FEMA pays $92 million for relatively few rescues
Some teams spent more time traveling and waiting than saving people
Thousands of the country’s most highly skilled rescue workers who were sent to hurricane-hit regions of Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico spent more time traveling and awaiting orders than they did rescuing people, racking up an estimated $92 million in reimbursement claims from the cash-strapped Federal Emergency Management Agency, The Arizona Republic has found.
The at-times-underwhelming number of physical rescues, coupled with the costly mobilization of more than 6,000 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Urban Search and Rescue program, raises questions about how to more efficiently use the nation’s vaunted network of versatile, highly skilled first responders.
FEMA’s National Urban Search and Rescue teams are the national Swiss Army knife of emergency response, able to handle anything from rescues
in earthquake rubble to dangerous water evacuations. Interviews and records from FEMA and some of the 28 searchand-rescue teams across the country detail their responses to last summer’s onslaught of hurricanes.
Colorado’s initial 45-member team of specially trained rescue workers mobilized to a rural Texas airport, where they loaded evacuees’ bags onto awaiting planes. The team was repeatedly reassigned and staged, ending up in Florida, where members searched wind-ravaged neighborhoods.
In a Los Angeles team’s 11-day Texas mission, records show the 80 members tasked with primary searches and rescues encountered more “animal issues” — 64 — than they did evacuations — 56.
Delays in task assignments amid the constantly changing emergencies resulted in many rescue workers driving thousands of miles across the country only to be left to stage at military bases, where they trained and waited to use their skills.
That is, assuming those orders to rescue people came at all.
FEMA officials told The Republic, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, that its task force network “saved or assisted nearly 9,000 lives” and “searched” thousands of buildings last summer. But the definition of what constitutes a “search” can vary widely, and the livessaved tally includes both technical rescues — the original intent of the federally reimbursed search team — and shuttling people in suburban Houston a few hundred feet away to a dry, slightly elevated cul-de-sac.
Some Urban Search and Rescue teams were exceedingly busy, like Texas task forces that rescued almost 900 people by air and ground and evacuated nearly 12,000 people, according to department records. They appear to have been some of the most active groups in what became one of the biggest mobilizations in the history of the system.
Others, however, were far outpaced by local first responders, non-governmental rescue groups and volunteers with boats, which frustrated many on the elite teams that had traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to help.
What happened after last summer’s hurricanes has some calling for the program to be improved in the face of highprofile natural disasters.
Irwin Redlener heads the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, a group that works to improve the country’s ability to prepare and respond to disasters. He lauded the work by the National Urban Search and Rescue teams and praised their efforts to work and train with local organizations. But he told the Republic that many of the tasks assigned to them in hurricane-hit areas fell “outside the boundary” of what should be expected for highly skilled rescue workers.
Some duties hindered their intended efficiency — at a potentially unwarranted cost, he said.
“They still are shackled with bureaucracy and the rules, who calls whom,” Redlener said, speaking both about federal Urban Search and Rescue and the broader emergency management apparatus. “I think a lot of that needs to be cleaned up.”
An ever-expanding list of expectations for Urban Search and Rescue teams brings with it more gear teams have to carry — and more time to load and transport it. Responders say that has come at the expense of rapid response and deployment. The teams are versatile while becoming less nimble.
FEMA teams are often staged at military bases or other outposts on the edge of a disaster zone, awaiting orders from incident commanders and higherups in the FEMA system. Communication delays, political turmoil or other bureaucratic breakdowns can leave teams in a perpetual state of waiting, even while rescues are needed on the ground.
Non-governmental organizations are increasingly filling the void for immediate response. The Cajun Navy, an informal network of Good Samaritans with watercraft, mobilized to the hardest-hit areas of the Texas coast and rescued scores of stranded people almost immediately after the storm hit.
Deploying smaller FEMA response teams is an option some have supported. Others have suggested making the groups more nimble by relying on local fire departments’ heavy equipment already close to the disaster zone.
Both alternatives have their critics. Smaller groups disrupt teamwork essential in emergency response, some say, and not all fire departments have the same gear in the quantities needed.
“If you wrote it down, it would be difficult to get to the bottom of it and say, ‘OK, well, this would be the answer,’ ” said Ben Ho, a physician with the Oakland Fire Department who helped draft some of the original protocols for the federal search-and-rescue team. “Certainly for rescue folks, it’s a frustration that we deal with all the time. Can we make it better?”
While not unique, the experience of Arizona’s Task Force 1 exemplifies the frustrations felt by many under the federal search-and-rescue umbrella.
After Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas coast, the 80-member team crammed into 10 vehicles, including a pair of 53-foot tractor-trailers, three box trucks loaded with supplies and three trucks pulling boat trailers and waterrescue vessels.
Skilled in stabilizing and evacuating collapsed buildings, making water rescues, performing emergency medicine and handling hazardous materials, the team traveled to the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, 1,200 miles away.
The team arrived at a staging area near Houston after the storm passed and the rain eased. Still, bayous and reservoirs were swollen, sending torrents of water rushing into low-lying communities. Fifty inches of rain inundated parts of the city.
The scenes across Texas were broadcast to the world. One man used his lifted Hummer to evacuate elderly neighbors as the water climbed higher near the Barker Reservoir. A family used their kayaks to help evacuate residents and pets down the street as the rain pelted on, day after day. Fan boats roared down residential streets, and volunteers worked alongside local first responders.
But members of AZ-TF1, along with 27 other task forces, were routinely left waiting for direct orders on where to respond — a practice colloquially referred to as “hurry up and wait.”
“It is ever fluid,” said Assistant Chief Shelly Jamison, adding that it can be mentally exhausting to have to wait. “FEMA is sort of like a slow dance where, when you go to work and you’re necessary, you’ve got great skills to bring. But the in-between time can be frustrating for those of us who are action-oriented.”
In the five days it was based near Houston, the team rescued 17 people, helped 12 people evacuate and helped move four pets.
Total amount AZ-TF1 requested from FEMA: $3,061,000.
FEMA officials are looking at ways to streamline operations and be more effective. It remains unclear what, if anything, needs to, or could, change.
Christopher Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, a group that trains responders across the country, said reflection can be beneficial.
The system often races from disaster to disaster, but one-size-fits-all plans can be difficult to meet in reality, he said.
“Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that all these disasters are moving targets. So the solutions are moving targets,” Boyer said. “You just don’t know what the next disaster is.”
“FEMA is sort of like a slow dance where, when you go to work and you’re necessary, you’ve got great skills to bring. But the in-between time can be frustrating for those of us who are action-oriented.” Shelly Jamison FEMA’s Arizona Task Force One