The agency grants money to prepare for natural disasters. But cuts and questions plague the project.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published September 19, 2005
St. Petersburg's Eckerd College is renowned for its marine science and international studies programs. Last month it added another distinction: It was the only applicant on the entire U.S. Gulf Coast to get a "predisaster mitigation" grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The college, which sits just a few feet above sea level, will use the $117,750 to draw up a plan for guarding its campus from hurricane damage.
The storms that hit Florida last year "could have dealt us a mortal blow," says Eckerd president Donald Eastman. "We need to do all we can to protect ourselves."
Not so lucky was Tampa General, which applied for the same type of FEMA grant. The low-lying hospital, which serves a 12-county area, hoped to get $3-million for waterproof doors and other improvements. But when the list of grant awards came out in August, Tampa General wasn't on it.
"We thought it was a good project," says Linda Mandell, a Hillsborough County contracts manager. "I don't know what criteria they were looking at."
The experience of the college and the hospital illustrates one of the many challenges facing FEMA, the beleaguered agency under fire for its response to Hurricane Katrina's rampage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
While a key part of FEMA's mission is response and recovery, the agency is also supposed to mitigate, or reduce the risks, from natural disasters before they occur. Mitigation measures include buying out homes in flood-prone areas and designing buildings to withstand earthquakes.
"Mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management," FEMA's Web site says. "It's the ongoing effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people's lives and property." The agency estimates that every dollar spent on mitigation saves $2 in recovery costs.
Since President Bush took office, however, FEMA's mitigation programs have suffered from budget cuts and the agency's loss of independence, critics charge. In 2003, FEMA was swallowed by the new Department of Homeland Security, whose overriding focus has been terrorism, not natural disasters like Katrina and the 2004 hurricanes.
"They don't seem to realize that every one of these storms did more damage in two hours than Osama bin Laden did in his whole career," says Frank Reddish, emergency management coordinator of Miami-Dade County.
FEMA's mitigation efforts began in 1988, when areas hit by hurricanes and other calamities became eligible for grants for "bricks and mortar" projects that could reduce risks in the future.
During the Clinton years, FEMA added Project Impact, which gave grants even to places that hadn't been struck by disaster. The goal was to encourage planning and preparedness. By 2001, a total of $77-million had been awarded to 250 communities in all 50 states.
The Bush administration proposed killing the original, postdisaster grant program as a way of trimming costs. After an outcry from state and local officials, Congress saved the program but cut the funding in half.
Project Impact was eliminated and a new program took its place: Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grants. For the first time, applicants had to compete for mitigation money on a nationwide rather than statewide basis. And the competition is fierce.
Of 785 applicants this year, fewer than 150 have been awarded grants. By far the biggest recipient is Iowa, which ranks 30th in population but got 36 grants, or almost a fourth of the total number. Its $1-million in grants account for about 4 percent of the $27-million awarded thus far.
Though pleased with the state's success, one Iowa official is concerned by the shift in priorities since FEMA was absorbed by a much bigger department.
"There was a real attempt to scale down mitigation programs through the transition," says Dennis Harper, Iowa's hazard mitigation officer. "You've got one agency that deals with natural disasters while the parent is focused on terrorism and homeland security."
"They don't seem to realize that every one of these storms did more damage in two hours than Osama bin Laden did in his whole career."
- FRANK REDDISH, emergency management coordinator of Miami-Dade County
The second-largest number of grants went to Florida, one of the states most vulnerable to disasters. Of the 18 grants announced in August, Miami-Dade County got all but one.
Reddish, the emergency management coordinator, says the county has been aggressive in its risk-reduction efforts since Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992.
"Andrew got everybody's attention here - I don't have to go around and tell everybody what to do. We work hard and our applications are almost always beautiful. When they send these things to FEMA, we get the lion's share because we do it right."
Officials elsewhere complain that the application process - which requires a cost-benefit analysis that some call a "computer program from hell" - is so technical that it is hard to get it right. A former FEMA official is aware of the frustration.
The program "is the most difficult - if you make a mistake or omit needed information, no revisions to the original application are possible," says Martha Braddock, who left the agency in 2001 and is now a private consultant.
Braddock worked with the University of Miami on its successful application for $2.5-million in FEMA funds to make campus buildings more hurricane resistant. She also consulted on Eckerd's application, which won money for a risk-assessment plan that will be the basis for future improvements.
Given the competition for the FEMA grants, "it is a real coup for Eckerd" to get one, Braddock says. "They have a strong team that was willing to work hard on what they needed to do."
Although it was created in 2000, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program got off to such a slow start that 2005 marks only the second round of grants. So far this year, almost 200 applications have been rejected, while another 161 are on a waiting list and scores more are still under review.
Given the backlog, the Republican-controlled Senate wants to cut next year's funding to $37-million, from the current $150-million - a 75 percent reduction.
Some say the program isn't worth the effort.
"It's too small a pot of money to be spread out nationwide. It's difficult to get a large-dollar project funded," says Gary Vickers, Pinellas County's emergency management director.
Pinellas, which could be devastated by a Category 5 hurricane, has used funds from FEMA's other major mitigation program to increase its shelter capacity. But that program - Hazard Mitigation Grants - also has its problems.
Created in 1988, it originally provided 15 percent of the total federal assistance to states after a presidential disaster declaration. But that has been slashed to 71/2 percent, greatly reducing the money available for risk-reduction projects.
Tampa General, which didn't get a predisaster grant, still could get money from the postdisaster program, because Florida was declared a disaster area after the 2004 hurricanes. The amount, though, might be substantially less - just $610,000 compared with $3-million.
Emergency management officials nationwide are fighting to increase funding for FEMA's mitigation programs. Hurricane Katrina, they say, showed that an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure.
"It's just common sense to do things that prevent a disaster from happening or lessen the impact of a disaster," says Michael Selves of the International Association of Emergency planners.
"Take the levees in New Orleans: If they had been higher and stronger, we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing now."
