Back in the day, I was often asked the question about what our chances are of qualifying for a Presidential Disaster Declaration. I would respond that, "There is no criteria, but it looks like they are using one dollar per population for the state." In that time Washington State was close to six million people. As you can see from reading the GAO report above the criteria has solidified, if not petrified at $1.00 per capita.
As GAO pointed out the inflation over the years has eclipsed what a dollar was worth when they established that formula for qualifying. It should be much higher today--as they point out in the paper. Evidently FEMA agrees so watch for a higher threshold in the future.
Then there is the number of disasters being declared. See the chart on page 10 that lists the number of disaster declarations from 1953 through 2011. There are only four years with ten or less and that number quickly escalates through the decades to a high of 98 for the year 2011. Is there a trend there?
One more set of number for you to consider. There were 539 disasters declared from 2004-2011. More than a third of that number are expected to have total obligations of less than $10M. The disaster declaration threshold is now pretty low when you think about the resources that are available in most states and you have individual declarations below $10M
The real issue as I see it is that like many other areas of our state and local government we have let the feds fill the gap for funding disaster recovery. Since most states don't have a disaster recovery fund of their own they are reliant on the federal government to bail them out. Additionally, our behaviors have fostered a belief by our citizens that the feds are a backstop for when anything goes bad, in their community and in their personal lives. We are literally panhandling the feds for disaster funds because we have failed to do our part as individuals and governments.
We have all used the word "responsibility" when coaching our children. I think it is now our turn to be coached on our responsibility reference planning for funding disaster recovery!
