TABLE OF CONTENTS(Click on Section)

PURPOSE

BACKGROUND

WITNESSES

The Subcommittee will meet on Thursday, October 6, 2005 at 11 a.m. in room 2167 Rayburn House Office Building for hearing on “Recovering after Katrina: Ensuring that FEMA is up to the task.”

Katrina and its impact

On August 23rd, the National Weather Service began tracking a tropical depression centered in the Southeastern Bahamas. On August 24th, Tropical Depression #12 became Tropical Storm Katrina, with sustained winds above 40 miles per hour. On August 25th, Hurricane Katrina (Katrina), a Category 1 storm, with sustained winds over 75 mph, made landfall between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach. It took 7 hours for the storm to cross Florida, dropping as much as 15 inches of rain in some parts of South Florida, causing some home damage and extensive power outages in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.

Once the storm reached the Gulf of Mexico, it intensified and sped up, achieving Category 3 status (sustained wind speeds exceeding 111mph) on August 26th. On August 28th, one day before landfall, Katrina became a Category 5 hurricane, with wind speeds in excess of 150 mph. However, as the storm moved into shallower waters closer to land, wind speeds decreased such that Katrina was downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane.

Katrina eventually made landfall in Southeastern Louisiana with sustained winds over 140 mph at the eye of the storm, and wind gusts over 100 mph in the City of New Orleans, just west of the eye of the storm. Katrina also brought with it rainfall exceeding 8-10 inches over much of the storm’s path. Damage directly from the storm was felt in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, though Louisiana and Mississippi received the brunt of the storm.

When Hurricane Katrina finally stalled out and died over Tennessee, it left in its wake devastation never before seen in either size or type in the United States. Covering an area estimated to be near 90,000 square miles, the storm ravaged four states, caused damage in several others, and impacted the entire country.

While neither the most powerful, nor most deadly storm to hit the United States, its combined wind speed, storm surge, flooding effect, and deadliness make it one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Exact estimates are still unclear, and may never be finally known, but what is known is that the impact of Katrina on human life was immense. The storm caused the deaths of nearly 1200 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were in Louisiana (923) and Mississippi (218), with 19 known deaths in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. The total number of casualties from the storm is expected to climb higher as the clean up from the storm continues, and more people are reported missing and presumed lost.

Katrina caused flooding in 6 states, mostly from storm surge and the high rate of rainfall. However, in Louisiana, the worst flooding was in the New Orleans area, caused by the failure of a number of levees. At least 80% of the City of New Orleans was at some point underwater, though the flooding from Lake Pontchartrain ranged from as little as a foot or two in areas such as the French Quarter to over 20 feet in the Lower Ninth Ward. Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama were underwater as a result of a 20-30 foot storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay. While just three weeks after Katrina, many of the breaks in the levees surrounding New Orleans had been repaired and much of the city had been drained, several of the temporary repairs were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Rita, causing substantial flooding in New Orleans.

The Structure of FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created to consolidate and coordinate the federal effort of responding to and preparing for disasters. FEMA is responsible for carrying out the authorities contained in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. §5121 et. seq., as amended) (Stafford Act), which is an amalgamation of previous disaster acts. This act contains broad authorities to help communities prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against disasters of all types.

Generally, FEMA, now a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is organized into four divisions, Preparedness, Response, Mitigation, and Recovery. FEMA’s Recovery division is generally responsible for the assistance necessary to help individuals, households, and communities recover from major disasters and emergencies. The Recovery division is primarily responsible for managing the Individuals and Households Program (IHP) and Public Assistance Program (PA). All of the activities under these two programs are funded out of the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), a multi-billion dollar fund that is supported by annual appropriations.

Florida 2004

The 2004 Atlantic Hurricane Season was one of the busiest and most destructive in history, including 12 named storms. These storms resulted in 21 federal disaster declarations covering 13 states and Puerto Rico. Four major storms (Category 2 or higher) struck Florida. Over 1.2 million people applied for federal and state assistance, and federal assistance to Florida exceeds $6 billion.

The Recovery from these storms is still ongoing, however, it has been hampered by a number of problems. State and local officials have raised several concerns, including complaints of delayed payments by FEMA for eligible activities, shortfalls in local budgets that constrain other activities, and constraints on how money is spent that cause local governments to build weaker structures with FEMA money, or use their own funds to build stronger structures.

FEMA’s staffing level

At the beginning of Fiscal Year 2005, FEMA’s recovery division only had 72 full time personnel. FEMA overall only has approximately 2,500 permanent full-time employees (PFT’s), though it can call upon a vast network of over 5,000 Disaster Assistance Employees (DAE) and nearly 800 Cadre of On-call Reservist Employees (CORE) for temporary help out during disasters.

During this hearing, it will be important to examine the impact that this level of staffing will have on FEMA’s ability to carry out its Recovery mission in the Gulf Coast region. Recovery division staff are responsible for reviewing project worksheets, which are the basis for reimbursement by FEMA for eligible activities. Without sufficient staffing, review and approval of these documents will be delayed, which will delay the recovery effort. Project worksheets cover such activities as emergency protective measures, reconstruction of public buildings and infrastructure (including schools) and debris removal.

Debris Removal

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has estimated that Katrina caused damage will result in over 2 billion cubic yards of debris that will need to be removed. Historically, according to FEMA, these estimates are 95% accurate. Also according to FEMA, the average cost for debris removal is $10-20 per cubic yard for regular debris, but can be much higher for hazardous material and contaminated debris.

In most disasters, the Federal government will pay the cost of debris removal from public property (including roads) and the cost of debris clearance from private roads to ensure access by emergency vehicles. However, due to the size and scope of Katrina, FEMA has already agreed to pay the cost of debris removal from private property, including commercial property, from a number of selected counties and parishes in Louisiana and Mississippi, with the remaining counties and parishes being eligible for similar treatment upon approval of the Director of FEMA.

Cash flow at the local level

While FEMA ultimately pays for much of the cost related to recovery from disasters through the Disaster Relief Fund, State and local governments carry out these activities on a reimbursable basis. This means that a State or local government may have to bear up-front costs exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars. While FEMA can provide State governments advance payments of up to 50% of the total expected cost, local governments are unable to draw down these funds until the reimbursement paperwork is complete.

In addition, many local governments have lost much of their tax base and revenue streams as a result of the disaster. While FEMA administers a community disaster loan program to help put cash in the hands of local governments, loans are capped at $5 million, on top of which, local governments must pay back these loans with interest.

How FEMA addresses these issues is critical, since most State and local governments, by law, are prohibited from running deficits; or there are strict requirements that must be met prior to borrowing money.

Timely and final responses to questions

One of the criticisms about FEMA raised during the 2004 hurricane season was its ability to provide timely and final responses to inquiries. According to several Florida counties, they are still waiting on final answers to project requests, over a year later. While to some extent this is an outgrowth of the issue of the total staffing, it is also a question of the current bureaucratic processes in place within FEMA. Currently, all decisions about projects must be reviewed at the field, disaster coordination, and finally the Regional level, with disputes and appeals being sent to the headquarters level. This inability of employees at the local level to receive final answers could make it more difficult to process project requests quickly. These delays ultimately result in delayed reimbursement.

Provision of Temporary Housing

Under the Stafford Act, FEMA assists disaster victims with housing in two ways, either through the direct provision of housing, or through temporary housing assistance. FEMA is authorized to directly provide housing to eligible recipients for up to 18 months. FEMA may also pay the cost of housing an individual in a rental property. Over 330,000 people have requested this assistance from FEMA.

In an effort to begin directly housing victims, FEMA entered into contracts to provide $2 billion in housing, including more than 125,000 trailers and mobile homes. FEMA additionally contracted with the Carnival Cruise Line and Scotia Cruise Line to provide temporary housing (four total, three and one respectively). These initial efforts have faltered, as FEMA has frozen the contracts for trailers and mobile homes and the contract with Carnival has been criticized for being overly expensive ($236 million) and unwise, as two-thirds of the total rooms on the ships are empty. It is estimated that as many as 75,000 people are still living in shelters nationwide. The Administration has developed an alternative housing plan, though the specific details have not yet been released.