Memo Shows FEMA Preparing To Dismantle Program Designed To Help Communities Deal W. Extreme Weather
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is known for responding to extreme weather like hurricanes and wildfires — the kinds of disasters that are becoming more intense and common as climate change gets worse. But the agency also has a program that sends billions of dollars to communities, municipalities, and states proactively so that they can prepare for these events before they hit.
In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained and first reported by Grist, the Trump administration announced its plans to dismantle that program — the biggest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded — even as disasters incur hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages across the United States. The decision comes as at least seven people were killed this week as tornadoes and catastrophic flooding descended on the central United States in what meteorologists called a once in a generation event.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, was established in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, replacing a similar FEMA initiative. BRIC’s first round of funding was launched in 2020, when Trump was still in office, and in 2023, the program awarded close to a billion dollars to scores of communities, states, and tribal nations across the country. In January, before Trump began his second term, the agency opened its fiscal year 2024 notice of funding, with $750 million in matching grants made available to applicants from areas that received a major disaster declaration within the past seven years.
But FEMA now aims to cancel those grants and any other BRIC grants that have not been paid out yet by the federal government, according to the pre-decisional memo dated April 2 from Cameron Hamilton, a Trump administration official who is serving as FEMA administrator until the president appoints a permanent head of the agency.
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https://grist.org/politics/fema-moves-to-end-one-of-its-biggest-disaster-adaptation-programs/
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