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The nation must move away from “incremental” mitigation measures to counter the effects of climate change and focus on large projects that can protect a wide range of people, the head of the Federal Management Agency said this week. from emergencies to emergency responders.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said as climate change intensifies disasters, the agency and its local counterparts should undertake large-scale, multi-million dollar projects instead of mitigating homes individuals liable to be flooded.
“There has yet to be this type of house-to-house effort. But when we think about future risks, we need to start thinking about community-wide system-based mitigation projects, ”Criswell noted Wednesday during a virtual question-and-answer session with emergency managers.
“We currently have such an opportunity to do more system-based community-wide projects that impact an entire neighborhood and move away as much as possible from a phased approach to risk mitigation.” , Criswell said.
His remarks signal a possible shift in strategy for FEMA, which distributes billions of dollars in risk mitigation grants to states and communities and has funded thousands of projects that alleviate flood-prone homes by either raising them up- above flood levels or by demolishing them and leaving the land vacant.
FEMA’s new grant program, called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, opens the door for larger-scale projects, Criswell said, as the program has unprecedented amounts of money and can give communities up to $ 50 million for a single project. Previous FEMA grant programs were limited to spending $ 5 million on one project, she said.
Criswell, who took over FEMA in April after being appointed by President Biden, also said the agency needed to focus more on future risks from climate change and less on historical patterns of disaster damage.
One of FEMA’s priorities is to “really tackle the impacts that we see from climate change and start to really move away a little bit from – not completely – but less of focusing on the historical risk than we are.” let’s see, ”Criswell said.
“We do a lot of our plans, we do a lot of our exercises based on historical risk, which should always be part of our conversation. But we need to have a more deliberate conversation about what our future risk will be. What do we think we will be facing in 10, 15, 20, 30 years and what steps can we take now to start reducing the impacts? Criswell added.
Such a shift in focus could also force FEMA to discourage projects that raise or demolish flood-prone buildings, as buildings that are mitigated are typically those that have sustained substantial flood damage in the past. FEMA’s primary goal in mitigating flood-prone properties is to reduce claims with the agency’s National Flood Insurance Program, which provides most flood insurance in the United States, but has had to borrow $ 35 billion from federal taxpayers to pay for flood losses since 2005.
Criswell spoke at a session sponsored by the International Association of Emergency Managers and the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. She was interviewed by Richard Serino, a former FEMA deputy administrator, who answered questions from a virtual audience of emergency managers.
Criswell did not say how FEMA would encourage states and municipalities to undertake community-wide mitigation projects.
FEMA’s public affairs office also provided no explanation in response to a question from E&E News. “We are working with state, tribal and territorial governments to support communities and identify and build resilience to natural disaster risk,” the public affairs office said when asked how FEMA would shift the focus to disaster risk. how communities spend mitigation grants.
Criswell said the nation has an unprecedented opportunity for climate change mitigation, as Biden has said he will allocate a record $ 4.5 billion next year to local mitigation projects.
But, added Criswell, “we know it’s not enough. We know we’re going to need more. But it really does give us the opportunity to be deliberate and proactive in how we approach this.
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