Preliminary Damage Assessments for Major Disasters: Overview, Analysis, and Policy Observations

Summary

When a major disaster overwhelms a state or tribal nation’s response capacity, the state’s governor or tribal nation’s chief executive may request a major disaster declaration from the federal government. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act authorizes the President to issue major disaster declarations in response to such requests.

To evaluate a state or tribal nation’s need for federal assistance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) uses a Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA) as a mechanism to determine the impact and magnitude of damage caused by the incident. Although not explicitly mentioned in the Stafford Act, PDAs play a crucial role in the declaration process. State and tribal governments use PDA information as part of the basis for their major disaster request, and FEMA relies on the PDA findings to provide a recommendation to the President concerning whether a major disaster declaration is warranted and what types of federal supplemental assistance should be made available.

More specifically, the PDA provides information about various “factors” which FEMA evaluates to determine whether Public Assistance (PA) is warranted after an incident. For PA, these factors include estimated costs of assistance, localized impacts, insurance coverage, hazard mitigation, recent multiple disasters, and the availability of other federal resources. Similarly, FEMA uses information from the PDA to assess factors that determine whether an incident warrants Individual Assistance (IA) and, if so, which types of IA.

Despite their importance in the declaration process, PDA information has only recently been publicly available. In 2008, FEMA, at the direction of Congress, began to post PDA reports on its website. PDA reports contain information concerning (1) damage estimates, (2) demographic information of the affected area (including percentages of elderly populations and low-income households), and (3) insurance coverage in the area.

This report analyzes a dataset built from 587 PDA documents. It also compares that constructed dataset to a previously constructed dataset of disaster declarations and other data from FEMA regarding obligations from the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), the account from which FEMA provides PA and IA.

In recent years, congressional interest in emergency management has focused on funding, program administration, and program coordination—both among federal agencies and state emergency management agencies. The data from PDA reports informs debates about these policy issues. For example, PDA reports provide insight as to whether FEMA recommendations are applied uniformly to all major disaster requests. Similarly, PDA reports can be analyzed to address congressional concerns over whether PA and IA determinations are systematic and appropriate. More broadly, PDA information can inform the debate over whether federal disaster assistance is being provided for incidents that could be handled at the state, local, or tribal level.

Some of the key findings in this report include

major disaster declarations that authorize PA generally conform with the PA thresholds outlined in regulation;

higher percentages of low-income households in a disaster-impacted area seem to influence the decision to authorize IA;

of requests that were neither expedited nor appealed, 18.5% were decided within one week, 63.7% were decided within two weeks, and 89.8% were decided within one month;

the time between a major disaster request and decision varies based on the amount of PA and IA damage as well as the type of event; and

the magnitude of PDA estimates for both PA and IA that under-estimate ultimate obligations is greater than the magnitude of estimates that over-estimate ultimate obligations.

This report concludes with policy observations and considerations for Congress. These considerations include

replacing the per capita threshold used by FEMA to make major disaster recommendations with another form of measurement;

requiring PDA reports to include additional information about the incident;

taking measures to increase PDA accuracy; and

amending Section 320 of the Stafford Act.

This report will be updated as events warrant.