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Officials with the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency management Agency continued their whirlwind tour through North Dakota Thursday afternoon in Minot, where they spent a couple of hours showing local governmental representatives the ins and outs of securing federal flood assistance. The two programs highlighted during the briefing were the Public Assistance Program and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Bismarck, Jamestown, Fargo, and Grand Forks were previous stops for the briefings, which will end this morning with a final stop in Carson.

Larry Akers, a FEMA hazard mitigation officer who just returned from helping in a tornado disaster in Oklahoma, said it seems like natural disasters have been happening more frequently in the past few years, and every time they do happen the price tag is considerable.

"I don't know how much this disaster we're in right now is going to cost," Akers said. "I have heard it said upwards of $100 million, by the time you consider public assistance, insurance and everything else."

He said the federal government spends billions every year helping with disaster recovery, and a program designed to help FEMA bring those costs down is the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Information Akers provided states the HMGP covers any action taken to permanently eliminate or reduce the risk to life and/or property from hazards.

"I like to make it simpler than that," Akers said. "I like to say that it's anything that you and I can do as private individuals or communities or government entities to change something that if that same hazard happens to us again in the future, it won't cost us as much, (and) hopefully it won't cost lives."

Projects that are eligible for this program include acquisitions projects such as the purchase of homes and property damaged or at risk of damage, and construction projects such as storm water retention basins and drainage projects, culvert/drain improvement projects, storm sewer lift projects, electric power line improvements and drainage pump improvements.

After Akers went through some of the intricacies of the HMGP, Paul Messner, deputy public assistance officer for the Department of Emergency Services, talked about the Public Assistance Program, which assists local governments with restoring public infrastructure to pre-disaster conditions.

The types of work eligible for this program include emergency work such as dike construction and sandbagging, and permanent work such as roads and bridges, water control facilities, buildings and equipment, utilities, and parks and recreation facilities.

Messner went over several different types of projects covered under this program as well as other details such as insurance requirements, project completion time limits and the appeals process for projects that are rejected.

Other officials took turns going over a multitude of important information for the assembled crowd, including the environmental impact any projects would have on the surrounding area and the inspection process.

Ensuring that all the various agencies work together was also a point driven home during the briefing. Portia Ross, environmental and historic preservation official for FEMA, said along with FEMA and local governments, the Army Corps of Engineers is also playing a part in helping North Dakota recover from the massive flooding.

"The Army Corps of Engineers, their office in Bismarck, has requested to be made aware of any work that is done on a bridge, on a culvert or in a wetland," Ross said. "So essentially, any time anyone splashes in a puddle, the Army Corps of Engineers would like to be made aware of it."