The 'Impact' of an Un-Mitigated Disaster

It seems I missed a rather important Cassandra. Thanks to the Long Island Press for providing an excerpt and a link in today's roundup of Katrina news to a newly relevant story on the dismantling of FEMA in general and of disaster-mitigation in particular. "Bush administration policy changes and budget cuts, say [emergency managers], are sapping FEMA's longterm ability to cushion the blow of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornados, wildfires and other natural disasters," according to the September 2004 story by freelancer Jon Elliston.

Among emergency specialists, mitigation -- the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters -- is seen as a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside....

According to FEMA estimates, every dollar spent on mitigation saves roughly two dollars in disaster recovery costs. The need for more systematic mitigation efforts was driven home by 1996's Hurricane Fran, which killed 37 people and caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. In 1997, [then-FEMA director FEMA director James Lee] Witt established Project Impact, which would become the agency's most high-profile mitigation program.

Project Impact relied on partnerships of federal, state and local emergency workers, along with local businesses, to prepare communities for natural disasters. FEMA's website still proclaims, "Mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management," but Project Impact is long dead. Elliston's story, which was also carried in a number of "alternative" weeklies as well as the Press last September, notes that diminishing "the Clinton administration's organizational emphasis on disaster mitigation" was a top priority for the new President Bush's FEMA director.

In February 2001 ... the Bush administration proposed eliminating Project Impact, a move approved by Congress later in the year. (On the very day the White House proposal was submitted, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake rocked Washington state.)

That timing was also noted in a Washington Post op-ed by Eric Holdeman, director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management. It wasn't until I read his Aug. 30 "obituary" for FEMA that I'd even heard of Project Impact.

At its height, only $20 million was allocated to the national effort, but it worked wonders. One of the best examples of the impact the program had here in the central Puget Sound area and in western Washington state was in protecting people at the time of the Nisqually earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were protected from high-impact structural hazards. Those involved with Project Impact thought it ironic that the day of that quake was also the day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.

At the time, according to Elliston's story, "some 250 communities in all 50 states had signed up for Project Impact." But dismantling the program, and other FEMA cuts, "would save roughly $200 million." Now the AP is reporting that Congress' allocation of $10.5 billion is just a "down payment" on Katrina relief.