FEMA Contractor
Anonymity Requested & Honored
This conversation is compiled of email correspondence.
Upon reaching out to John (name changed for anonymity), I had little understanding of what FEMA was doing and what their role was. FEMA's website isn't easy to understand, and information is hard to find. I was hoping my conversation with John would give me more insight into the inner workings of FEMA.
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My correspondence began with some initial questions. John was very helpful in providing an larger understanding of FEMA's work, and how the response in Puerto Rico was either similar or different to emergency responses in the past.
Below are the questions I sent to John:
In his responses, I've highlighted important key points.
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Could you clarify some of what FEMA's ultimate goals and roles are during a disaster? For example, are they specifically tasked with ensuring citizens receive funds to rebuild their homes, provide food and resources, etc. or are they also tasked with more long term development such as the infrastructure rebuilding in Puerto Rico?
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Do you know of any plans by FEMA to invest in renewable energy (solar & wind) and more sustainable grids in Puerto Rico after the disaster? Or again, is this out of their scope of work?
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Based on your experience with both the Red Cross and FEMA, could you talk about how these two organizations work (or don't work) together? And if they do that well? Any thoughts on collective impact and/or the lack thereof during this particular disaster response?
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Do you think FEMA should play a role in long term development? Is FEMA equipped to play this role or should it be contracted out to non-profits, international non-governmental organizations, etc. to do that work? This might seem like a redundant question, but my thoughts surround the idea that Puerto Rico is in a unique relationship with the United States. It didn't have the infrastructure or strength to survive a major disaster like Maria for multiple reasons. Does FEMA have the capacity to rebuild an island? Or are they more suited to disasters on a smaller (relative) scale such as the outcome of Hurricane Harvey, Florence, Sandy, Katrina, etc.?
John's Detailed and Thorough Responses:
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Question 1:
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Some of this information is available directly from FEMA’s Website or is based on my experience
with FEMA funded programs facilitated by other departments of government in direct response
to Hurricane Maria. Officially FEMA’s goal is to repair many of the damages caused by Hurricane
Maria, that includes homes that were damaged and in some cases a complete loss, it includes
critical and non-critical infrastructure like roads, bridges, power grids, municipal and non-
municipal water supplies, Public use sites, qualifying Public and Private properties etc.
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FEMA is tasked with assisting with more long term restoration, specifically the FEMA Public
Assistance program is exactly that. One of the main goals of the PA program is to provide
funding, oversight and guidance to states or territories like Puerto Rico in rebuilding damaged or
completely lost infrastructure. These projects are often multi-year endeavors in spite of an 18
month time frame and are a critical element of what FEMA does after the response phase of a
disaster ends.
FEMA Provides food and other resources during the Response phase of the disaster. If food is
provided for too long to populations it begins to negatively affect local economies i.e. why buy
your food when you can get it for free. Other resources are treated the same way. Eventually
food and other resource aid must end before it negatively impacts economies; a difficult thing to
judge during the response to a disaster.
Additionally it is FEMA’s goal to leave Puerto Rico better prepared for future disasters by
bolstering supply and logistics and sheltering abilities, facilitating quality training in emergency
management subject areas and through better planning. Naturally all of this falls under the
scope of preparedness and is a core component of the “Strategic Plan.” To the best of my
knowledge this is identical to what is done for the rest of the U.S. Already FEMA has increased
reserve supplies of food, water, blankets, tarping materials and generators in Puerto Rico.
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Question 2:
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I do not know of any plans by FEMA to invest at all in any sort of long term power infrastructure aside from what has already been done to end the power outage. In many ways it’s outside the scope of what that Agency does.
FEMA’s purpose is not to modernize Puerto Rico, but restore the existing infrastructure wherever possible. Inside the scope of the FEMA PA program upgrades are not made to infrastructures unless the repairs would still be outside of modern safety codes and best practices or comes at a significant cost advantage to the federal government.
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Question 3:
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Based on my experience, from Katrina, Rita and Maria, I think that The Red Cross and FEMA do work well together, but there is always room for improvement. The existence of Joint Field and/or Joint Recovery offices is vital for FEMA and other inter-agency partners and NGO’s, like the Red Cross, to have a common place to share information, delegate each of the many jobs involved with disaster response and recovery, and plan for what is in the best interest of the affected public, tax payer dollars, and donations funding the relief efforts. It would be nice if more information could be shared, I think it would provide for more fluid operations, but given the sensitive nature of some of it, it cannot and in many ways that does inhibit certain aspects of operations.
Specifically as this relates to Hurricane Irma/Maria, when FEMA made the decision to cut off food and water distributions, the food and water didn’t just disappear. They just stopped bringing in new food and water, turned over existing stock to the Red Cross and other NGO Partners to continue their operations as normal; there was very little impact from FEMA discontinuing that part of response in order to move towards recovery. This is standard practice on that kind of operation too, but sadly the public didn’t see it that way or understand it.
Overall, I wouldn’t say that the impact the FEMA and the Red Cross wasn’t any more or less than what it was of any other disaster, to me it felt very much like operations as usual. When I responded to Hurricane Katrina I was working for the Forest Service and representing the government, but my crew was assigned to Red Cross Shelters, Red Cross and Baptist Church Kitchens/dish washing and a Red Cross warehouse.
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Question 4:
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I do not think FEMA should play a long term role in recovery and restoration (I.E. Long term Development), beyond what it already does and what’s outlined in the Strategic Plan. Major disasters like Maria take decades to recover from. It was my experience that in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit, FEMA was just wrapping up the final phases of response to Hurricane Andrew from 1994. They have made the same commitment to Puerto Rico as they would have for any other state.
“We’ll be here until the job is complete.” -- Federal Coordinating Officer Michael Byrne
In my experience FEMA is the most well equipped agency the United States has for dealing with rebuilding after Maria. Much of the actual restoration work will be contracted out, but overseen by FEMA. Certain aspects of the management of engineers and contractors will be contracted to qualified companies like AECOM Recovery and CH2M-Hill, Yates etc… who will oversee other contractors in their jobs.
No nation, non-profit, NGO or company has the capacity to handle all of this by themselves. Many partners will likely play different roles in this operation for the next 10 years. For example, Hurricane Sandy still has contractors assigned today.
You’re right that Puerto Rico has a unique relationship with the States as a whole. That is a topic for another day and another discussion, but does FEMA have the capacity to rebuild an island? FEMA has the capacity and authority to manage the funds being spent on rebuilding. They have the ability to delegate roles to companies or other groups (e.g. non-profit or NGO) who specialize in each of the areas needed to rebuild Puerto Rico properly. What FEMA does not have (and never will) is the manpower to handle the management, engineering, construction, logistics, supply, and every other aspect of rebuilding Puerto Rico. That--is going to be an effort that takes funds, time, manpower, and smarts from all over the United States. Overall I think FEMA is the best equipped to manage this task though.
Additional Information Provided
John provided additional information outside of the questions I asked him. They are bullet pointed below:
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Hurricane Maria was the worst natural disaster to hit the United States in over 100 years. The response to this disaster was complicated by politics and a lack of available manpower, supplies and an inability to get what was critically needed on the island fast enough.
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The power outage in Puerto Rico was the longest outage in US History. The critical bottleneck that led to the outage lasting so long was the inability to get enough power poles (wooden) on the Island fast enough. To the best of my knowledge there are only a handful of lumber mills that still make utility poles like were needed in PR. There were not enough spare utility poles in the entire country to fill the order that PR needed in a timely manner. Many of the linesmen brought into PR to work found themselves starved for work because without supplies they couldn’t get lines back up. This was compounded by longer shipping times to the island.
The proven fundamentals of emergency response in every instance I can think of were followed, albeit in some cases more slowly than I would have liked.
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The 2017 fire season also had an effect on the response effort too. Many crews and incident management teams and individuals were on assignment and unavailable to mobilize to Puerto Rico when Maria hit and this certainly would have hampered their efforts in the immediate aftermath in some way.
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During that week the US was at a National Preparedness Level 4 with nearly 30 incident management teams committed to fires. Teams who may have otherwise been available to fall into the command structure and even help provide critical assistance. Also more than 200 soldiers were committed as firefighting resources during that time.
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Hurricanes Irma and Harvey also had more than 200 personnel committed at the time. The first instance of Hurricane Maria showing up on the National Sit Report was September 28th.
From a national resources standpoint, we were already spread very thin when it came to responding to a new emergency because of the wildfires last year.
FEMA's function is not first response in emergencies (they provide emergency management chain of command and long term support). The job of first response falls on the State or Territory and always has. FEMA found themselves in the position of first responders when they arrived because resources were so overwhelmed on the island.