Outlines the Disaster Relief funding request. He testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee. We will call this hearing to order. We are welcoming the administrator of the federal Emergency Management agency, mr. Brock long, here to discuss the Response Recovery to hurricanes harvey, irma, and maria, as well as the wildfires that spread across california. Thank you very much for being here and joining us. I want to thank you and the thousands of fema personnel who have deployed and continue to work tirelessly to help communities and families get back on their feet in the wake of devastating events. Congress has passed two y supplementals which have provided an additional 46 billion to ensure femas ability to respond to the aftermath of such disasters. While some of these efforts are already underway, there is still a very long road ahead. Today, we look forward to hearing from you on how this third supplemental request will enable the communities to start down the path, the long path of longterm recovery. Mr. Long, before i get to you, i want to introduce my ranking member, who is a good friend. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and good morning, mr. Administrator and welcome to your first appearance before the subcommittee. I wish it were not necessitated by the hurricanes that prompted thirdistrator supplemental funding request in the last few months. But we are nevertheless a good to spend a some time with you to get your perspective on femas response and recovery activities and the challenges that lie ahead. I know this has been a difficult time for your agency. You were at fema for only a few months when Hurricane Harvey struck the gulf coast followed close behind by irma and maria. I would be remiss if i did not mention the wildfires that devastated large parts of california, my home state. We want to help support the efforts of fema personnel and we want to make sure that femas programs are working to support Recovery Efforts, particularly in puerto rico because of the level of devastation there and the fiscal challenges it was already facing. Again, we appreciate your joining us this morning and i look forward to a productive discussion. Rep. Carter we are also joined by the full committee member, ms. Lowey. Administrator long, thank you for being here and all your hard work assisting the states and u. S. Territories that have suffered recently. There have been more than 50 major disaster declarations so far in 2017. 20 of them were for disasters that have occurred since your confirmation, including hurricanes harvey, irma, and maria. After Superstorm Sandy, it was very difficult to garnish support for the Disaster Assistance we needed and i remember that very clearly. There are similar concerns now about the adequacy of funding proposed by the administration for this supplemental, particularly with regards to puerto rico, which has faced significant fiscal challenges for some time. It is my hope that today we could have a productive discussion about how fema can best help those impacted by harvey, irma and maria. With a particular focus on how to assist puerto rico with a vital repairs and improvements to the system, water infrastructure, Transportation System and other important infrastructure. The traditional fema programs will only bring puerto rico just so far. And it will be important for us to understand what the limits are and what additional flexibilities might be helpful. For recovery beyond the scope of fema programs, we need to understand femas role in determining unmet needs that will need assistance from other federal agencies. It is simply not acceptable to restore infrastructure and public facilities to predisaster conditions, especially in puerto rico, which suffered unprecedented damages. We must use assistance funding to mitigate the impacts of future disasters, or else we will find ourselves in this exact position in short order when the next hurricane blows through, forcing taxpayers to pay more because investments were not made in an appropriate time. Resiliency is the only sensible path forward. So, administrator long, i want to thank you for being here today and i look forward to this discussion. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, ms lowey. The people of Southeast Texas suffered more than we have certainly, in my memory. We had over 52 inches of rain, and over 150,000 homes flooded, a number of people tens of thousands of people in my district are living on the second floor of their homes with the first floor torn out because they dont have anywhere else to go. We, all of us, are immensely grateful to the work that fema has done to help the people of eastern and Southeast Texas, who suffered from this catastrophic rain event and to all the volunteers that came from all over the country. One of the Silver Linings to the storm or the people who showed up spontaneously with food, supplies, water. I am specifically grateful to the people of the navy that just showed up with boats and food and jambalaya. I did not even know there was such a thing as the cajun navy. We all found ourselves in houston doing what had to be done to help our neighbors and friends. That is one of the reasons i am so proud to represent the community of people who looks to our neighbors, our faith and our state to help each other, but the federal governments role is it essential and administrator long, we appreciate the work that fema has done. We are grateful for the help that you provided, but a lot more has to be done and without you directly addressing the Disaster Relief fund, i want to say at the outset that the request is woefully inadequate. It is embarrassing. It is deeply embarrassing to the people of texas to see that the largest housing disaster, there is not one time recommended for housing relief in the request. So, we are very grateful to speaker ryan and the chairman for opening up this process to make sure the Appropriations Committee is the one that makes a decision on what the people in the nation need in response to this hurricane. On this committee, we always have and we will once again make the decision on what is necessary to heal the people of texas, the people of florida and the people of puerto rico and Virgin Islands from this storm. We look forward to working with you in my colleagues to be sure that the people of the United States who suffered are made whole. Thank you. Administrator long, at this time, you will make your statement. We have a written copy. We ask that you try to limit yourself to five minutes because we have a lot of questions coming your way. Mr. Long mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it is an honor to be here today. It marks the end of the 2017 hurricane season. The word unprecedented does not do it justice. I want to start by thanking the members of the committee and members of congress for considering the first two supplemental. It is vital funding and we are in the middle of a third request, which i will get to. For 97 days we have been actively responding around the clock. And just to not only to harvey, irma, maria, as well as the california wildfires, but right now we are working 30 one disasters across the country in 21 different jurisdictions. My staff is tapped out. They worked around the clock and bust their rear ends every day to help those in need. We are doing the best we can do to move as quickly as we can. This has been the longest activation in femas history and i am externally proud to work with the members of fema and we have a long way to go in the spirit of improvement. I have many ideas and i have not had the chance to catch my breath. Some of my ideas i can do with my own authority and some will require changes to the stafford act. Just those four events impacted 25 Million People. You know, in a 97 day time period, we put almost 5 Million People into the individual assistance program. To put that into context, that is greater than sandy, katrina and wilma combined. It is a tenfold increase over what we did last year for the entire fiscal year. While these statistics i could go on, while we put 80,000 people in hotels in texas for harvey alone, i could go on with it though statistics. The nation needs to stop and take a deep breath and figure out how we collectively become more resilient. Not just fema, but it is the whole community, trying to figure how we better utilize from the cajun navy to the federal emergency agency. I am ready to change the face of Emergency Management in the way we tackle emergency in this nation. It will require your help as well. Today we have received roughly 42 billion when you include not only the drf funding, but the nsip Debt Forgiveness and disaster loan funding and now we are asking for 23. 5 billion. This is a tremendous amount of money. Protecting the taxpayer dollars is of utmost importance, as well as saving lives. I get it. In this third supplemental, we are asking for special provisions that we need congress to consider. We need outcome based planning. You are asking for puerto rico to have an integrated Recovery Plan with clear outcomes so we are not just throwing money at recovery. We have an outcome in mind going into this. The next thing is i am also asking for additional authorities, particularly around puerto rico. The stafford act allows me to rebuild communities to a predisaster standard, which would not be prudent. We are facing massive amounts of antiquated infrastructure. The average age of the power plants is 41 years old. Globally the average age is 18 years old, as i understand it. When fema comes into this situation, i will need additional authorities to be able to put by puerto rico in a resilient or prudent manner based on what we does we are not here again having the same Committee Hearing about not only maria. The real question for me is, it is time to question, what is femas role . What can we adequately handle as an agency . Lets hit the reset button and lets carve out what every level of government and the community should be responsible for. Fema is not designed to be the first and only responder and a disaster, but that is where we find ourselves and we have got to fix that problem. Doing so fixes the whole Community Issues that we face and bringing up a level of resilience. I have numerous ideas. Starting first with the recovery is too complex, too fragmented. Funding comes from too many different federal agencies, down to the local level. And its difficult to understand what you are entitled to. It leads to confusion and frustration on your part, the citizens part, and the disaster survivors part. It is time to streamline the governments part down to the local level to achieve the governor and the local governments goals and responsibilities, not my goals and responsibilities. We have to increase preDisaster Mitigation. You have got to get hit to have access to hundreds of millions of dollars of mitigation funding. That is reversed. It is backwards. It does not make sense. We need to move 404 section money out of the stafford act, where people can play not mitigation strategies, rather than having to get hit and then figure out how to do mitigation. The formula needs to be changed. We ask to make sure state and local governments have the ability to push out lifesustaining commodity distribution. They cannot be just on the shoulders of the federal Emergency Management agency to push food and water out. Every state should have a capability. Large states should have the capability. We should be able to back that capability, not supported fully. We have to make sure we find low to no cost ways to implement a true culture of preparedness. We dont have it. And it is time to hit the reset button on how we become more resilient, not only at the citizen level, because citizens are the true First Responder. They are the true First Responder in an active shooter event, when a tornado hits, or when a flood occurs. We need to give tangible skills, how to be properly insured as a homeowner and business owner. We have to fix the business process. I run a program that is structurally broken will stop it goes into debt every time we have a major event and i have to ask for supplemental. We continue to go into debt. Trina forced it into debt. Sandy forced into debt. Harvey, irma forced into debt. We have to fix the structure of that framework. I run a program that is not financially solvent. I have about 100 more ideas that i could share and i look forward to working with you, but i am here in the spirit of improvement and i look forward to having a fruitful discussion today. Thank you. Thank you, that was very spectacular. I love that outside the box thinking. Let me remind our panel here, we are going to be on the clock. We are going to try to sift through it. I will do a little cruising over, but not a lot. Well, that was bliss. I would love to hear the other 100 ideas you have got. And lets hope we can figure out a way to do those things. Weve been thats so, you started off with the big picture. Thats right where we need to start. Heres the concerned, the big picture. Whats the status of fema at this time and the impact it takes on response and recovery in this years hurricanes. What do you anticipate your Biggest Challenges will be in the coming months and how do you plan to address them . With more than 80 of femas workforce currently deployed. Are you concerned with femas ability to respond if another catastrophic event occurs . Mr. Long great question. In regards to harvey and irma, we are rolling forward the initial recovery and longterm recovery phases. The Biggest Challenges that face us are housing, obviously. Congressman, you hit the nail on the head. There are not enough travel trailers and in some cases, hotels to service. Fema is not a housing expert, by the way. I often question if fema should be in charge of Disaster Recovery housing, and that is another discussion we should have. It is on my plate and we work with it everyday. Housing is tremendously different, not just from texas, but the california wildfires, which is one of the most disturbing events i have ever been a part of it my career, and based on the urban nature of those wildlife fires. The Housing Mission is tremendously different there because there is nothing to rebuild. It has been burned completely down, versus where we have to go into harvey and understand what anmbi rebuild. Apartments that could be available. So, in puerto rico, it is an antiquated power system that we are trying to figure out day and and day out. The complexities of it being an island in the logistical complexities ants to it. Everything we do in puerto rico is hard. That is not a complaint, it is just a reality. So, power and housing is also a problem in puerto rico. If you are trying to fix homes in puerto rico, putting a blue tarp on a house is not easy because there is not a structure to connect it to. You have to first rebuild the structure before you put the blue tarp on it. In many cases, it is try to figure out who owns the home. Those are issues that are there. We are having to delicately deal with millions of dollars of taxpayer money. One of the things i have recognized that we have to improve is oversight and grants management, which is a responsibility of the entire community, not just fema. We have got to increased the grants management, provide more training as to how this funding rights. But we have to solve this fragmented recovery from different types of money coming from female or the federal highway, wherever it comes from with different policies, different rules and it just said everybody up for failure in the long run. And we never trained people have to utilize the funding that comes down from the federal government and the best way possible. Here is what you are entitled to. Here is what your goals are. Lets grab the money you need and put it to work in concert in an efficient and effective matter. There is a lot we have to talk about. Housing is going to be the most Difficult Mission ahead of us. Rep. Carter that is an excellent to respond, this years disaster activity and in my understanding, there is 33. 5 billion requested in the supplemental funding. Why does this funding in fy18 in puerto rico and the Virgin Islands and you plan to submit another supplemental in addition to support these disasters . Mr. Long that is another excellent question. We are performing our due diligence. It is hard to project what the true cost will be after fy18. As we transition to recovery and we are asking puerto rico to have an integrated outcome based plan for the recovery effort. It helps to project what we need. We also, as we get into recovery based on what a governor might ask for when a disaster happens, we try to estimate out. I think if we go beyond 2018, i dont think the estimates we will provide you will be remotely accurate based on the work and that is why we decided to stay there. Administrator long, the administration has proposed giving you discretion to waive the predisaster condition limitation on public assistant grants for puerto rico and to fund the repair of a replacement of public facility components that were not damaged. Replacing them is essential to restoring the overall facility. Can you talk more about why this facility is needed in the case of puerto rico. Do you expect it will help speed up Recovery Efforts . Did you consider extending this to the u. S. Virgin islands as well and if not, why not . Mr. Long in regards to puerto rico. I am concerned i dont have the authority to implement recovery in a manner that is needed. Because where fema gets in trouble is when we start fixing issues that were not damaged as a result of the actual disaster. If you take the roadway system inside puerto rico, there are plenty of deferred maintenance issues where the system was not maintained for the roadways. They were damages there before the storm and i