Emergency management’s mantra is simple: Be prepared. Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord brought that message to the Flagler County Commission on Monday as part of his pre-hurricane season briefing. This time, it had nothing to do with storms. It had to do with the rapidly changing or diminishing of federal assistance in emergencies as the president redefines the role of the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Or possibly eliminates it.
With or without FEMA, Lord cautioned the commission, local governments must be prepared to assume more costs of recovery than they have in the past, especially if the federal government declares fewer disasters, as appears to be the plan. Fewer declarations will mean far less reimbursements and far fewer grants for innumerable projects and services local governments depend on in the recovery phase of what are becoming routine climate disasters.
“I know this has been in the news a lot FEMA changes, and that is something I am watching, literally change hour by hour on certain days,” Lord said. “Big, big changes, potentially to what FEMA is or isn’t at the federal level. Our main concern, obviously, is the ability to continue to receive funding after major disasters.”
Lord noted the president’s executive order in January creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council to “basically advise the President on the ability of FEMA to address and solve disasters in our country, and then make recommendations. That group meets for the first time later this week.”
The president signed a subsequent order called Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness. “The executive branch, particularly, looked at the suite of grants provided by the Department of Homeland Security,” Lord said. The administration canceled the $750 million Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program (BRIC), and it reduced the multi-billion-dollar Hazard Mitigation and Grant Program many Florida communities relied on. (Politico this month reported that the president halted awards under the mitigation program in April.)
“We did not have any projects under that grant. So Flagler County did not lose out,” Lord said of BRIC. “There were other jurisdictions in Florida, throughout the country, that did lose out on that,” including ongoing projects that were ordered halted.
There may be changes to FEMA’s disaster grant programs. “So the public assistance grant programs, the ones that make us partially whole after we have a large disaster, the President has hinted that he wants greater ownership at the state and local government level,” Lord said, “and what my gut tells me we’ll most likely see is it will be harder for us to get declared after a disaster. So storms like the ones we’ve seen the last few years, where we didn’t really get hurricane-level impacts, but we had very bad tropical storm type impacts in our community, it is possible that we would not get federal declarations for those types of events.”
That means no federal money for repair or reconstruction of the Flagler Beach pier, whose imminent reconstruction depends on money secured after it was severely damaged by successive hurricanes causing tropical storm conditions on the barrier island since 2016, even though the pier and Flagler County were at no time struck by an actual hurricane.
It also means no money for dune reconstruction and beach renourishment, even though, since 2016, Flagler County has secured millions of dollars in FEMA dollars to repair its beaches. It may mean no new money for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ beach-renourishment project in Flagler Beach after a severe storm, if there is no declared emergency, even though the beaches might be ravaged.
It also means that repair loans to individuals and reimbursement for other government infrastructure will no longer be available.
“It is very much going back the way it was about 10-15 years ago, it was much harder to get declared for a federal disaster declaration,” Lord said. “So it looks like probably the pendulum swinging back that way again. We don’t know that as a fact, but on multiple times the president and the DHS Secretary have hinted that’s where they’re going.” The Department of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem. She said there may be word “as early as summer of this year,” Lord said. “We don’t know. But it’s definitely something emergency management is talking about.”
Lord said that underscores “the importance of us maintaining solid reserves to make sure we can cover those expenses.”
Local reserves, however, would not have been sufficient to cover the costs of the pier or beach reconstruction, nor would they be if the county were to face similar circumstances in the future. The lack of a federal disaster declaration could have consequences as immediate as the opening and running of local shelters during emergencies, since those operations rely in some part on FEMA reimbursements. If local governments have to make up the cost, the burden will give local officials pause–or shift resources from other commitments.
If there is a silver lining, it is double-edged. “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away,” the president had said four days into his second term, only to walk back those words in the “Achieving Efficiency” executive order of March 19. The order appears to keep FEMA in place, but it eliminates grant programs and shifts responsibilities to state and local governments.
Then will come the recommendations of the Agency Review Council. Its 13 members include Kevin Guthrie, who had preceded Lord as Flagler County’s emergency management director and has Florida’s emergency management director under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The panel is co-chaired by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security who today falsely defined habeas corpus as “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country” (it is an individual’s due process right to challenge detention by government), and Pete Hedseth, the secretary of defense who a few weeks ago telegraphed secret war plans on an unsecure group chat.
Much of the push against FEMA is based on misinformation, much of it disseminated by the president. For example, the president falsely accused former Vice President and presidential contender Kamala Harris of spending “billions of dollars on housing for illegal migrants,” confusing shelters for migrants for disaster-recovery shelters. Outside of the $42 billion or so it receives, FEMA starting in 2023 has administered about $4 billion in federal grants that go to other agencies, including a $650 million Shelter and Services Program appropriated to the Customs and Border Protection’s budget, and that provides shelter and services for migrants released from Customs’ custody.
Susan says
Trump is taking away all government agencies as well as eliminating FEMA, Medicaid, next will be Medicare and Social Security.
Don’t say he wouldn’t do that because he is doing it.
With his tariffs merry go rounds, we are going to have higher prices of items and shortages of many items on store shelves.
If this is what you call Making America Great again, you sure fooled me of that being true.
If you are a billionaire, you are going to be fine because you will be getting a larger tax break.
ric Santo says
Just thinking about all the Republicans in Flagler County who voted for the orange moron. Now the pier that so many of you (and others) enjoyed, will never get rebuilt. Nice work MAGAots.
Oh well. You better get used to disappointments as they will only continue and worsen under this administration. So, no bellyaching allowed!
Atwp says
Voters cast there for Trump. Now the voters are getting hurt. They voted for him now he saying he dosent care about the people who voted for him. Am glad a lot of his voters are getting hurt by his crazy decisions.
Shark says
You get what you vote for. When you vote for a blatant liar and convicted felon among other things what do you expect!!!!
JimboXYZ says
Ever since Covid, every safety net mankind has developed has pretty much failed. Insurance Companies, the dozens that left FL during the Biden-Harris fiasco. I felt for Trump-Pence, they stopped long enough to listen to Fauci for a Federal Government coup that led to all of this. And what we ended up with was Biden-Harris that diverted $ 100’s of millions each year to allow a border crisis to escalate onto what it did under the fraud of Biden’s brand of leadership. Trump-Vance has the border back in relative order. Tariffs doing as much as possible to replenish & unf*ck Biden-Harris incompetence. How does anyone recover billions of Biden-Harris spending a reserve earmarked to recover from natural disasters ? Easily the worst POTUS-VPOTUS team in USA History. Monday, Biden announces his cancer has escalated into a Gleason score of 9. Imagine where we’d be had Biden been re-elected somehow. Biden was our “Make-A-Wosh Foundation POTUS”. Running America shouldn’t ever be like fulfilling a cancer patient’s Disney World trip.
End of the day, there are no guarantees in this world. We’re all on our own really. Paying higher taxes, insurance premiums, that’s for all those that financed what they couldn’t afford to buy for themselves outright. The rest of us end up paying for something that we’ll never benefit from. That was Ft Myers hurricane, all the mansions, yachts & exotic cars that got wiped out. What a mess Biden made of this nation. It was hardly perfect before, but the last quarter century alone has just been progressing society to basically the Biden’s Gleason score.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/former-president-joe-bidens-cancer-diagnosis-gleason-score/story?id=121932715
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason_grading_system
Dennis C Rathsam says
TRUMPS Polls are up everywhere! Up over 50%, while the Dems langwish under 30%! TRUMP told you all from the gitgo, with full transparency short term pain for years of gain. All you democrates have the biggest scandal on your hands since Watergate! You lied to the American people, You bought the FAKE NEWS! You all consperisized to deseved the American people. Who,s gonna believe another word out of you mouths? Blame TRUMP while the JACKASS party burns in hell!
Steve says
Voting against One’s own best interests and then complaining about the Consequences are the FPC way. It’s the old vicious cycle against yourselves.
Good Luck
Villein says
I think this is for the best. Why should someone else pay for your public and private property? That’s what insurance is for. Even if that means, most likely, you have to self-insure.
It does mean areas will be abandoned when they are heavily damaged because there simply aren’t financial resources sufficient to rebuild. Oh well.
I would like to remind my friends and neighbors to stock up on hurricane supplies as the season is upon us. You should plan for several months without power, drinkable water, food, fuel, medicines, etc. because FEMA will not be coming to town.
David Meeks says
This is a result of years of government junk on ALL sides. You people need to get it through your heads it’s NOT just Trump.
The fact you call Trump voters all sorts of names & are angry towards us screams to how messed up this county has become. A bunch of children you are!
Skibum says
Florida is one of the states that already doesn’t have a sufficient tax structure to support the necessary infrastructure and services that people who live here depend on. Public safety deficiencies is a prime example of the malfeasance all the while those idiots in Tallahassee are touting the latest ideation of some type of tax cut on the front side as a distraction, and then having FL residents pay more at the back end for things they have no control over like property insurance, auto insurance, etc. FL politicians complain incessantly about so-called federal “overreach” when there is a Dem in the WH, refusing federal money that would be a huge help to those in need in this state while at the same time syphoning as much federal dollars quietly for pork barrel projects and schemes that benefit few.
FL is, as we all know from living here, sitting directly in the bullseye of the path of so many east coast hurricanes, and the prospect of repairing damaged infrastructure and rebuilding after a catastrophic major hurricane without the help from FEMA is something that this state is not going to be able to afford or handle alone. But, of course, people who live in this “red” state keep voting in local, state and federal republicans who consistently pass legislation that is NOT in the public interest and which hurts average Floridians every day. Maybe one day people living here will wake up… if they survive and their property is not wiped out in the next major hurricane that makes landfall here in this den of iniquity and inequality.
The dude says
Welp… the old guys yelling at the clouds are here.
Of course our dear dear Jimbo has it all wrong… again.
He does, as is his way, twist himself into pretzels to try and pin the actual culmination of decades of the GOP favoring corporate interests over those of everyday Americans into a COVID/Biden/Harris issue.
Word of advice… don’t ever challenge Jimbo to a game of Twister or Limbo… unless you wanna get smashed.
Anyway, then Dennis follows up with a complete mangling of the English language, as is HIS way.
Don’t ever change guys. You are the reason I keep coming back… for the laughs.
Sherry says
trump’s approval rating is NOT up! Not to confuse the Fox addicted with facts. . . take a look:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/latest-polls
Whathehck? says
Jimbo and Dennis just tell us how great the kool-aid is. Does the wool ever bother your eyes?
Sherry says
NO! trump’s approval rating is still way below 50% in the latest polls:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/latest-polls
Kennan says
Sherry, Skibum, and The Dude, thank you, thank you thank you for keeping it real. listening to some of these guys walk through a minefield of their own stupidity is embarrassing enough, but when you call them out on it…. PRICELESS.
RWBoggess says
I must agree, in part with Villein – Make sure you make your plans to encompass weeks and months without power or other essentials as FEMA will not be able to come to your rescue. The cities, counties and state are NOT prepared – even the local Director of Emergency Management AND FEMA itself, have said they are not prepared for the Hurricane season. I personally have started taking steps to put together a disaster kit of food, batteries, radio, etc.
As someone that has been in EMS for over 40+ years and dealing with FEMA multiple times, FEMA has some serious problems – there is no denying that. But to gut it and disassemble at the start of the Hurricane season and with the other natural disasters taking place, I am sure that the shortcomings of FEMA could have been resolved in a more planned and sensible way. Unfortunately, the current government mentality is throwing the baby and water out the 10-story window without regard to consequences or planning. There are no long-term plans – just short terms plans – destroy not fix.
Joe D says
There is going to be MUCH LESS (if ANY) FEMA money coming to Florida in the future. The current Trump administration wants to “raise the bar” of requirements to even be declared a disaster in your local area. Many of our recent storms wouldn’t qualify as FEMA disasters under the new plan.
I personally have purchased a higher elevated, poured concrete, concrete slab floors and roof with hurricane shutters, townhouse for a REASON. I moved from another coastal state that REQUIRED elevated coastal housing construction since the mid 1980’s.
People aren’t REALLY prepared for serious storms with their increasing flooding and EXTENDED power outages. I purchased a solar battery basic back up system which would keep my freezer and fridge running off solar in an extended outage ( I expect that I will gradually expand that system as finances allow…unfortunately the new bill in Congress, cuts out the 30% tax credit for adding alternative energy systems to your house, after the current program phases out at the end of 2025). My brother and I have this joke of exchanging emergency back up gifts at Christmas (solar chargers, solar lights, solar battery rechargers, camping supplies, etc). As these storms get more frequent and more severe, people need to realize, the government (especially the current one) isn’t going to rescue you. Although since Trump always favors his FRIENDS, Florida is likely to be treated VERY favorably with any disaster money.
I agree with an earlier commenter: take advantage of any sales tax holiday for emergency preparedness equipment purchases!