Common reasons FEMA denies money after major disasters
Local governments and nonprofits trying to recover from major disasters have sometimes learned the hard way that money spent on protective measures, cleanup and rebuilding is not always reimbursed by the U.S. government.
The Associated Press analyzed more than 900 final appeals of public assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the past decade. A look at some of the common reasons money is denied, with examples: IMMEDIATE THREAT A common point of dispute is whether work undertaken by cities, counties and other governmental bodies was vital to address an “immediate threat” to life or property.
Sticking tightly to its definitions, this means that some appeals can be denied even when FEMA acknowledges that particular protective measures were the right thing to do.
In early 2009, heavy rains and melting snow caused flooding in parts of Washington, leading to a leak in the earthen abutment of the Howard Hanson Dam, nearly 50 miles southeast of Seattle. While repairing the dam, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warned downstream communities that they could be at increased risk of flooding if another severe storm hit.
Officials in King County and several cities placed giant sandbags atop downstream levees, erected flood guards around facilities such as a jail and sewage treatment plant, and temporarily relocated the county election office.
The governments sought a combined $38 million from FEMA. Upon denial, local officials flew to the nation’s capital with what they described as “a mountain of evidence” in favor of a scaled back appeal for $31.5 million.
“FEMA staff told us, ‘We understand why you did what you did, and it was a reasonably prudent thing to protect the public,’” said Mark Isaacson, King County’s wastewater treatment director who at the time led its flood control
division. But “it didn’t fall within their definition of imminent flooding.”
So the local governments ate the costs, delaying other levee projects while taking money out of various funds. REPAIR OR REPLACE FEMA also can face difficult calls on whether damaged buildings should be replaced or repaired. Its rules say they should be fixed if doing so would cost less than half of what it would cost to build new. But those calculations and decisions are often disputed, sometimes even within the agency.
The University of Iowa’s
recovery from a 2008 flood focused attention on the so-called 50 percent rule. FEMA initially promised $297 million to replace a flooded performing arts auditorium and a flooded art school building, but ruled that the school’s damaged art museum should be repaired at its same location for $5.2 million.
The university had requested $40 million to rebuild the museum on higher ground, saying it could no longer find insurance for the $500 million fine art collection at the location on the banks of the Iowa River. But FEMA rejected its appeal in 2012,
saying the university’s inability to obtain coverage was a business decision by its insurer.
Two months later, an agency audit concluded that the auditorium and the art building also should not have qualified for replacements — only repairs — because staff erred in calculating the “50-percent rule.” The audit recommended suspending those projects and cutting $83.7 million in funding, outraging university officials and Iowa politicians. FEMA officials ultimately rejected the audit’s findings and allowed the projects to go forward.