The Disaster Recovery Center set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration in Carrollton will be closing for good at 7 p.m. tonight.

“The reason they’re scaling it back is because the flow of people coming in has slacked off,” said Tim Padgett, director of the Carroll County Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA will not disappear from the county, though. There will still be agents working in the field doing inspections of property, agents knocking on doors to make sure people know how to register for the assistance they need and agents with the national flood insurance program looking to mitigate future flood damage.

There will also be one FEMA representative along with representatives of the SBA working in Room 501 at the David Perry Administration Building on College Street in Carrollton.

“There are some people who’ve got to come back and sign loans or whatever through the SBA,” Padgett said. “I asked them to keep a FEMA representative here to answer any questions that the public might have.”

Nearly 700 people from Carroll County have registered with FEMA since the flooding that began Sept. 21 and still may have questions about any correspondence with the agency.

Two weeks after the flooding, FEMA is moving into a recovery phase opposed to a response phase, said Tim Tyson, spokesman for FEMA.

“Our community relations teams have visited more than 2,000 homes in the disaster area, helping people get to the recovery centers,” Tyson said. “In Carroll County specifically, I know the teams have gone door to door. They have visited every identifiable residence and business that had flood damage.”

People can still visit the Disaster Recovery Centers in Douglasville at Lowe’s on 7001 Douglas Blvd. from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. or Lowe’s of Austell at 1717 East-West Connector from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

People also can register online or by phone – the SBA has a deadline of Nov. 23 to apply for loans – but now with the number of applications received, the agents in the county need to work on processing them.

The community has sites in churches and agencies such as the Salvation Army that are taking over to fill the immediate needs of the people affected by the flood. The local volunteers have been canvassing the county to help wherever they can.

“If it wasn’t for our volunteers, here locally and our volunteers coming in from other areas to help us, I mean they have really helped bring some of our people’s lives back to normal,” Padgett said. “That’s the good thing about this community, is it just comes together, everybody helping everybody.”

Padgett praised FEMA’s handling of the crisis. The center has been running seven days a week since it opened nearly two weeks ago on Hay’s Mill Road.

“The thing that I saw this time, it has always been just a compassion for people,” Padgett said. “They would just wrap their arms around you.”

Along with the individual assistance available through FEMA, counties and municipalities are eligible to receive reimbursement for the money spent dealing with the devastation created by the flooding.

The county has already started the paperwork to be reimbursed for the labor, materials and equipment used as a result of the storm damage. Padgett is estimating at least $22 million in damage to the county, but that will increase.

“We still don’t have estimations on the bridges that are damaged,” he said. “We still don’t have estimations on McIntosh Reserve.”

Those may take some time to compile. With McIntosh Reserve, both federal and state agencies will have to decide how to handle the clean-up.

“We’re still waiting on everybody and their brother to tell us what we got to do,” Padgett said. “That deals with NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service). That deals with the Corps of Engineers. That deals with Historic Preservation. So, that deals with everybody and their brother.”

As of Friday morning:

• $40.4 million has been disbursed by FEMA for housing assistance and other needs

• $2.2 million in loans has been approved by the SBA

• 19,649 households and businesses have registered with FEMA

• 5,155 people have been assisted at one of the 14 Disaster Recovery Centers