FEMA Budget Running Low

And while the peak of hurricane season is still ahead of us, new reporting reveals that FEMA is already stretched to the limit. Roll Call reports that FEMA is phasing into what they call, “immediate needs funding mode”. When they put non-life-threatening life-saving activities on pause, and they prioritize urgent recovery efforts.

(00:20)
That’s because the agency has already issued at least 100 disaster and emergency declarations this year. Nearly as many as they authorized all of last year. FEMA’s warning that by the end of September, they could be more than $6 billion in the red. Here to discuss it, former FEMA, Administrator, Craig Fugate, it’s good to see you again. Look, as of August, this country has weathered $25 billion in storm damage. Extreme events. We’re just now seeing hurricane season escalate. What does that mean in the weeks they ahead, and most pointedly, for people who find themselves in need of immediate help?

Well, what FEMA did was to make sure they did have money for future disasters. And really when they go into immediate needs funding, which we had done in the Obama administration, they had actually done this in the Bush administration, is when funds get to a certain point, you stop doing permanent work from older disasters and you keep the remaining funds for the next disaster. Really focused on, as you say, life-saving, but also taking care of the families and other people that are applying for assistance in the aftermath of the storm.

(01:28)
And what’s key here is, we’re going into September peak of hurricane season, but October 1st is also the start of a new fiscal year for the federal government. So FEMA is really trying to manage their funds based upon October 1st. Even with a continuing resolution, they get new money for disasters. The biggest problem right now is all of the work from all of the other disasters, including Hurricane Maria that had hit Puerto Rico, will have to stop if that work had not already started until FEMA gets additional funds.

So Florida Senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott pushed for more FEMA funding months ago because a more severe hurricane season was predicted. But the agency, as I said, is still facing a big deficit. Is the issue that, I don’t know, there’s not enough awareness of the urgency, not enough awareness of the role FEMA plays. Ask anybody who’s been through a storm and I’ve covered enough of them and talked to enough people who have come through, but not without loss of homes and other things. Are we going to have to reassess what FEMA needs, especially in the light of climate change?

Well, I think the formulas that are used to build FEMA’s budget need to be adjusted upward for these [inaudible 00:02:47] catastrophic disasters. If you look at FEMA’s, not the number of disasters, but looking at the large disasters where there’s a lot of recovery work, that progress needs to take into account, we’re seeing more those multi-billion-dollar recovery operations and put in more funding on a reoccurring basis each year. Not only for the older disasters, but for the new ones that are occurring. And I think we always focus on the immediate response. FEMA’s going to focus on search and rescue. They’re going to focus on getting supplies in the area. They’re going to focus on helping states pay for debris and other immediate costs.

(03:23)
But the real problem here is if you’ve got a fire station that got destroyed in a storm, a fire, an earthquake, and you haven’t started to work on that fire station, that project hasn’t been approved, you can’t replace that fire station until FEMA gets more money.

I mean, that’s one of the most obvious things. Are we seeing more, even from when you were in office of one disaster following another, following another in the same place, so they haven’t recovered from one thing and here comes the next?

Well, it’s certainly been something we’ve been seeing more of as we’re seeing more active hurricane seasons. But also look at wildfires. We’re seeing several places that we had fires in Northern California, we’re seeing people have rebuilt and now we’re seeing fires coming back again, and people have lost their homes after they’ve rebuilt. So we know that disaster frequency is increasing. We know certain types of disasters that are weather-driven, such as drought, extreme heat, extreme rainfall, and the storms have been increasing.

(04:25)
And so looking at how we’ve always funded disasters, looking backwards isn’t helping us stay ahead of the financial costs. And again, these are uninsured losses that the federal government reimburses, States and local governments and eligible nonprofits, as well as the individual assistance assistance they provide to families who didn’t have insurance or were underinsured. So as we also see an insurance crisis growing, we’re seeing more and more people that are without insurance or underinsured in these various disasters.

Craig Fugate, thanks so much for helping us understand what’s happening right now. We appreciate it.