what is the standard for obtaining a presidential disaster declaration?

The other day I had a television interview with a reporter. She asked me, “What is the standard for obtaining a Presidential Disaster Declaration?” My response was, “Today, I don’t know what that is.”

There certainly has been some political aspects to disaster declarations, but nothing like what we have seen lately. Case in point, Trump refused to send disaster aid to Chicago after 2 devastating storms

There is a process whereby a state does an initial damage assessment to try to determine the “uninsured” losses from a disaster. If deemed appropriate, they request a joint disaster assessment with their Regional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). For Illinois, that would be FEMA Region V—that I once worked extensively with back in the day. The FEMA Region forwards a recommendation to FEMA National and after their review a recommendation is sent to the President.  That is the “normal process.”

In the past there have been efforts to try and create some sort of standard, like “there has to more damage at a rate of $1.00 for each resident of the state. For Washington State that would be $7-8M in damages. Less than that and you don’t get a declaration. However, those efforts were never very successful. I asked my former Deputy Director at King County what she remembered as the standard. As she recalled, she had asked that same question of Washington State disaster recovery staff and it was not clear how and when a standard would be met. I recall one county in Washington State that worked for many months to get a “fish disaster” declared.

In the past year the State of Arkansas asked for a declaration and FEMA denied it. The Governor called the President (she was his Press Secretary in his first administration) and the state was awarded a disaster proclamation.

The politization of the declaration process is detailed in the linked story above. The State of California has also been threatened with “no disaster funding” for other political reasons, similar to Illinois.

Today, how do you ensure you get a Presidential Declaration? Be a friend of the President?