FEMA is reminding community members about their EFFAK (Emergency Financial First Aid Kit) Toolkit after some residents who were victims of the fires down in LA lost important documents.
Multiple victims of the LA fires have requested FEMA assistance since the disaster, experiencing delayed insurance coverage to no insurance coverage at all. Some of those delays were due to important financial documents lost in the fires the FEMA needs to estimate the amount of assistance available.
“Because disasters can happen at any time, we really encourage people to get this kit," FEMA Point of Information Officer Brandi Richard-Thompson said. "That's called the Emergency Financial First Aid Kit, and it's designed to help individuals protect their critical financial information before a disaster happens.”
Richard-Thompson with FEMA says by utilizing the kit, you can take an hour or two to put together financial, legal, identification, and medical documents while understanding what coverage you have and how that impacts your readiness for a disaster.
“There are individuals who are still waiting to hear back from their insurance company about what they're going to be eligible to receive," Richard-Thompson added. "In order for us to help, for FEMA to help, we need to know what their insurance company will provide.”
The online kit can be found on the FEMA website and lists needed documents, where and how to store the kit and other financial assistance available to you.
Last year, the Roza family fell victim to a house fire in Atascadero. While a locked safe helped save many important documents when their home caught fire, others perished.
“We got lucky in that our documents were safe, but for our prescriptions, they were lost," Jared Roza said. "That was hard...Thankfully, our doctors were amazing and called them in, but the doctors had to put a little effort in with the insurance companies.”
Without needed medication for five days, fire victim Jared Roza says anxiety was hard to overcome.
“I recommend [to keep] a couple days of your medication in a safe spot somewhere, just in case, because you never know," Roza added.
