The Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is running dangerously low as the busiest time of the disaster season arrives and as lawmakers debate spending levels for the coming year. Members of Congress are negotiating a budget deal to fund the federal government for FY 2024, as well as a Continuing Resolution as a stopgap measure for the month of October to avoid a government shutdown. Due to elevated spending on recent disasters, FEMA has had to implement what’s called Immediate Needs Funding – a type of restriction on the use of DRF money, used when funds are running low, to only “lifesaving and life-sustaining activities” such as response and urgent recovery activities. The DRF is the source for myriad programs under the Federal Emergency Management Agency that provide disaster assistance to impacted communities. These include assistance provided under a disaster declaration – such as Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program – as well as Fire Management Assistance Grants and disaster readiness and support activities. Even with INF implemented,
September 24, 2023
The avoidable death count from COVID-19 continues to rise. Using simple comparative mortality rates we have expanded the prior national comparative study to look at how we can also estimate the number of lives that might have been avoided if these states had the same benefits from national leadership as the neighboring province of Ontario, Canada. Overall, these avoidable deaths will only continue to rise in the absence of leadership and substantive assistance from the Administration. The continued failures to pass additional
October 30, 2020
Like any healthy financial portfolio, disaster financing should be diverse. There is no single mechanism that should be overly relied
August 8, 2019
As Hurricane Florence approaches the East Coast as a major hurricane, there is also a collective sigh of relief among
August 8, 2019
This post was originally published on March 15, 2018 in The Hill. I just returned from Texas, where I was assessing the relief progress of our partners six months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
July 26, 2018
This post was originally published on November 30, 2017 in Fortune. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have created the costliest hurricane season to date, but this is also part of a trend of increasing frequency of billion-dollar weather disasters. And it’s creating a stark reality for American companies today. As large-scale disasters become more common, businesses must do more to invest in disaster preparedness beyond their own infrastructure and business continuity plans. The new normal requires business leaders to invest in the resilience of the communities in which they operate. This is not just a moral necessity. Spending on community resilience is also a sound business decision. Take the pharmaceutical industry for instance. About 50 pharmaceutical plantsoperated by some of the largest drug companies in the world are located in Puerto Rico. All must now manage a major broken link in their supply chains—the loss of major manufacturing capacity due to the painfully slow
March 27, 2018
This post was originally published on August 28, 2017 in Fortune. All presidents face disasters at some point in their tenure, and how they lead the nation through the response and recovery has a direct
March 27, 2018
