Vrede too wrote:We don't know how much we spend on disasters, and that needs to change
In the days after Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Oct. 8, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) distributed 6 million meals, 1.1 million gallons of water and 87,000 blankets, providing a critical lifeline to residents of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
But as with any disaster, meeting these immediate needs is only the beginning of many millions of dollars of federal assistance over months and years to state and local governments, tribes, businesses and individuals in the affected states.
Over the past two decades, FEMA has seen a 212 percent increase in its Public Assistance Grant Program, the largest source of federal disaster assistance to state and local governments, from an annual average of $1.8 billion from 1996 to 2005 to $5.5 billion per year from 2006 to 2015. But these dollar figures are just the tip of the iceberg and do not include what other federal agencies — including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development — have spent on disaster response, recovery and mitigation.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in September put the average annual total of federal disaster spending in recent years at $27.7 billion, spread across 17 departments and agencies that play a role in response or recovery. This report provides a first-of-its-kind comprehensive look at federal disaster expenditures but tells only part of the story. The amount of state and local government investment in disaster relief and mitigation, a key part of the funding picture, remains unknown.
In fact, a complete tally of total public disaster-related spending in the United States does not exist....
Reining in the costs of future natural disasters effectively will require a hard look at how disaster-related money is being spent and whether there is appropriate investment in activities that could reduce the costs of future disasters. A 2005 study by the National Institute of Building Sciences reviewed 10 years of federal government spending on hazard mitigation for earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods and found that every dollar spent in preparing for these types of disasters saved roughly $4 in recovery costs.
And yet, federal funding has not followed evidence that investments in disaster mitigation could reduce total spending over the long run. For example, in fiscal year 2016, Congress appropriated $7 billion to FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund primarily for response and recovery, but only $100 million for the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Fund to limit the severity of damages from a future natural disaster....
In am 100% behind helping people after disasters, but the many I have seen are more about throwing money at large corporations than about helping people. Naomi Klein discusses disaster capitalism in her book Shock Doctrine.
I've seen the multilevel cleanup contracts, that screw the little man who performs the cleanup and enriches the haliburton types who are awarded the contract and each of its subsidiaries it sells the contract to and each of the subsequent levels of profits for these resellers of the FEMA contract until only out of work beggars do the work for pennies on the dollar.
and those damn MRIs. I wonder how much that crap costs. Community kitchens work so much better. The first thing after a storm (if you still have a house but no electricity) is to cook from the refrigerator and then from the freezer. We also have block parties and BBQs.
and those damn MRIs must cost $20.00 for absolutely nasty food. a few cans of spam and some beans would make more sense.
My hurricane experience includes, but is by far not limited to, 16 August no electricity days with my 8+ months pregnant wife and a lost house after an October storm the same year. After a storm, county officials become camera hungry morons, cops enforce any new rule they can come up with as long as double time overtime is involved and the only looting comes at the hands of the cops and the out of state power companies entering homes at will while the owners are kept behind barricades.
MRI story - I occasionally use day labor. Two years after Opel, these day worker/drunks were still eating MRIs and speculating on why the government keeps the recipe secret for these fantastic meals.
