Hurricane Impacts and the Road to Recovery

How Well Are You Prepared to Address Your Community’s Future Needs Following a Hurricane?

With experience as emergency managers, city/county administrators, department directors, and budget officers, we know the minute-by-minute challenges you are facing. These are the priorities we focus on.

An honest self-assessment of your community’s current capacity and capability is critical to understanding how to meet today’s challenges. Operational and funding challenges that may seem insurmountable now may be eased through expert strategic and available funding support—assistance that qualifies as direct administrative costs and is eligible for short- and long-term reimbursement from the federal government.

Are you concerned about removing debris from private property?

When removing storm-related debris, working with FEMA to approve Private Property Debris Removal (PPDR) is critical. Historically, once approved by FEMA, the implementation of PPDR can be achieved through Direct Federal Assistance (DFA) using FEMA’s national debris contracts, or the State could procure a state contract with participating affected counties to clear storm-related debris on ROW and PPDR. Counties, cities, school districts, and special districts can procure debris contracts separately and receive reimbursement through a project application under Category A (Emergency Debris Removal). Impacted communities may not fully understand the volume of PPDR until weeks after the damage and should plan for anywhere between 6 weeks and 6 months of ROW and PPDR support.

Have you communicated the risks to residents remaining in or returning to impacted?

Combustion-driven generators pose safety concerns for homeowners as they should never be used indoors and need to be installed by a licensed electrician. Carefully evaluating the short- to mid-term viability of individuals remaining in significantly damaged areas, and how to ease the transition of impacted residents to temporary residences, should be a focus. Authorities also need to communicate to citizens the risks of returning home, including hidden dangers such as exposed electrical wiring, reptiles that entered the home during flooding, and mold which can take hold 24-48 hours after flooding. While FEMA will deploy rapid response Individual Assistance (IA) teams to begin application intake for disaster survivors, preliminary damage assessments (PDAs) by FEMA are likely to take weeks or even months. Local government officials should be actively working to understand the totality of housing impacts in their communities, immediate displacement assistance available, and coordinating with non-profit organizations on near-term solutioning.

Are you thinking about temporary housing solutions for those who FEMA programs do not help?

While FEMA has activated its Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) Program, providing short-term hotel stays, and may provide temporary mobile homes in the near future, navigating this federal assistance mechanism is often extremely challenging for homeowners and renters. There are too few available hotel rooms, which are often already occupied by recovery workers, and temporary mobile homes require eligibility screening and mobilization of units which can take weeks or even months. To streamline and accelerate this temporary housing challenge, consider partnering with community-based organizations or a service system program administrator to facilitate unit identification and placement for your impacted residents. Also consider leveraging available ARPA funding, HUD Emergency Solutions Grant programs, or CDBG/HOME funding for immediate emergency response repurposing.

Are you fully documenting damage assessments?

Damage assessments must consider all aspects of the devastation experienced by communities. It is not only the damage to public infrastructure, but also the social impact of removing that piece of infrastructure from service (e.g., schools, libraries, gas stations, police stations, and fire stations). These assessments must tell a compelling story of the true impact to communities and must be updated to account for uncovered damage. There will be future federal funding opportunities apart from those provided by FEMA; local communities must prepare in the coming days to be able to demonstrate financial need beyond what FEMA can provide.

Does your private non-profit organization know they are likely eligible for federal recovery assistance?

Many private non-profit organizations do not know they are eligible for FEMA PA. Consider providing targeted communications to these organizations on how to apply and what types of expenses are eligible for reimbursement. This includes private non-profit organizations that operate eligible facilities and provide critical public services such as education, utilities, emergency, or medical facilities, as well as facilities that provide non-critical but essential social services to the general public, such as center-based childcare, daycare for individuals with disabilities, food banks, houses of worship, homeless shelters, low-income housing, museums, multi-purpose facilities and community centers, zoos, and more.

Have you implemented documentation standards?

Keeping accurate records is critical to successfully obtaining FEMA disaster-assistance funding. Applicants and sub-applicants can drive their own response and recovery without FEMA permissions or approvals. However, to receive FEMA reimbursement, applicants need to document why an action is being taken, what the risks of inaction are, and why the action is considered reasonable based on current localized conditions. Additionally, applicants should document any volunteer support hours as well as any donated resources/equipment—these can be used to offset local cost-share requirements in the future. Finally, all meetings with FEMA should be documented with detailed notes regarding what was agreed to with copies sent to FEMA as well as the State.

Are you prioritizing financial management?

Impacted jurisdictions, whenever possible, should dedicate a new bank account to all disaster-related expenses and expenditures and develop specific cost codes to track disaster-related spending. This includes separate coding of all relief-related efforts outside of normal operations, including emergency-specific capital expenses, equipment, supplies, contract services, and force account labor. This will greatly improve the probability of full reimbursement of any Direct Administrative Costs or recovery-related expenses and will provide real-time input to Community Disaster Loan (CDL) Program submissions and/or advanced funding requests.

Have you identified a designated leader to monitor and act quickly to address emerging issues?

Pay close attention to how the crisis is affecting people, especially communities with predominantly elderly, fixed income, or low- to moderate-income populations. Understand the social impact of removing critical pieces of publicly managed infrastructure from service (e.g., schools, libraries, gas stations, police stations, and fire stations). Proactively work through inter-jurisdictional solutions to localized problems, including sharing of facilities, resources, and staff. Identify a designated leader who retains the holistic view on recovery operations and coordinates across departments and stakeholders without the recovery focus being on ‘other duties as assigned.’ Often with immediate danger subsiding, emergency operations give way to traditional division of responsibilities (DPW/community development/finance). It is imperative to keep a core operating group of key stakeholders coordinating regularly.

Are you anticipating new localized stresses of disaster to ease recovery?

In the immediate aftermath of disaster events, near-term solutioning often does not align with a well-coordinated recovery strategy. As thousands of recovery and construction workers flood into the impacted areas, they draw critical resources away from disaster survivors—including available housing and food—and may also place increased stress on healthcare and public safety services already operating at reduced capacity

A focus on strategies to mitigate these stressors is important while still promoting rapid recovery. Municipal and county governments should also anticipate the near-term demands on local public services such as permitting and/or electrical and occupancy inspections.

While these stressors can add to the complexity of disaster recovery, operationalizing a recovery-based economy may ease the acute fiscal distress communities often face after disaster events. By working diligently to restore key local economic producers—grocery stores, restaurants and bars, gas stations, and recovery supply providers—communities can benefit from local sales tax revenue. Innovative strategies include accommodating modified business operation guidelines and waiving certain local ordinances, enabling localized staging and point-of-sale areas for large building supply vendors such as Home Depot, Lowes, etc., and use of public facilities for food vendor villages to accelerate the recovery of local restaurants.

How well are you prepared for the long haul? Don't be afraid to ask for help.

Parsing events like Hurricane Ian into phases with varying levels of resourcing and departmental engagement shifting over time achieves better results.

Phase 1: Critical Response (2-6 weeks). Immediate stabilization of key infrastructure, such as water treatment system, storm drainage, and public safety functions; sheltering for displaced residents; clearance of ROW to facilitate search and rescue and rapid recovery; power restoration to traffic control devices, key businesses, and moderately impacted residences.

Phase 2: Assessment and Continued Response (2-5 months). Comprehensive damage assessments of impacted public infrastructure and assets; continued sheltering and transitional sheltering; coordination with State and federal partners on solutions for restoration of public services, and assistance for socially vulnerable populations; coordination with key community stakeholders such as healthcare and large business leaders; establishing internal management strategies for cost recovery (FEMA) for emergency response and long-term recovery outlays.

Phase 3: Short-Term Repairs and Long-Term Recovery Planning (6-12 months) – Perform temporary repairs to public infrastructure to enable operational continuity. Develop a long-term recovery plan to include repair/replacement strategies for significantly impacted public infrastructure, restoration of economic opportunities, redevelopment of housing, and action planning for future impact resiliency and mitigation. Forecast near-term (1-3 years) fiscal impacts and loss of revenue such as acute reductions in sales tax revenue and/or cash flow strains resulting from unpaid property tax assessments. Undertake strategic planning on the connection between housing, economic markers, healthcare services, transportation, and public infrastructure.

Phase 4: Long-Term Community Redevelopment (3-5 years). Implement long-term community redevelopment initiatives and projects for housing, economic opportunity, and repair/replacement of critical infrastructure and social service support functions.