I just posted an article with complaints from LA officials. Here is an account of recovery problems as noted by the outgoing Administrator of FEMA:
Battling Climate Change, FEMA Chief Blasts ‘Social Welfare For Developers’
From the Advocate newspaper in LA:
Our Views: FEMA still a work in progress
The Diva is not an optimist when it comes to anticipating what the incoming Congress might do, but it is worth considering these suggestions. See:
4 ways Congress can hit the reset button on disaster preparedness
This is a new and important topic for those of us interested in the recovery phase. Your comments are invited.
From a FL newspaper, see this article: FEMA money keeps many Florida counties afloat.
This article references a Bloomberg News article from a month ago, which was titled:
The Areas America Could Abandon First. Some excerpts:
You could drive a shrimp boat 1,300 miles along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi to Fort Myers and not pass a single county or parish that voted against Donald Trump. The cities and towns along that shoreline had better hope he remembers their support: Without increasing levels of federal spending, climate change could push parts of them out of existence.
So far this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent $1.1 billion on what are called Individual Assistance payments, which help households recover from natural disasters. There are no limits on the number of times a household can apply, so the program isn’t just a safety net; for some people, it’s effectively a subsidy to live in areas that are especially vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and storm surges.
From Bloomberg News: Trump Rejects Climate Change, but Mar-a-Lago Could Be Lost to the Sea . “Floridians in Palm Beach spend millions to deal with rising seas.” An excerpt:
Donald Trump shelled out $409,759 for property taxes in 2016 on Mar-a-Lago, his oceanfront club above billionaire’s row in Palm Beach, Fla. Some of those tax dollars will go toward combating the ravages of climate change, a phenomenon the president-elect has dismissed as a hoax. Trump tweeted in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese” to make U.S. industry less competitive. In early December he told Fox News that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. He’s picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch denier of climate change, to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A Wrenching Decision, Where Black History and Floods Intertwine. Residents of Princeville, N.C., are considering the prospect of leaving their town after enduring a 100-year flood for the second time in 17 years.
From the latest issue of the HSAJ, this remarkably candid article by Quinton Lucie: What Comes Around, Goes Around (and Around and Around): Reviving the Lost History of FEMA and its Importance to Future Disasters
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) lacks a coherent historical record. Often this results in the agency repeating the mistakes of its past. By creating a comprehensive public record of FEMA and national emergency management efforts over the last half century, FEMA can break its cycle of repeating past failures and rediscover successes that were otherwise lost to current emergency management leadership.
FEMA’s Plan to Make States Pay More for Disasters. “It’s one of the many ideas and practices that Craig Fugate, the agency’s outgoing leader, hopes the Trump administration will adopt. Among the others: rescuing pets.” [Thanks to Ed Thomas for this citation.]
This concept is not new. The Diva recalls writing about the need for more state investment in preparedness for disasters back in 1993, when the topic was included in the milestone report Coping with Catastrophe, issued by the National Academy of Public Administration
Update: another take, this one from Bloomberg News, on the same topic.
From the NY Times: Dismantling Climate Rules Isn’t So Easy. An excerpt:
Regulatory reversals lacking a legal or factual basis would result in lawsuits by citizens, states and industries supporting the regulations. Challengers would argue that the rules are rooted in statutory language, court precedents and in careful documentation of environmental, technological and market facts. On the climate, for example, three Supreme Court decisions established that federal climate action is required by the Clean Air Act’s broad language; and the E.P.A. then, via another rule upheld by the judiciary, documented substantial climate risks.
Jobs: FEMA Looking for a Few Good Men and Women. “The only mistake that Craig Fugate made.” I got this posting from Eric Holdeman’s blog. The Diva thinks Fugate probably made more than one mistake but this one was a glaring error.
Update: See detailed comments on the Holdeman site provided above. Clearly some reservists are still very angry.
Recovery Diva 