1-2 punch: FEMA confident despite blitz of two hurricanes.
WASHINGTON - Faced with the looming threat of dual disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ramped up preparations for Hurricane Irma as it barreled toward the Florida coast, even as the agency continued the massive recovery effort in storm-battered Texas.
It was a 1-2 punch of powerful storms certain to strain the agency’s quickly dwindling coffers.
The roughly $1 billion left in FEMA’s Emergency Response Fund was expected to run out as soon as the end of the week, just as Category 5 Irma could be pounding Florida and less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey caused massive flooding in Houston.
The House on Wednesday passed $7.9 billion in Harvey disaster relief as warring Republicans and Democrats united to help victims of that storm in Texas and Louisiana. The 419-3 vote sent the aid package — likely the first of several — to the Senate in hopes of getting the bill to the president before FEMA runs out of money.
The Senate, in turn, on Thursday raised the size of the relief package to more than $15 billion.
Even so, far more money will be needed once more complete estimates of Harvey’s damage are in this fall. The storm’s wrath could end up exceeding the $110 billion federal cost of recovery from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
That year was perhaps the last time FEMA faced as tough a test — when hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck within weeks of each other.
The agency’s widely criticized response to the then-unprecedented flooding in New Orleans became a major embarrassment for the Bush administration.
Despite years of post-recession funding cuts during the Obama administration, FEMA’s leaders worked to streamline and consolidate operations, cutting costs while maintaining staffing levels.
Still, top officials tried to offer reassurance.
“We’re not going to let money get in the way of saving lives,” FEMA Adminisconsecutive trator Brock Long said Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.” Long said his confidence was high that the agency could handle Irma.
“Despite everything that’s going on, this is what we train for. We have catastrophic plans. Obviously after Irma, staffing patterns could be strained,” he said.
Top officials responsible for responding to large-scale public emergencies meet regularly to conduct drills and update plans covering numerous worstcase scenarios. That includes what to do if two massive hurricanes strike the U.S. mainland within days, 1,000 miles apart.
FEMA maintains large stores of food, bottled water, medical supplies, cots and blankets, pre-packed and strategically placed at locations throughout the United States and its territories. Those supplies were being pre-staged on semitrailers, where they can be driven into the disaster zone after the storm passes.
To help speed delivery of emergency supplies after a storm, the U.S. government as part of the disaster-declaration process routinely exempts commercial truck drivers in the region from federal rules, including ones limiting how many hours they can safely drive.
The preparations were being made even as FEMA continued to respond in Texas. So far, FEMA has approved $148 million in aid for more than 180,000 survivors of Harvey, finding more than 50,000 hotel and motel rooms for survivors.
Tom Bossert, President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, said the federal government won’t forget Harvey’s victims as attention shifted toward the threat from Irma, a Category 5 storm with 185-mph sustained winds — the strongest ever observed in the open Atlantic.
He said the federal response in Texas was entering a recovery phase that will be long and, at times, frustrating for affected homeowners.
The U.S. government was marshaling Small Business Administration loans, disaster unemployment assistance from the Labor Department and FEMA reconstruction aid to rebuild state and municipal infrastructure.
“I won’t forget Harvey,” Bossert said. “Now, it is a long game that requires a lot of attention to detail.”