Ala. Disaster Unemployment Assistance Benefit Period Extended

The Alabama Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have announced that benefits in the form of Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) will be available through June 3, 2006.

This 13-week extension is available to those who have already filed for disaster unemployment assistance with the state. On March 6, President Bush signed legislation that extended the benefit period for nearly 400,000 affected individuals nationwide.

Disaster Unemployment Assistance is traditionally available for a period of up to 26 weeks from the disaster declaration date. Persons living or working in the disaster-declared counties who became unemployed, or could not engage in their customary self-employment as a direct result of Hurricane Katrina are eligible for DUA.

The declared counties are: Baldwin, Choctaw, Clarke, Greene, Hale, Marengo, Mobile, Pickens, Sumter , Tuscaloosa , and Washington . Claims are filed through the Department of Industrial Relations, and funding is provided by FEMA.

For more information, call the Department of Industrial Relations at 800-361-4524 or go online at dir.alabama.gov/.

The deadline to file was Nov. 30, 2005. To date, 1,148 DUA claims have been approved, resulting in over $755,000 disbursed.

Individuals who need to register for disaster assistance or those wishing to check the status of their application may call FEMA at 800-621-FEMA (3362) or, TTY 800-462-7585 for the speech or hearing-impaired, or go online at www.fema.gov . March 11, 2006 is the last day to register.