FEMA tapped out in 2017, audit says

WASHINGTON — The Federal Emergency Management Agency was stretched thin and overwhelmed in 2017 by the sequence of major hurricanes and wildfires that caused disasters across the country, according to a Government Accountability Office “performance audit” released Tuesday.

The report concludes that FEMA generally carried out its duties as expected when responding within the continental United States — to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the California wildfires — but it found that FEMA was not ready for what Hurricane Maria did to Puerto Rico.

“They were completely overwhelmed from a workforce standpoint,” Chris Currie, the Government Accountability Office director for emergency management issues and leader of the audit, said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “Once Maria hit, their staff resources were pretty exhausted. Their other commodities and resources were exhausted.”

Some of the FEMA staff deployed to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands “were not physically able to handle the extreme or austere environment of the territories, which detracted from mission needs,” according to the report. FEMA officials told the auditors that “the physical fitness of staff could be assessed” before future deployments.

At one point last October — as FEMA struggled to respond to multiple disasters — 54 percent of FEMA’s deployed workers were forced to perform tasks for which they did not meet the agency’s standard of “qualified,” the report states. And many staff members couldn’t speak Spanish, something that hindered efforts in Puerto Rico: “FEMA did not have enough bilingual employees to communicate with local residents or translate documents.”

FEMA had problems locating people on the islands “because many affected areas did not have posted addresses, many individuals use nicknames instead of their given names, and often several families were located on a single property,” the report states.

Officials in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands had prepared for a natural disaster before the arrival of Hurricane Maria, but “neither had recently experienced nor stockpiled the resources necessary for a hurricane of that magnitude,” the report states.

The report, titled “2017 Hurricanes and Wildfires: Initial Observations on the Federal Response and Key Recovery Challenges,” makes no specific recommendations, but says the Government Accountability Office is conducting a comprehensive review of how the federal government plans for and responds to disasters.

FEMA’s own in-house report, released in July, acknowledged that the agency had not anticipated that two storms might hit Puerto Rico in rapid succession or that the destruction would be as broad and intense as what Maria delivered last September.

The earlier FEMA report noted that in mid-September, before Maria arrived, officials on Puerto Rico shipped the bulk of the island’s emergency supplies to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which had been hit hard by Hurricane Irma. When Maria roared in, Puerto Rico was low on food, water, tarps, cots and other supplies.

FEMA officials have repeatedly said the agency is not supposed to be the first responder after a disaster, instead emphasizing that localities and states should have that responsibility. But Hurricane Maria blew up that protocol, the new report suggests: “FEMA essentially served as the first responder in the early response efforts in Puerto Rico.”

The report notes that the remoteness of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands “complicated” the FEMA response, as did the “outdated local infrastructure.”

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Currie highlighted the infrastructure challenges.

“In Puerto Rico, you had the absolute destruction of the system,” he said. “It wasn’t just about stringing line and putting up power poles but the complete restoration of the system.”

The island territory faced major logistical challenges in delivering materials and parts that had to be manufactured elsewhere and shipped to Puerto Rico. Normally, Currie said, a state would receive assistance through mutual aid agreements with neighboring states, but that capacity was limited in Puerto Rico. The Government Accountability Office plans to take a closer look at power restoration and evaluate the work of the Army Corps of Engineers in a future report.

Currie said FEMA wasn’t prepared for Maria: “I think FEMA didn’t do as good a job as they could’ve done to anticipate” such a devastating hurricane.