No More Money?
Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former associate administrator for FEMA’s response and recovery team, said that FEMA will have to make critical decisions about how to allocate its resources in light of the two hurricanes. The agency's disaster relief funds cover not only emergency shelters and search and rescue operations, but also individual assistance to victims who return to their homes and need money for food, gas and other necessities.
And other natural disasters could be just around the corner: Tropical Storm Jose strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane on Wednesday, and hurricane season runs through the end of November.
"Depending on what comes in, they’ve got to be prepared for more," said Zimmerman.
The House overwhelmingly passed a $7.85-billion aid bill for Harvey victims on Wednesday, and the Senate is expected to take up the legislation quickly. But Florida legislators said that still won’t be enough to cover the potential devastation of Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
The administration is already anticipating the need for more hurricane relief funding: The White House has requested an additional $6.7 billion in Harvey funding as part of the spending bill that Congress must pass by the end of September to keep the government open. And that figure could increase if there's considerable devastation from Irma. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Sunday that the Harvey recovery could ultimately cost as much as $180 billion.
Asked on Thursday whether FEMA was being overextended, President Donald Trump praised the agency's "great bravery" in managing the response to the two hurricanes.
"I don't think anybody has done anything like they've done at FEMA, and they have done a very good job," he told reporters.
William Booher, FEMA’s director of public affairs, said in an email that it was "too early to speculate on the full impacts and costs of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma." He stressed that FEMA was already deploying resources to prepare for and respond to Irma, activating more than 700 federal personnel and sending FEMA staff to assist on the ground in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Florida.
Such advance preparation is one reason why FEMA has been burning through its disaster relief fund so quickly, according to Rafael Lemaitre, a former FEMA spokesperson who worked for the Obama administration.
After the federal government’s calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed a bill that allowed FEMA to pre-position supplies and personnel in an anticipated disaster zone ahead of a state’s request, among other reforms. "It’s more expensive to lean forward, but that’s what we owe it to survivors to do," said Lemaitre.
Unlike other agencies, FEMA bases its annual budget requests on its spending plans for past major disasters, as well as a 10-year average for non-catastrophic events. Since the frequency and severity of extreme weather events have increased in recent years, federal spending on disaster relief has been rising.
"At this point FEMA is running on fumes," said Lemaitre.
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands face particular vulnerabilities in the wake of Irma that could require significant outside support.
Jenniffer González-Colón, the resident commissioner for Puerto Rico in the U.S. House of Representatives, said the island already suffers from a poorly maintained power grid as well as an ongoing exodus of doctors. She’s received assurances from the Trump administration that medical teams and other personnel have already been dispatched ahead of the storm.
"This is the first time FEMA is working so closely in terms of communication with government of Puerto Rico and local agencies," said Gonzalez, a Republican. "It’s the first time we got an adequate response."
Puerto Rico is bracing for the effects of Hurricane Irma.Thais Llorca / EPA
Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., remains concerned, however, that federal personnel will be stretched thin, given the enormity of the back-to-back hurricanes. He’s been pushing FEMA to solidify its plans to pre-position its resources in Florida, as they haven’t been finalized yet.
"They’re still determining what should go where and the personnel," said Deutch. "You can’t wait until after the hurricane strikes."
Texas and shut downs
As lawmakers continue trying to pass a long-term spending bill — or yet another temporary stopgap measure — to avoid a government shutdown before Friday at midnight, many federal employees are watching negotiations closely, wondering about the short-term fate of their jobs.
But some are also keeping a close eye on Capitol Hill talks with apprehension about how a shutdown might affect the Federal Emergency Management Agency as it comes off a year of natural disasters described as “historic on many levels” — and as FEMA-aided recovery continues in affected areas in Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and California.
Because FEMA is run by the Department of Homeland Security, which has in the past continued to receive funding during government shutdowns, former agency officials say it is common for lawmakers to brush off concerns a shutdown would adversely affect the agency’s operations.
“The Republicans like to say [a shutdown is] not a big deal because they say DHS stays on the clock because they’re exempt,” former FEMA administrator W. Craig Fugate told The Washington Post. “At FEMA that’s not true.”
More than 3,000 of FEMA’s estimated 15,815 onboard employees would be suspended in the event of a government shutdown, according to the Homeland Security Department’s contingency plan for a lapse in appropriations. The plan was last updated in 2015.
Fugate, who led the agency from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, said most of FEMA’s workforce can indeed be dispatched to emergencies regardless of a shutdown because they are funded out of the Disaster Relief Fund, which is not affected by a lapse in appropriations.
[Shutdown looms as Republicans seek short-term spending deal for government]
During the most recent government shutdown, in October 2013, FEMA furloughed nearly all its full-time staff members who were deemed nonessential, Fugate said. That had an effect on the agency’s administrative support and its employees’ overall morale as the agency continued to respond to emergencies.
“For us at FEMA, it’s a huge deal,” Fugate said. “We ended up furloughing 85 to 90 percent of our career folks . . . Who do you think processes the payments? Who do you think does all that back-end stuff? IT stuff? Plus, if you have policy issues, there’s no one to turn to.”
Fugate is among those who say a shutdown would add stress to an agency that has been pushed to the limit in the past year by a spate of especially catastrophic natural disasters. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria made landfall in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, respectively, and a series of major wildfires hit California, including the Thomas Fire, now the largest in the state’s history.
From those disasters alone, FEMA approved a staggering number of applications for individual aid directly related to the disasters as they struck: 367,895 in Texas from Hurricane Harvey; 768,411 in Florida from Hurricane Irma; 407,532 in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria; and 4,346 from the California wildfires. An even larger number of applications came to the agency after the disasters. FEMA received nearly 900,000 requests for individual aid after Hurricane Harvey in Texas; in Florida, the number topped 2 million for applications related to damage from Hurricane Irma.
Current FEMA spokespeople declined to comment on the possibility of a shutdown, referring all questions to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
House Republicans and White House officials have remained cautiously optimistic about avoiding a government shutdown with a short-term spending bill, despite the protests of some who complained such a bill would just delay the problem.
It seemed a far cry from rhetoric that took place in 2015, when the threat of another government shutdown loomed, and both Republican and Democratic lawmakers took to extremes to discuss what a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would look like. Then, Democrats accused Republicans of “putting American national security at risk,” while Republicans downplayed Democrats’ concerns as “all about politics.”
“This is a debate over funding a part of government so essential that if funding is not there, almost all of the employees show up anyway,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in a Senate floor speech at the time. “They’re considered essential.”
As The Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee outlined in a fact-check of lawmakers’ concerns in 2015, what unfolded in the shutdown of 2013 was more nuanced:
About 31,295 DHS employees were placed on furlough during the shutdown, according to the congressional Research Service (CRS). But about 85 percent of its more than 200,000 civilian and military employees were deemed essential to the agency’s operations and continued to work without pay. . . . About a quarter of total furloughs came from the management, research, training and operational functions of DHS. But these were smaller administrative departments, and they took a big cut to their staff of 90-plus percent.
DHS had a small percentage of furloughs relative to its size, and its core functions relating to national security continued. But the funding lapse shut down many programs, including non-disaster grants, federal law enforcement training, the FEMA Flood Risk Mapping program and the chemical site security regulatory program. The shutdown also disrupted procurement activities, which was a notable impact for a federal agency with the sixth-largest procurement spending, according to the CRS.
“As it goes in heated political debates, the reality is somewhere in the middle,” Lee wrote.
[Kelly expresses optimism about ‘dreamer’ deal without suggesting timeline]
Fugate, the FEMA administrator under Obama, can clearly remember heading the agency as the government prepared to shut down in 2013. In the first days of the shutdown, Tropical Storm Karen formed along the Gulf Coast, but FEMA’s nearly 4,000 furloughed employees were left to observe the approaching storm.
“We had to figure out workarounds so that people could at least monitor their emails,” Fugate said. “They could monitor their emails but they couldn’t respond to or act on anything. . . . We could watch it, but we couldn’t do anything about it.”
FEMA ended up recalling 240 staff members and reactivating the National Response Coordination Center in Washington to respond to the storm.
“Even then, we couldn’t support them administratively or prepare for any potential recovery efforts — a major detriment to our mission to support survivors,” Fugate wrote in a February 2015 blog post.
Former FEMA director James Lee Witt, who worked at the agency under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, recalled a similar experience when the government shut down — twice, technically — early in his tenure, first when nonessential federal services were suspended for six days in November 1995 and then again from Dec. 16, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996.
The shutdowns cut his staff to a “skeleton crew” at FEMA headquarters, Witt said.
“We knew we had money to deal with the disasters. That was no problem, because it was already appropriated,” Witt said. “Our main concern was taking care of employees as well as making sure we could maintain whatever we could in-house and taking care of the critical things. It was just trying to keep the ship moving, you know.”
He added that the shutdowns had a direct impact on employee morale.
“That kind of thing is depressing to employees,” Witt said. “A lot of people don’t realize how hard they work, how committed they were to make a difference . . . We just kept them posted, what was going on, just hoping it would end as quickly as possible.”
Though Witt was relieved no major disasters struck during those shutdowns, the experience left him hoping lawmakers would “use a little common sense” and avoid them in the future. He has been monitoring the current congressional stalemate from Arkansas, where he now lives.
“I hope and pray that they don’t do a shutdown. It’s not good for the country. It’s not good for federal agencies,” Witt said. “I think it’s totally irresponsible of both parties.”
FEMA Still Not Helping Texas?
HOUSTON — Outside Rachel Roberts’s house, a skeleton sits on a chair next to the driveway, a skeleton child on its lap, an empty cup in its hand and a sign at its feet that reads “Waiting on FEMA.”
It is a Halloween reminder that, for many, getting help to recover from Hurricane Harvey remains a long, uncertain journey.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Ms. Roberts, 44, who put together the display after waiting three weeks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send someone to look at her flood-damaged home in southwest Houston. “I think it’s beautiful how much we’ve all come together, and that’s wonderful, but I think there’s a lot of mess-ups, too.”
Outside the White House this month, President Trump boasted about the federal relief efforts. “In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus,” he said. FEMA officials say that they are successfully dealing with enormous challenges posed by an onslaught of closely spaced disasters, unlike anything the agency has seen in years. But on the ground, flooded residents and local officials have a far more critical view.
According to interviews with dozens of storm victims, one of the busiest hurricane seasons in years has overwhelmed federal disaster officials. As a result, the government’s response in the two biggest affected states — Texas and Florida — has been scattershot: effective in dealing with immediate needs, but unreliable and at times inadequate in handling the aftermath, as thousands of people face unusually long delays in getting basic disaster assistance.
FEMA has taken weeks to inspect damaged homes and apartments, delaying flood victims’ attempts to rebuild their lives and properties. People who call the agency’s help line at 1-800-621-FEMA have waited on hold for two, three or four hours before they even speak to a FEMA representative.
Nearly two months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25, and six weeks after Hurricane Irma hit Florida on Sept. 10, residents are still waiting for FEMA payments, still fuming after the agency denied their applications for assistance and still trying to resolve glitches and disputes that have slowed and complicated their ability to receive federal aid.
Brian and Monica Smith, whose home in the northern Houston suburb of Kingwood had two feet of water inside after Harvey, said they had received more help from their church, their neighbors and their relatives than from FEMA. A $500 payment from FEMA to help them with their immediate needs was delayed by three weeks. And they waited 34 days for the agency to inspect the damage to their home, pushing back repairs.
“You feel abandoned,” Mr. Smith, 42, said. “You feel like it came and went, and everybody’s focused on the storm in Florida and now in Puerto Rico.’’ by the flooded Imperial River, call FEMA twice a day to check on the status of their application and inspection. Mrs. Perreault said she had spent so many hours on the phone on hold that she learned, as other callers have, to put the phone on speaker and go about her day.
“I thought I was going to get brain cancer,” Mrs. Perreault said. “They give you the runaround.”
Inspection BacklogOne of the most significant problems FEMA has had in Texas and Florida is the backlog in getting damaged properties inspected. Contract inspectors paid by the agency must first inspect and verify the damage in order for residents to be approved for thousands of dollars in aid. FEMA does not have enough inspectors to reduce the backlog, and the average wait for an inspection is 45 days in Texas and about a month in Florida, agency officials said.
Ernestino Leon among the debris removed from his family’s flood-damaged home in Bonita Springs, Fla.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe officials, including Brock Long, the FEMA administrator, acknowledged the long waits for both inspections and phone assistance. They said they were in the process of hiring hundreds of people in the next few weeks, including additional contract inspectors. They attribute the delays to “staffing challenges” after three major hurricanes in quick succession struck the Gulf Coast and the Southeast, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, as well as the devastating wildfires in California.
“Resources are stretched, particularly when it comes to inspections,” Mr. Long said. “Obviously it’s frustrating.”
The wait times for the help line and inspections far exceed those during past disasters.
People who called FEMA in the immediate aftermath of Katrina waited an average of 10 minutes before speaking with a representative, and weeks later that wait dropped to five minutes, according to a 2006 report by the inspector general’s office for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. In addition, the report stated, the agency has historically tried to complete the entire inspection-and-approval process within 10 days after an application is filed. After Hurricane Rita in 2005, many home inspections were completed less than two weeks after homeowners applied.
But given the extraordinary impact of three major storms this year, many experts say FEMA field workers’ initial relief efforts deserve high marks.
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“I think they have done a terrific job,” said Paul M. Rosen, who worked in the Obama administration as the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. “You just have to tune out the political noise and let them do their jobs.”
Strides Since KatrinaIn 2005, FEMA became the face of the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and the agency’s poor handling of the disaster in New Orleans led to the resignation of Michael D. Brown, the director at the time. FEMA has since improved its image, and former federal officials praised its response in recent weeks to a staggering string of hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters. Over all, about 8,200 people in FEMA’s nearly 10,000-person work force are deployed in the field, responding to more than 20 natural disasters around the country.
“The whole response-and-recovery industry is maxed out,” said Michael Coen, the former chief of staff at FEMA in the Obama administration.
The Trump administration has been publicly criticized for its response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. While the problems there with power, gas and water are far worse than those in the continental United States, FEMA’s response to Harvey and Irma has also quietly frustrated flood victims on the mainland, from low-income neighborhoods to trailer parks to wooded suburban enclaves. Some have turned to their elected officials to complain and ask for help navigating the multiagency disaster bureaucracy, including FEMA’s federal insurance arm, which manages the National Flood Insurance Program.
In Kingwood, Tom and Lisa Slagle asked Senator Ted Cruz’s office for help after a $25,000 flood-insurance payment they were counting on was delayed for more than a month. “This has been more a disaster, trying to deal with insurance, than it was when our house flooded,” said Ms. Slagle, 49, a retired Houston firefighter.
In South Florida, officials in Collier County, which includes Naples, are waiting for FEMA R.V.’s known as travel trailers, which flooded residents can use as temporary housing. Only 15 of the trailers have been approved by FEMA statewide since Wednesday. “It’s a process, a long, arduous process,” said William L. McDaniel Jr., a Collier County commissioner. “But it can’t come quick enough.”
In East Texas, a FEMA mobile disaster center was scheduled to assist flooded residents one day last month in a courthouse parking lot in the town of Orange. “FEMA didn’t show up that day,” said Stephen Brint Carlton, a Republican who is the county judge and the top elected official in Orange County. “They don’t show up and we have a bunch of elderly people sitting out in a parking lot, and no one’s there to help them.”
Harvey sent about two feet of water into Jesse Altamirano’s home in northeast Houston near Greens Bayou. On a recent afternoon, as a contractor repaired the walls, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his call history. One call Mr. Altamirano made to FEMA, on Oct. 6 at 10:27 a.m., lasted 4 hours 54 minutes 20 seconds. For all but about 10 minutes of that time, he said, he was on hold, trying to get the agency to extend his hotel stay. But a FEMA representative eventually told him it was too early to complete his extension. He was told to call back in two days.
Jason Brunemann in his home in Bonita Springs, which was damaged by Hurricane Irma. His application for FEMA assistance was denied.Asked how much time he has spent on hold with FEMA since Harvey wrecked his home, Mr. Altamirano replied: “I’ve called them probably like eight, nine times. I’m thinking a good 16 hours maybe.”
Residents Still UprootedIn some ways, hard-hit areas in Texas and Florida have made progress since Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. In Texas alone, nearly 7.5 million cubic yards of debris has been collected and more than 120,000 people have visited FEMA’s disaster recovery centers. The agency has supplied money, housing and other resources to residents as well as local governments. In Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, FEMA has provided about $2 billion in individual assistance to residents.
Yet in other ways, the rebuilding seems to have only just started. Three shelters remain open in Texas, and Florida closed its last one on Saturday. As part of a FEMA program, 61,135 people in Texas are staying in hotels. Some residents are living in their moldy, half-repaired or even condemned homes and apartments. Other residents remain uprooted. Shirlene Hryhorchuk, a high school teacher in the East Texas town of Deweyville, sleeps several nights each week on a cot in her home-economics classroom while her house undergoes repairs.
In the days after Irma tore through Florida, Ernestino Leon, 48, met and shook hands with Gov. Rick Scott when the governor toured the emergency shelter where he was staying. Mr. Leon works in golf course maintenance and came to the United States 30 years ago from Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s poorest states. His house in the Gulf Coast town of Bonita Springs is a torn-out shell surrounded by piles of debris and the few chairs he and his wife Lucia could salvage.
“He asked me if I liked this country and I say yes,” Mr. Leon said of Mr. Scott. “That’s why I’m here. I pay taxes. I’m a U.S. citizen. He told me not to worry and said that help would be on the way.”
Mr. Leon is still waiting for much of that help. Five weeks after asking FEMA for assistance, the Leons were in limbo. They moved out of a shelter on Saturday and into a hotel, while waiting for the agency to provide $10,000 to repair their home, a process tied up by a delayed home inspection. “This won’t be enough,” Mr. Leon said of the still-awaited money.
In Houston, Tim Wainright, 47, filed with FEMA on Aug. 28 after floodwaters damaged two bedrooms, but more than 50 days later, he and his wife are still waiting for an inspection.
“My hope is that they’re busy with people that really, really need their assistance,” Mr. Wainright said. “By now our walls are painted. All our drywall is back in place. If they came by, they wouldn’t have anything to inspect.”
Some residents are angry after being turned down by FEMA for assistance, often for reasons that they dispute. Of the 2.9 million applications for individual assistance the agency has received after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, FEMA has denied 23 percent of them — 678,160 — with the majority of those denials in Florida, where 432,000 applications out of 1.8 million have been rejected after Irma.
FEMA officials say the number of denials in Florida is high because the agency determined that many homes were not significantly damaged by the storm.
Jason Brunemann’s application for FEMA assistance was rejected because the agency concluded that he had adequate insurance. But his homeowners’ insurance does not cover flood damage, Mr. Brunemann said, and his flood-insurance claim remains in limbo. The rebuilding of his small house on the banks of the Imperial River in Bonita Springs has stalled, and he is recovering from a pre-Irma motorcycle accident in which he broke his hand and a bone in his neck. He plans to appeal his denial.
“A lot of people are appealing, but I don’t think I’ll get anything at all,” said Mr. Brunemann, 35, an air-conditioning installer who has been living in his truck and his gutted house. “I’m not optimistic.”