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Early one December morning, an icy low-pressure
disturbance began making its way out of Oklahoma, across Arkansas, up
through Tennessee, and over the Appalachian mountains. The storm came
sliding quietly down the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, slid across
parts of western South Carolina on Wednesday, December 4, and then rolled
through the middle of North Carolina later in the day, blanketing almost
half the state with 2 to 6 inches of snow and — to make matters worse — a
thick layer of ice as deep as an inch, taking even veteran weather
forecasters by surprise.
The Charlotte Observer called it “the region’s worst
ice storm ever,” and noted the storm’s aftermath may easily have caused as
much damage as its arrival. “Unlike Wednesday, when sleet and freezing rain
slickened area roads and caused hundreds of accidents,” the paper said in
its Thursday edition, “the problem today is the damage done by ice to trees
and power lines.” Before it was over, the winter ice storm left almost 1.4
million residents in North Carolina without power, caused nearly half a
billion dollars in timber losses over more than 2 million acres, and took
four lives.
Cleaning up
Why does a state department of transportation need
help with debris removal? And why does it make sense to hire a consultant to
help oversee debris clean up? The answer is provided, in part, by a North
Carolina Division of Emergency Management study of the seven major disasters
to occur in the state between 1996 and 2000. The study reported that 48% of
all costs associated with federally declared disaster response went toward
debris removal, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency responsible for
providing a major portion of funding. The same study found the majority of
FEMA appeals and deobligations (or rescinded funding approvals) were
associated with debris removal projects. |
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After debris removal, 20% of FEMA-related disaster
relief funds went to public utilities, 14% to emergency protection measures,
8% to buildings and equipment, and 6% to roads and bridges, making
debris-removal more than twice as expensive as any other disaster relief
activity. It can also be, far and away, the most time-consuming to manage.
Under the worst conditions like those of the 2002 North Carolina ice storm,
collection and disposal of all types of storm-related debris may take as
long as nine months. However, documentation, grant administration, grant
appeals, and responding to grant audits can require years to bring to
completion.
It’s important for transportation agencies to
realize that although FEMA assistance is invaluable during times of crisis,
it isn’t a carte blanche process. A key requirement for having FEMA
reimburse recovery costs involves showing that costs are reasonable and
appropriate. However, proving costs are reasonable for debris removal work
often is no small task. If a neighboring jurisdiction gets the same work
done for less money, FEMA may decide to use that jurisdiction’s cost as the
basis for what is reasonable. FEMA may then decide to reimburse everyone up
to that baseline only.
Lastly, the potential for a post-disaster,
post-award audit of FEMA funding has grown increasingly likely in recent
years. The pressure on FEMA audits began in the early 1990s with the
astronomical amounts of damage that began to result from mega-events like
hurricanes Hugo and Andrew. It has continued through the 1990s with efforts
to assure federal government efficiency and persists today, with an eye
toward keeping the total amount of FEMA awards from getting out of hand and
rooting out potentially fraudulent claims. In the early years of strict
auditing, the simple problem of insufficient documentation caught many
agencies off-guard, resulting in deobligation notices in the range of $10
million or more.
Benefits outweigh costs
When the ice storm hit, the North Carolina
Department of Transportation activated more than 300 PBS&J inspectors in 16
counties most severely affected. In the field, the inspectors monitored
debris removal operations, coordinated with FEMA inspectors on reimbursement
eligibility issues, and developed a scope of work for contracts specifically
targeting hanging limbs and seriously damaged trees. The team also put in
place a truckload monitoring system with photo documentation for each
truckload tied to that truck’s load ticket. In all, we helped oversee the
management of 33 contracts covering federal, state, and non-system roads and
helped establish 28 truckload-monitoring sites. Meanwhile, a separate team
began work with FEMA and Federal Highway Administration officials on grant
administration issues for all 43 counties in the federally declared disaster
area.
In all, FEMA assistance for the North Carolina
winter storm and a smaller ice storm that affected nine northern counties in
February of the following year totaled roughly $43 million and $16 million
respectively. From those amounts, approximately $22.5 million and $7.5
million went toward post-disaster debris removal. Assistance was also
provided by the FHWA in approximate amounts of $18 million and $6 million.
Combined, the storms provided PBS&J with the opportunity to deploy emergency
management assistance on a broad scale and under extremely challenging
conditions. The ice storms also provided the chance to further develop a
Web-based program for collecting documentation for use in our debris removal
work around the country, including recovery from hurricanes and forest
fires.
Disasters on the scale of the North Carolina ice
storms make it clear that, with larger populations living in disaster-prone
areas and the added threat of intentionally caused disaster situations,
public managers can no longer afford to wait until after the disaster
strikes to develop cleanup and recovery plans. This is especially true as
the abilities of emergency management consultants continue to grow in
computer-based modeling, emergency planning, pre-positioned contract
negotiations, debris removal management, and post-disaster grant
administration. The benefits of planning ahead and relying on specially
trained professionals for assistance will easily pay for themselves, and,
ultimately, will allow on-staff personnel to concentrate on the most
critical objective: getting their communities operating on a back-to-normal
basis as quickly as is humanly possible.
Johnny DeLoach is a program manager for emergency
response and recovery in PBS&J’s Atlanta office. Wayne Floyd is a senior
project manager for emergency response and recovery, and Amy Goodman is a
technical coordinator for emergency response and recovery, both with PBS&J.
Reprinted from Better Roads Magazine
October 2004 |
