FEMA had a warning for local governments at the annual Governor’s Conference on Hurricanes: Don’t count on Uncle Sam to be there immediately after the next natural disaster.
“If you’re waiting on FEMA to run your commodities, that’s not the solution,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long said Wednesday. “I can’t guarantee that we can be right on time to backfill everything you need.”
The warning came as Gov. Rick Scott asked everyone to pray that Florida isn’t struck by a hurricane for the third year in a row. The state endured Matthew in 2016 and Irma in 2017.
“Hopefully we won’t have any hurricanes. It would be nice not to have, in my eighth year, any hurricanes,” said Scott, who is winding down his time in the Governor’s Mansion and running for the U.S. Senate this fall against incumbent Bill Nelson.
Long bluntly stressed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others that offer disaster assistance have been stretched thin after a series of 2017 storms and wildfires, as well as the ongoing volcanic eruption in Hawaii, so local officials should have their own plans to provide water and other essential services for the first few days following a disaster.
“If you don’t have the ability to do things such as provide your own food and water and your own commodities to your citizens for the first 48 to 72 hours, and I’m asking you to consider pre-event management concepts,’’ Long said while appearing at the week-long training event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach.
With the start of the six-month hurricane season two weeks away, Long said FEMA isn’t “going to back away” when disasters strike. But he said local and state capabilities need to be strengthened, such as signing deals with private water bottlers and debris haulers and hardening local communications systems.
He talked of a need to revamp the national flood-insurance program, saying that due to “affordability” about 80 percent of homeowners in Houston didn’t have flood insurance before Hurricane Harvey hit last year.
Long said he’s also trying to revamp FEMA’s business model, as he estimated the agency spent about $300 million a day responding to disasters in 2017, with hotel bills at $3.5 million a day for displaced residents due to hurricanes Irma in Florida, Maria in Puerto Rico and Harvey in Texas, as well as floods, tornadoes and fires.
“The bottom line is that my operational capacity internally does not grow with the number of events that we have,” Long said.
During his talk, Scott praised people attending the conference for their work to restore services following hurricanes the past two years.
The governor’s office announced on Wednesday the state has submitted a $616 million request to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for ongoing Hurricane Irma recovery efforts.
HUD has 45 days to respond to the state’s request for the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program money, which would go into providing assistance to affected businesses, repairing homes, building new affordable rental units and buying land for affordable housing.
The federal program requires at least 80 percent of the money go to the hardest-hit counties and ZIP codes. As part of the state’s request, the areas listed in the application include Orange, Volusia, Brevard, Polk, Broward, Collier, Duval, Lee, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.
The money would also help Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida because of Hurricane Maria.
Staff writer Mark Skoneki contributed to this report.
