(Roughly) Daily

Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, wildfires– they’re all on the rise, in both number and severity. Which is putting more strain on FEMA… But as Nicole Wetsman explains, FEMA is so hard to deal with that a new industry, “disaster consultants,” has emerged… and looks likely to prosper…

… FEMA is, in theory, complicated for a reason. Its labyrinth of rules is there to curb fraud and to make sure that local governments are using taxpayer money appropriately. But a laser focus on fraud prevention sometimes leads to the agency spending as much or more on documentation and reviews as the project itself should cost. “FEMA will spend thousands of dollars writing a project worksheet for $250 of eligible costs,” says Ben Rose, recovery and mitigation section chief at Vermont Emergency Management. “It’s not seeing the forest for the trees.”

And it also makes the process nearly impossible to navigate alone, particularly for cities and small towns that have never dealt with disasters before. Most don’t have any in-house emergency management experts who understand even the basics of the process. Some states, like Vermont, usually send in their own teams from emergency management departments to help cities and towns with the FEMA process. They only use consultants as force multipliers during really, really big disasters. Others, like Oregon, rely on them more often because the state just can’t maintain the level of staffing required.

That layers on additional costs for communities and, by extension, FEMA — which is well aware of the role consultants play in the public assistance program. It even pays for them: the towns, counties, or other groups applying for public assistance funding can use up to 5 percent of any grants for management costs. Still, FEMA used to be a bit dismissive toward consultants, [disaster consultantr AThat layers on additional costs for communities and, by extension, FEMA — which is well aware of the role consultants play in the public assistance program. It even pays for them: the towns, counties, or other groups applying for public assistance funding can use up to 5 percent of any grants for management costs. Still, FEMA used to be a bit dismissive toward consultants, [disaster consultant Alyssa ] Carrier says. That’s changed over the past few years. “It’s much more like, let’s work together,” she says.

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If anything, the public assistance process has only gotten more byzantine over the past few years, experts say. The agency set up a digital portal to streamline the process of submitting public assistance grants. But it’s an undertaking to train local officials — who might have six other jobs — in that tool. “You have to upload every document and do them in a certain order,” Carrier says. “It can be hard to follow if you don’t understand the process to begin with. And one of the issues is, if you don’t do everything in order, you’ll get kicked back out and have to start all over again.”

FEMA is assessing the public assistance program with a focus on simplification, Jeremy Edwards, FEMA press secretary, said in an email to The Verge. “FEMA continues its ongoing efforts and initiatives to simplify and streamline the public assistance program,” he said.

But experts say FEMA also seems to be getting stricter with how it applies its own rules around what’s eligible for public assistance funding and around the rules cities and local governments have to follow to get that funding. Some of that is likely because of pressure from the various oversight agencies, like OIG, that come in and double-check the agency’s work. In 2016, the OIG released a report saying that FEMA wasn’t doing enough to make sure that groups receiving public assistance grants were sticking to procurement guidelines. They followed up with a similar report in 2021. “After another report like this, Public Assistance Recipients and Subrecipients should expect FEMA to take an even firmer stance on requiring compliance with procurement regulations,” wrote Michelle Zaltsberg, an attorney specializing in disaster recovery, in a blog post.

All of that oversight colors FEMA’s decisions. “Too often, FEMA prioritizes or looks through the lens of avoiding audit findings, avoiding Inspector General reports, and avoiding waste, fraud, and abuse complaints,” Phelps says. “And then like third or fourth on the list of what they try to do is help survivors.”

None of this is relieved by the growing frequency of disasters pulling the agency — and its money — in all directions. The amount distributed through public assistance funding has gone up for the past three years. There are no restrictions to the program based on dollar amounts; how much money gets spent is purely based on what’s eligible for the program. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the changing climate meant things like wildfires and hurricanes were appearing more frequently and in places where they may not have hit before. Before around 2015, Oregon used to average a federal disaster every 17 or 18 months, Phelps says. Since 2015, they’ve averaged a disaster declaration every seven or eight months — more than twice as often.

That leads to FEMA almost acting more as an insurance company that only pays out money when it has to than an agency providing aid, Phelps says. The first priority often seems to be making sure the paperwork is perfect…

A sobering read: “The Disaster Consultants,” from @NicoleWetsman in @verge.

* John D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon considered the richest person in American history (and possibly in modern history)

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As we ruminate on response, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that Hurricane Iniki struck the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i; with winds of over 145 mph, it was the second-strongest Pacific hurricane on record, and caused around $3.1 billion (in 1992 USD) in damage and six deaths, making it the costliest natural disaster on record in the state. At the time, Iniki was the third-costliest United States hurricane. The storm struck just 18 days after Hurricane Andrew, the costliest tropical cyclone ever at the time, struck Florida.

Kauaʻi citizens were hopeful for disaster relief from the government or insurance companies, though after six months they felt annoyed with the lack of help.

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