New article tonight from the Washington Post, March 5, 2013. The essence is that the National Weather Service will suffer much more than FEMA, which has a lot of cash on hand.
Every week, the blog gets queries about FEMA – when is was created, why, and its functions. So I am bringing up an older posting that addresses those questions.
If you are curious about when, why, and how FEMA was created, I recommend this well-researched, and objective account of the history of emergency management in the U.S. before and since the formation of FEMA: Emergency Management; the American Experience, 1900-2010 (second edition); 2012.
Note that either a hard copy or the ebook version is available from the publisher and from Amazon.
Disclosure: the Diva is the editor of this book.
THE RHETORIC: Earlier this week, I posted some information about the lengthy study process and new book from the National Academy of Sciences re Resilience. See earlier posting here, including details about their Nov. 30th workshop.
From an intellectual standpoint, the study and the presentations at the NAS this past week are commendable and credible. But my concerns have been practical ones — how will local officials and others responsible for the front lines of emergency management actually adopt the philosophy and apply it in their communities?
Also, of concern is how the federal emergency management agencies (not just FEMA, but EPA, NOAA, HHS, USGS and others) will champion the cause of resilience and include resilience actions and measures into their work. Note: FEMA is one of the 9 federal agencies that support the work of the NAS on resilience.
THE REALITY: This week the FEMA Administrator testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure e Committee on Dec. 4th. At the hearing, when pressed about some of the longer-term considerations for the eastern states recovery from H. Sandy, Fugate took the short/narrow view. Some excerpts:
… when legislators asked FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate about these kinds of infrastructure issues, such as developing a long-term strategy for safer housing on the shorelines, he insisted that such issues, while important, were beyond the scope of his agency.
“Again, this goes far beyond what FEMA does, it goes far beyond the Stafford Act,” said Fugate, referring to the law that created the federal disaster relief system that is in place today.
Speaking about long-term housing solutions in New York and New Jersey, Fugate said, “The Stafford Act is a key part of this initial fix … but it does not get to pre-existing conditions, (and) it doesn’t get to some of the regional challenges that we have in that dense population area.”
Fred Tombar, a senior adviser to the HUD secretary for disaster recovery, noted that his agency is developing plans to provide rebuilding assistance – to be made available to communities that qualify for the Community Development Block Grant Program. The rebuilding assistance would help communities “build back in a way that is smarter and safer than what has been done before,” he said.
The source for these quotes is the coverage of the questions and answers from the House Committee Hearing in this article: House Committte Grills FEMA chief on Long-Term-Fixes in Wake of Sandy.
As the implementation planning for recovery begins, it is worth reviewing what the baseline is for national recovery guidance from FEMA. See the recent GAO testimony/report, titled Disaster Recovery; Selected Themes for Effective Long-Term Recovery; June 2012. A copy is attached here:Testimony-Czerwinski. It reviews the National Disaster Recovery Framework and the newly created position of Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator.
Also the National Preparedness Goal — npg — issued in Sept. 2011 by DHS, outlines the “core capabilities” needed for state and local governments to deal effectively with a catastrophic disaster event. The extent to which this document has contributed to capabilities for recovery in the states and municipalities affected by H. Sandy remains to be determined.
[Special thanks to Bill Cumming for calling these documents to my attention.]
The pending recovery from H. Sandy will allow us to watch the implementation of the NDRF, the role of the FDRC, and the new role created for HUD Secretary Donovan, who was named by the President as the overall manager of recovery for NY and NJ. The interaction among those 3 positions/persons will be most interesting, in my view.
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Kathleen Tierney’s comments on the NY Time blog re Do We Really Need FEMA?
October 31. Her concluding sentence:
The bottom line is that the U.S. currently has an emergency management system that is second to none in the world. It is by no means perfect, and it needs to continually evolve in response to new threats and disaster experiences. But it is clearly not in need of a radical overhaul.
[Tierney is the Director of the Hazards Center, Univ. of CO/Boulder]
Sandy Shows Why We Need FEMA; Oct. 31.
An excerpt:I hope the storm is a good reminder that when we hear candidates’ soothing words about shedding federal government functions, whether it’s FEMA, Medicaid, or safety nets in recession, we must think about what that actually means in practice. Disasters happen, recessions happen — like it or not, there are market failures and natural disasters in our future. If anything, it seems as though these 100-year storms come about every six months these days. (Which reminds me — here’s a great idea for a big, national infrastructure project that will create millions of jobs for white- and blue-collar workers and save billions in lost output: Bury the power lines!)
At the end of the day, we don’t need “big” government or “small” government. What we need is an amply funded federal government to meet challenges like those we’re facing today, ….
How to Tell if FEMA is Doing a Good Job or a Lousy One; the New Republic, Oct. 31
Superstorm Sandy has pushed on northward, leaving some of the most densely populated areas of the country a mess in its wake. Now, rescue agencies will get in full gear—none moreso than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). What can the storm’s victims expect from FEMA? And how can we evaluate whether the agency, which so famously bungled its response to Hurricane Katrina, is doing a competent job? To answer these questions, I called on Mark Merritt, a FEMA official under Clinton who spent years coordinating its disaster relief efforts with state and local governments, and who is now the president of a crisis management consulting firm. Merritt and I spoke by phone just after his plane touched down in D.C.—“a ghost town”—on what to watch for as FEMA’s efforts get underway.
The Conservative View: See the article titled: How a Smart Conservative Would Reform FEMA, by Matt Mayer of the Heritiage Foundation, as interviewed in the Atlantic , October 31. In my view, he is the best informed conservative commentator. [I just took issue with a writer in Forbes online.]
Fugate usually does not speak from a prepared text, so blogger Eric Holdeman is the best source of information about Fugate’s remarks to the recent NEMA conference.
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There have been at least 2 GAO reports in the past year, dealing with problems with the FEMA reservist workforce. The lastest report documenting the problems and issues comes from DHS’s Office of the Inspector General.
Here is the link to the full text ( 20 page) OIG report; June 2012.
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FEMA has a knack for issuing reports and not bothering to tell anyone. I am not sure of the release date but there is a new report available. Here is the direct link to the 76 page report, Lessons in Community Recovery; Seven Years of Emergency Support Function #14, Long Term Recovery from 2004-2011. The report is dated December 2011.
The report is somewhat interesting and informative. In my view there is too much emphasis on process and not enough on outcome, results, problems. Some years ago, the famous Gilbert White ( Director of the Hazards Center at the Univ. of CO/Boulder) said “Don’t tell me what you did, tell me what you accomplished.” That remains good advice for all of us.
This article focuses on the slow drawdown of federal funds made available for recovery projects in Louisiana since the trio of hurricanes that hit in 2005. It highlights the financial management needed for the long, complicated recovery process. Check out: Another lesson learned from hurricanes Rita, Katrina; December 16, 2011. A couple of excerpts:
While recovery from hurricanes Rita and Katrina from 2005 has been steady, the money allocated by the federal government to Louisiana has not been all spent. There is almost $2 billion still unspent from the $13.4 billion that was given to the state for rebuilding from those devastating natural disasters, according to the state Division of Administration.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be spent, since it will probably take the state years to fully recover.
While we can be grateful for the aide from the federal government, among the lessons from hurricanes Rita and Katrina is how to make the recovery programs from natural disasters more efficient, while making sure the money is spent honestly and for the purposes intended.
FL paper reports kindly about one of its former state officials who now has national prominence. See Master of Disaster Stands Ready, from fltoday.com; Nov. 25, 2011.
Recovery Diva 