In a recent blog post I talked about the impact of many years of institutional knowledge walking out the door at FEMA. Where do these people, with that type of experience go?

The question hanging over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) “Is FEMA prepared to respond to a major hurricane after all the loss of people, leaders and institutional knowledge?”

There have been two significant chemical related disasters in the news in the past few weeks. One in California and another here in Washington State where I live. The one in Washington happened in a smaller and basically rural county. These events can occur almost anywhere at fixed facilities, as these were, or during transportation on roads and rail networks.

How do you measure disaster resilience? That can be a tough question to answer. Check out the chart below. I’m not a big believer in how “this one thing” can be the answer, but educating ourselves on different tools will be helpful.

One of the biggest hurdles that state and local agencies have is getting their populations to understand how the 100-year flood plain actually works statistically.

When you have repeated flood events, that fact alone will bump up the number of National Flood Insurance Policies (NFIP) in a state. The map below reflects those numbers with Florida and Louisiana having the highest percentages of policies. I had not realized until recently that there was private flood insurance available.

In the FEMA Review Councils Report there is a proposal to streamline how Public Assistance (PA) funding is provided.

Disaster Zone Podcast: Protecting Your Home from Wind Blown Fire Embers

Wildfires have become one of the more common natural hazard disasters that can impact people where they live and work. In this podcast we learn about general Firewise solutions to protect homes and then a line of cost effective products that can help keep fire from entering your home. Nicholai Allen is the founder of SAFE SOSS and an active wildland firefighter (FFT1, FFT2, Engine Boss Trainee) in his third year fighting catastrophic fires.

I am on a service that sends out messages from reporters looking for sources for stories. See the one below.

This is of course anecdotal, but note the reference to “possible concerns” about climate change impacting a depressed housing market in Florida. I think pictures of homes falling into the ocean in other states and concerns about “sunny day flooding” in areas of Florida are finally having an impact on anyone smart enough to do some research on the topic. 

When a democratic candidate debate for Governor in California was held, the topic on the cost of insurance came up. Increasing rates can be called “skyrocketing” in some areas of the United States. I recently spoke to one homeowner who’s home was surrounded by wildfire but did not burn. They did have one outbuilding burn to the ground. Their property insurance rate doubled after the fire.

It appears to me that the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Mullin is taking quick action to try and “fix” problems caused by the previous DHS Secretary.

One such action was the firing of FEMA staff needed to respond to disasters. Now we see this, FEMA brings back employees it recently let go as it looks to 'stabilize' its workforce.

The next big thing that needs to be done is to hire a new FEMA Administrator who is qualified by experience to run the agency. That is still pending. As I write this on 11 May, the FEMA Review Council is meeting to release their much delayed report that was submitted to DHS months ago.

We’ll have to see what version of the report is released and what the recommendations are in the report

Disaster Zone Podcast: Nonprofit Fundraising

If you are a nonprofit organization, it means that your goal is to not make money, but provide some form of service or product. The challenge is always how to do that without a stream of money to fund your activities. That is the subject of this podcast. There are tips here for very small organizations and other ideas that will work for very large nonprofit organizations.

If you were not able to find it or not had the time to look for it, here is a link to the document, Final Report: The President’s Council to Assess the Federal

I’ve copied a LinkedIn post from Quin Lucie below. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, since I have lived it more than researched it. I’ll have to vouch for the fact that federal agencies can get jealous and be vengeful when it comes to budgets and budgeting. OMB did not like it that James Lee Witt could go directly to President Clinton since he had a personal relationship with him since serving as his State Emergency Management Director. When he left, they took their pound of flesh from FEMA. And, I do see a turn back to civil defense/national security is coming in the future…for all emergency managers and state and local programs

We do have a dam problem in the United States. The majority of dams are privately owned and many were constructed by farmers who damed up a stream to have an impoundment area, wala, a dam/lake is formed.

Finally we have the FEMA Review Council’s report. From The NY Times, Trump Panel Calls for FEMA Overhaul

From NorthStar:

The Forecast: 13 Named Storms | 6 Hurricanes | 2 Major
The Driver: El Niño peak = higher Atlantic wind shear, suppressing overall development
The Reality: The probability of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coastline still sits at a critical 32%
The Hotzones: Florida holds a 74% risk of a named storm. The Gulf Coast retains a 20% probability of a major landfall.

I did not attend the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) briefing on the world cut that is coming to America this summer. One attendee wrote this about the one hour briefing, “The FEMA World Cup briefing for state and local partners… a wasted hour of my life. No substantial information for state or local governments.”

Having only $3B in a monetary fund may not sound too shabby for many, but for the nation with so many disaster needs and billion dollar disasters becoming much more common (note: you don’t need a hurricane either to get to at $1B damage total) they are running out of federal disaster funds.

Finally…we will hear officially from the FEMA Review Council. Their last meeting was cancelled at the “very last minute” in December after they had all assembled in Washington, D.C.