Corps lawyers are handling legal claims following the engineered rise in Eagle Lake as residents there report kinks in their quest for financial assistance while they wait to return home.

Claims of personal property damage or injury may call the district’s counsel at 601-631-5074, said Lt. Col. Greg Raimondo, deputy commander of the Corps’ Vicksburg District, during Tuesday’s community forum on flood matters.

Instructions for filing property damage or personal injury claims against the Corps also appear on the Mississippi Valley Division website. Federal law requires claims be filed within two years of the act causing the damage or injury. Claimants may file suits in federal court if cases aren’t decided in six months, or, if they are decided, within six months of a final action on the case by the government.

The Corps opened the Muddy Bayou Control Structure to raise the lake about 12 feet to ease pressure on the mainline levee at Buck Chute. A sand boil on the earthen barrier was enclosed with a 2-acre berm. Effects of the two-pronged project on lakefront property are an unknown until the lake is lowered, estimated to begin around June 20 in the district’s newest update.

“It’s a question that will have to be addressed as the lake comes down,” Raimondo said, terming the Corps’ decision to raise the lake “a tough call.”

Mississippi 465, submerged and closed to traffic for three weeks, won’t re-emerge from the deep until mid-June. Still, some homes are merely inaccessible, said Kelly Myers, who has stayed with a friend in Vicksburg since an evacuation was ordered May 5 for the community of about 800 people.

“I know my house isn’t flooded, but with the road closed you can’t get in and out,” Myers said.

FEMA applications for individual assistance can be completed by phone at 1-800-621-3362 or at www.fema.gov. Inspectors with the agency are expected to contact people for the purposes of the assistance process. The agency reported Tuesday it had distributed $538,868 to some of the 2,700 who’ve registered for financial assistance in 14 counties declared federal disaster areas by President Barack Obama on May 11. Most is going toward temporary housing, a release said.

Myers said she’s been denied once already online, adding she was advised following Tuesday’s meeting by FEMA officials that the online application “doesn’t ask enough detailed questions.” The next move is to visit the mobile disaster recovery center, she said.

“Some have already gotten money and some haven’t — yet we’re all in the same situation,” Myers said.

The mobile unit will operate from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday in the former Blackburn Motors on Washington Street.