But the states are now struggling with the funding of their basic emergency management needs, including in closed weather, future events, along with future disasters, planning and preparing recovery. It is thanks to the large part of the frozen FEMA funding, which is caught in a broader office of management and budget instructions in the end of January, which agencies directing agencies temporarily to prevent the disbursing of federal assistance to the states, and to ensure that it is “corresponding to the President’s policies and needs.” Two Democratic states filed a resolution for enforcement against the federal government in February, alleging that the administration’s review of funding has organized a significant FEMA funds for both disasters and state-level emergency management employees.
A representative of Oregon’s emergency management program told Wired that FEMA was still withdrawing millions of dollars, including the state’s emergency management performance grant, in which the state uses to pay local emergency managers. Oregon usually reimburses the counties for the salary of the employees at the end of each quarter, but if the funding continues, the representative said, “We will not be able to reimburse the local courts.”
Local participation is also breaking up after the new agency policies. In the last summer, a flood-prone rural city in Middaltown, New York, Hudson Valley, was selected to participate in a program as part of FEMA Building Regiment Infrastructure and Community (BRIC) program. Representatives of FEMA were out to Midletown to visit flood areas, weak water wells and bridges which were affected by floods. The representatives of the city started a meeting with FEMA regularly to talk on grants and share expertise.
In mid -February, a few minutes before a scheduled 9 o’clock meeting with the representatives of the city, the FEMA Sampark from Midletown sent an email to cancel and share the call that the BRIC program was stopped. When Town Council member Robin Williams began searching for other grants to replace federal funds, he said that he realized that information from FEMA, who nominated Midletown, was removed from the agency’s website as a specific AT-Risk disaster area, a few days after the canceled call. FEMA never returned to the Midletown Group; Williams came to know that the BRIC program was ending with an article on the environmental news site Grist earlier this month.
“He said,” Hey, sorry, the program is actually over, “says Williams. “They have not said anything.”
An internal FEMA communication memorandum sent in early March has instructed employees that activities – from webinars to conferences – are not related to the current disasters – no longer related disasters need to be submitted an authority form to get approval before the employees participate or get approval.
“I have presented a ton of things and are shot each time,” an employee says. “The thing is that the flood and tornado and fire season is practically here. And now we are hoping that we just sit and wait for these terrible things, before we can pick up the phone and talk to our partners.”
In his press release announcing the cancellation of BRIC, a FEMA spokesman described the program – the program to help prepare weaker communities for future storms, floods and storms – “Another example of a useless and ineffective FEMA program.”
