Lost in the title of the article is the fact that the money is being provided to boost the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) funding available to state and local jurisdictions.
Then there is this piece of information that comes from a Disaster Tough Podcast that featured an interview with the immediate past FEMA administrator, Pete Gaynor. In the podcast, Pete relays a story about being at a conference (likely the International Association of Emergency Managers) and asking 1,500 emergency managers to raise their hands if they are disaster mitigators. Only about 15 people raised their hands. He was aghast that everyone did not raise their hands. Mitigation still is not seen as being a primary duty. He also said that if he had asked “who is a disaster responder?” everyone would likely have raised their hands.
This, then, is the problem our discipline has. We are stuck in disaster response mode and not responding to the opportunity to improve the disaster resilience of our respective states and communities by promoting disaster mitigation and, in climate change terminology, “climate adaptation.”
Watch for a new Disaster Zone podcast coming in June on climate adaptation.
Claire Rubin shared the Washington Post article above.