Governor Mark Dayton is appealing after FEMA denied assistance to individuals and households in seven southern Minnesota counties hit by storms and flooding the third week of September. The governor says in Waseca County alone, with a population just over 19-thousand, there’s an estimated 9.3 million dollars in uninsured damage. He says without assistance, 15-hundred homes across southern Minnesota will not be properly heated this winter and therefore uninhabitable.
Dayton says desperate homeowners have turned to dangerous alternate heating sources, and local fire departments are investigating at least two house fires that authorities suspect were caused by inappropriate heating sources. The governor wants individual disaster assistance for Blue Earth, Freeborn, Hennepin, Le Sueur, Rice, Steele and Waseca counties.