FEMA making $3.5B available in climate fight

The Biden administration Thursday announced a record injection of money to help communities prepare against the effects of climate change, as disasters continue to pummel the country.

The new funds — $3.5 billion in grants to states to protect against floods, wildfires and other threats — mark a shift in U.S. disaster policy as climate change gets worse: Rather than smaller, more targeted investments, the government is throwing huge sums of money at disaster preparation as fast as it can.

“The risks that we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,” said Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is administering the money.

The goal of the new money is to get local and state officials to broaden their approach to put less emphasis on small-scale projects that fortify individual homes or buildings, and more attention on ways to protect entire communities, she said.

“We really want to start to shift the focus,” Criswell said.

In May, President Joe Biden said he would double funding, to $1 billion, for another FEMA program — called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC — which also gives state and local governments money for projects such as seawalls and drainage or for helping people relocate away from vulnerable areas.

And a bipartisan infrastructure bill pending in Congress would provide tens of billions of dollars in climate resilience funding, the most in American history. That package includes an additional $1 billion for BRIC and $3.5 billion for a separate flood-protection program at FEMA.