We will call the hearing to order today we are welcoming the administrator of the federal Emergency Management agency to discuss the Response Recovery to hurricane harvey, irma and maria and the wildfires spread across california. Thank you for being here to join us. The magnitude of the disaster we are experiencing this year is unprecedented. I want to thank you and the thousands of personnel who deployed and continue to work tirelessly to help the communities and families get back on their feet in the wake of every instance of the devastating events. Congress has passed to emergency supplementals that are providing an additional 26 public and to ensure the ability to respond to the aftermath of disasters. Now its time to shift focus is from response to recovery and while some of these efforts are already underway there is a long road ahead. Please before i get to you i want to introduce the ranking member. Welcome mr. Administrator to your first appearance before the subcommittee. The third emergency supplemental request in just the last few months but we are nevertheless eager to spend sometime with you to get your perspective on the response and recovery activities and challenges that lie ahead. The los closely behind irma and area and i would be remiss if it didnt devastate large swaths of california in my state. We want to help support the efforts of the personnel and make sure that the programs are working well to support the Recovery Efforts. Particularly in puerto rico because of the level of devastation and fiscal challenges that it was already facing. We already appreciate you joining us this morning and i look forward to a productive discussion. I appreciate the chairman holding this hearing. For the u. S. Territories that suffered recently from natural disasters. Thereve been 50 major disaster declaration so far in 2017. 20 of them were for disasters that occurred since your confirmation including hurricanes harvey, irma and maria. I remember that very clearly. With regards to puerto rico which has faced significant fiscal challenges for some time. We can help those impacted by ay harvey, irma and maria. Water infrastructure, transportation and other important infrastructures. The traditional programs will only bring porter rico just so far. To understand the limits and what additional flexibilities might be helpful. We are recovering beyond the scope of the programs and need to understand the role in determining the unmet needs that will inform the systems from other federal agencies. Its simply not acceptable to restore infrastructure and public facilities to previous conditions especially in puerto rico that suffers unprecedented damages. We must use the funding to mitigate the impact of the future disasters or else we will find ourselves in this exact decision in short order when the next hurricane blows through forcing the taxpayers to pay more because of the investment not made in the appropriate ti time. I look forward to the discussi discussion. Thank you mr. Chairman. We have over 52 inches of rain and homes flooded, 200,000 Apartment Units come a number of people, tens of thousands in my district are livin looking on te second floor of their homes with the first floor turn out because they dont have anywhere else to go. We are also grateful to the work that is done to help the people of houston and Southeast Texas who suffered from this catastrophic event and to all the volunteers from all over the country one of the Silver Linings of the storm where the people thawere thepeople that sp spontaneously from all over the country with food, supplies, water and im grateful to the people of louisiana who just showed up with boosting food and jambalaya to help pull people out of their houses. I didnt know there was anything such as a caged navy. The caged navy. We found people doing what needed to be done and it is one of the many reasons im proud to represent that Wonderful Community of people who will look first at each other, to our family, to our neighbors to help each other, but the role is the central and the administrator, we appreciate the work that youve done and we are grateful for the help that you have provided, but a lot more has to be done and without even directly addressing the Disaster Relief fund i want to say at the outset the office of budget management request is woefully inadequate. Its embarrassing, it is deeply upsetting to the people of texas to see the largest housing disaster in the history of the United States of america isnt a dime recommended for housing relief in the omb requests, so we are grateful to the speaker for opening up the process to ensure the Appropriations Committee is the one that makes the decision on what the people of our districts and the nation need in response to the hurricane. They invest that authority in congress and on this committee we always have and we will once again make a decision on what is necessary to heal the people in texas and florida and puerto rico and the Virgin Islands, so thank you mr. Cherry and her holdinholding the hearing and ik forward to working with you and my colleagues to the people that have suffered are made whole. At this time you were recognized to make a statement. We have a written copy and we ask you try to limit yourself to five minutes because we have a a lot of questions coming your way. Members of the committee, thank you and it is an honor to be here. Marking the end of the 2017 hurricane season, it has been the word unprecedented does not do it justice. I want to start by thinking members of the committee and congress who are quickly considering the first supplementals and pushing through it vital funding and here in the middle of a third request i will get to minimum. In office about five months for 97 days weve been actively responding around the clock and just only to harvey, irma, maria, the california why dont wildfires, my staff is tapped out. Out. They work around the clock to help those in need and we are doing the best we can do to move as quickly as we can. This has been the longest activation in history and ive got to say i am extremely proud to work with the members and we have a long way to go in the spirit of improvement. I have many ideas that ive not had a chance to catch my breath and come to you with. Some of them i can do with the stroke of a pen and some of them are going to require changes to the stafford act to put this in context, just those infected 25 million people. And this time. We put almost 5 million in the individual assistance program, to put that into context an cont short a timeframe that is greater than sandy, katrina combines and its a tenfold increase over. How do we utilize over to the federal Emergency Management agency and i didnt come up here to do the status quo. Im ready to change it in a way to tackle resiliency and its going to require your help as well. To date we have received since august 25 roughly 24 billion when you include not only the funding but now youre asking for 23. 5 billion. I get it and the third supplemental we are asking for special provisions i need the congress to consider. We need outcome based planning when we enter into the disaste disasters. We have an outcome in mind going into this. The next thing im also asking for Additional Authority particularly around the rico. The act allows me to rebuild communities to be predisaster standard which wouldnt be in this situation. We are facing maximum amount of deferred maintenance and infrastructure at antiquated infrastructure. The average age of the powerplant is 44yearsold and if you look at it globally it is typically a 1 teenyearsold asi understand it so when they come into this situation, i will need additional authorities to be able to put back in a prudent manner so that we are not here again having the same meeting. The question for me is it is time to question their role in the Disaster Response and recovery. What can we handle as an Agency Versus what the role and responsibility of the community should be from state and local governments and lets hit the reset button and carve out every level of government in the whole community to be responsible for. They are never designed to be the only responder in the disaster that in many cases that is where we find ourselves and weve got to fix that problem. Doing so fixes the whole Community Issues that we face and brings up a level of resilience. I have numerous ideas starting first with recovery is too complex. Funding comes from too many different federal agencies out of the state and local level and how to use the funding in concert with one another and it leads to the obligations, confusion or frustration on your part of the substance part and the disasters part. This is the time to fix this and work down to the local level them to achieve the goals and responsibilities. You have to get hit to get access to the funding. We need to move the funding out of the act up front where people can plan out mitigation strategies rather than having to get hit. It needs to be changed and we need to make sure they have the ability to push out the lifesustaining commodity distribution. It cant be on the shoulders of the federal Emergency Management agency to push food and water out. Every state should have the capability. Our cities should have their own capable of. We should b be able to back fill the community can not to supplant it fully. We have to make sure we find low to no cost ways to truly implement a culture of preparedness within the citizenry. We dont have it and its time to hit the reset button on how to become more resilient because the citizens were the first true responder to b an active Shooter Event and when a tornado hits were when a flood occurs and we need to give tangible skills from cpr to how to shut off water valves to ho have to be properly insured. Not only as a homeowner but as a business owner. We have to fix the business process. I run a program that is structurally broken every day. It goes into that every time we have a major event in the have to ask for supplementals. Katrina forced into that harvey, irma forced into this and weve got to fix the structure of the framework and ensure affordability. I run a program that isnt financially solvent and i have more ideas i can share and i look forward to working with y you. Thank you. That was very spectacular. Let me remind our panel here i will do a little courtesy over. I love the other ideas that god and lets hope we can figure out a way to do those things. You start off with kind of the big picture, and that is right where we need to start. A series of questions concerning the big picture. What is the status at this time and the impact of the states response and recovery to this years hurricane, what you anticipate the Biggest Challenges will be in the coming months and how do you plan to address them with more than 80 of the workforce currently deployed and to support ongoing Disaster Response activities are you concerned with the ability to respond of another catastrophic event occurs . With regards to harvey and irma, we are moving forward in the phases. The Biggest Challenges to face us are housing. There are not enough manufactured home and travel trailers and hotels to service and we will never be able to move fast enough to put people back in their homes. The bottom line we work with every day. Housing is tremendously different not just from texas at the California Wildfires which is the most disturbing ive been a part of based on the nature of held by fighters. Its tremendously different because theres nothing to rebuild and its been torn down versus where we have to go into harvey and understand what can be rebuil rebuild instead of manufactured homes or how we transition people out of hotels into other options, rent and if youve got them, apartments that may be available. So, this is the Biggest Issue that we face. In puerto rico obviously it is an antiquated power system we are trying to figure out. The complexities added to it. Everything we do in puerto rico is hard. Its not a complaint is just the reality. So power and housing is also a problem when you try to fix homes in puerto rico you simply put a blue tarp on the house and that isnt easy because there is no structure to connect it to. You have to rebuild the structure before you put the tarp on it and in many cases it is trying to figure out who owns the home are those issues that are there. The other thing i recognize is that we have to delicately deal with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. One thing we have to improve its oversight. The management is the responsibility of the whole community. Theres more training to how the funding works and what we have to solve is the fragmented recovery from different types of money with different policies, different rules and exits everybody up for failure in the long run and we never train people how to utilize the funding that comes down from the federal government and the best way possible. Heres what you are entitled to and what the goals are lets put it to work in concert with one another in an efficient and effective manner. Theres a lot to talk about. Housing is going to be the most Difficult Mission ahead of us. The disaster activity and my understanding, 23. 5 billion requested the supplemental for the hurricanes but only the fy15 teen costs. Why is this and do you plan to submit another supplemental in addition to support these disasters . That is another excellent question. We are performing our Due Diligence into this hard to project what the true cost is going to be. As we transition to the recovery and while we are asking them to have an integrated outcome based plan for the recovery effort it helps project what we need and also as we get into the recovery based on what the governor may ask for and the different programs that are available, we look at the trends, the programs and we deliberately go in and try to ask them i think if we go beyond 2018, i dont think that the estimates i could provide you with the accurate based on the work and thats why we decided to stay there. The administration has proposed giving you discretion to waive the condition limitation on public assisted grants and the repair over the replacement in the public facade of thfacility components that we not damaged but replacing them is essential to restoring the overall facility. Can you talk a little bit more about why this is needed in the case of puerto rico or do you expect that it will help speed up the Recovery Efforts and do you consider extending this to the u. S. Virgin islands as well and if not, why not . I am concerned i dont have the authority to implement recovery in a manner that is needed. If i fix a infrastructure that hasnt been maintained then it comes back and rightfully so and says wait a minute is this true of the federal governments responsibility or should this be on the back of the local and state government. We are running into so many deferred maintenance issues with the entire infrastructure and antiquated systems that i dont think you can put it back to the predisaster condition. Those that i have to prevent Public Health emergencies and loss, future loss of life. But once we get into the permanent work that is required to actually rebuild a higher standard for example just putting the standard for the power grid on to puerto rico is greater than the condition we found the power grid in to begin with so this is why we are asking for those authorities. I need protection when it comes to putting puerto rico back in a more resilient manner so that we are not sitting here and having this discussion. How will you decide when to use it and do you anticipate that you will probably use it or only in certain circumstances or certain kinds of projects . Right now we dont have a full understanding. We are still in the response phase. But we know as we get into the permanent work or the different categories, category c. Three g. Like the debate for fixing the public infrastructure, we are already in the emergency work trying to get into the areas of the power grid where youre having to do the bridge removal and brush removal because of overgrowth and thats deferred maintenance, which delays the recovery time. We know we are going to see, we are anticipating it that coming into the permanent forking issues of recovery. Under this authority or others, well fema be able to fully fund the federal share of the more modern efficient and resilient type of electrical generation and a great system for puerto rico or will Puerto Rico May be eligible to receive an amount sufficient to construct a brandnew version of the Current System which would still be vulnerable to the future hurricanes in other words while the funding reflects the higher cost of the system that would mitigate against future disaster cost . What is your understanding about other federal resources that could be available to puerto rico and the added cost . This goes back to fragmented recovery. Everyday we have recovery meetings with our partners across the perspective. Other agencies are in the office were having this meeting staley when it comes to how funding comes together. For example, when a detailed conversation with secretary of hud about housing and how fema can handle housing about 50 damage and after that its more of a hud issue. I believe that over the next time we can still do a better job streamlining these programs and assigning authority that is clear. Thank you. Thank you mr. Chairman for holding hearing. After hearing from mr. Brock, just want to say that im sleep better tonight. Im so impressed. It seems to me youre handling this just right. The only question i have is when youre talking about rebuilding standards and other homes are the electric grid, i was there with the speaker not long ago, to help if we ever get the budget process going we can give your number that will provide for Adequate Funding to do this. I understand youre saying you have to combine your efforts with hud and other agencies. Knowing your there will help me sleep better tonig