Brock long. Here to discuss response of recovery to hurricanes harvey, irma, and maria as well as the wildfires that spread across california. Administrator, thank you very much for being here and for joining us. The magnitude of the disaster activity that were experiencing this year is basically unprecedent unprecedented. I want to thank you and the thousands of dedicated fema personnel who have deployed and who continue to work tirelessly to help communities and families get back on their feet in the wake in every instance of these devastating events. Congress has passed two emergency supplementals which have provided an additional 26 billion to ensure femas ability to respond to immediate aftermath of the disasters. Now its designed to shift focus from response to recovery. And while some of these efforts are already under way theres still a very long road ahead. Today we look forward to hearing from you on how this third supplemental request, 23. 5 billion, would enable the communities to start down the path, a long path of longterm recovery. Mr. Long, please, before i get to you, i want to introduce ms. Roybalallard, my good friend, for any comments she might have. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good morning, mr. Administrator, and welcome to your first appearance before the subcommittee. I wish it were not necessitatesed by the damaging hurricanes that prompted the administrations supplement a. M. Third funding request in just the last few months. But we are nevertheless aeger to spend 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. And i would be remiss if i did not mention the wildfires that devastated large swaths of california, my home state. Mr. Administrator, we want to help support the efforts of fema personnel and we want to make sure that femas programs are working well 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. We are also joined by the full Committee Ranking member, ms. Lowey. Ms. Lowey, youre now recognized for any comments youd like to make. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate chairman carters holding this hearing. Administrator long, thank you for being here and for all your hard work assisting the states and u. S. Territories that have suffered recently from natural disasters. There have been more than 50 major disaster declarations so far in 2017. 20 of them were for disasters that occurred since your confirmation, including hurricanes harvey, irma, and maria. After Superstorm Sandy it was very difficult to garner support for the Disaster Assistance we needed, and i remember that very, very clearly. There are similar concerns now about the adequacy of funding proposed by the administration for this supplemental, particularly with regard to puerto rico, which has faced significant fiscal challenges for some time. Its my hope that today we can 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 vital repairs and improvements to its power 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 inform assistance from other federal agencies. Its 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 at an appropriate time. Resiliency is the only sensible path forward. So administrator long, again, i really do want to thank you for being here today, and i look forward to this discussion. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, ms. Lowey. Mr. Cull behr sop has requested an opening statement. The people of houston and Southeast Texas suffered more than we have than any storms certainly in my memory. 52 inches of rain. 150,000 homes flood. 250,000 apartment units. 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, the sheet rock torn out because they dont have anywhere else to go. We all of us are immensely grateful to the work that femas done to help the people of houston, the Southeast Texas, who suffered from this catastrophic rain event, and to all the volunteers who came from all over the country. One of the Silver Linings of this storm were the people that just showed up spontaneously from all over the country with food, supplies, water. Im especially grateful to the cajun navy, the people of louisiana who just showed up with boats and food and jambalaya to help pull people out of their houses. I didnt even know there was such a thing as the cajun navy. We all found ourselves in houston doing what needed to be done to help our neighbors and friends and its one of the many, many reasons im so proud to represent that Wonderful Community of people who all look first to each other, to our family, to our neighbors, to our faith and our state to help each other. The federal governments role is 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 even directly addressing the Disaster Relief fund i want to say at the outset that the office of management and budgets request is woefully inadequate. Its embarrassing. Its deeply upsetting to the people of texas to see that the largest housing disaster in the history of the United States of america, theres not one dime recommended for housing relief in the ombs request. So we are grate tofl speaker ryan, to chairman frilling hooizen to open up this process to make sure the Appropriations Committee is the one that makes the decision on what people in our nation make in response to this hurricane. The constitution vests that authority in congress and on this committee we always have and we will once again make the decision on whats necessary to heal the people of texas, the people of florida, and the people of puerto rico and the Virgin Islands from these terrible storms. I thank you, mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and look forward to working with you and my colleagues to be sure the people of the United States who suffered are made whole. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Culberson. Administrator long, at this point youre recognized to make your statement. We have a written copy. Wed ask you try to limit yourself to five minutes because weve got a lot of questions that are going to be coming your way. Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, madam member, members of the committee, thank you. Its an honor to be here. Marks the end of the 2017 hurricane season. And its been the word unprecedented doesnt do it justice. I want to start by thanking members of the committee but also members of congress for quickly considering the first two supplementals and pushing through. Its vital funding and were in the middle of a third request which ill get to here in a minute. Ive been in office about five months. For 97 days weve been actively responding around the clock. And just to not only to harvey, irma, maria as well as the California Wildfires but right now were working 31 disasters across this country in 21 different jurisdictions. My staff is tapped out. They work around the clock and bust their rear ends every day to help those who are in need. We are doing the best that we can do and trying to move as quick as we can. This has been the longest activation in femas history. And ive got to say, im extremely proud to work with the members of fema. Weve got a long way to go in the spirit of improvement. Im here in the spirit of improvement. I have many ideas that i have 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 through my authority. Some of them are going to require changes to the stafford act. But to put this into context, just those four events, harvey to the devastating California Wildfires, impacted 25 Million People. You know, in a 97day time period weve put almost 5 Million People into the individual assistance program. To put that into context, in that short of a time frame thats greater than sandy, katrina, rita and wilma combined. Its a tenfold increase over what we did last year for the entire fiscal year. And while these statistics, i could go on, where weve put 80,000 people in hotels in just texas for harvey alone. I could go on with those statistics. The nation needs to stop, take a teep breath, and figure out how we collectively become more resilient. Not just fema. You mentioned how do we better realize the whole community from the cajun natheyvnavy all the the federal Emergency Management agency. Im ready to change the face of Emergency Management and the way we tackle resiliency in this nation. And its going to require your help as well. Today weve received since august 25th weve received roughly 42 billion when you include not only the drf funding but the nfip Debt Forgiveness as well as Community Disaster loan funding. And now were asking for 23. 5 billion. This is a tremendous amount of money. You know, protecting the taxpayer dollars is of utmost importance as well as saving lives. I get it. And in this third supplemental were asking for some special provisions that i need the congress to consider. We need outcomebased planning, Recovery Planning when we enter to these disasters. Were asking for puerto rico to have an integrated Recovery Plan with clear outcomes so were not just throwing money at recovery. We have an outcome in mind going into this. The next thing is that im 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 in this situation. We are facing massive amounts of deferred maintenance in the infrastructure and antiquated infrastructure. The average age of the power plants is 44 years old. If you look at it globally, what the average age of a power plant is, its typically 18 years old as i understand it. So when fema comes into this situation, i will have i will need additional authorities to be able to put back puerto rico in a resilient or prudent manner based on what we so were not here again having this same Committee Hearing about not only maria. But the real question me is it is time to question what is femas role in Disaster Response and recovery. What can we adequately handle as an Agency Versus what the real roles and responsibility of the whole community should be from state to local governments. And lets hit the reset button and lets carve out what every level of government and the whole community should be responsible for. Fema is never designed to be the First Responder and the only responder in a disaster. But in many cases thats where we find ourselves. And weve got to fix that problem. You know, doing so fixes the whole Community Issues that we face and bringing up a level of resilience. I have numerous ideas. Starting first with recoverys too complex, is too fragmented. Funding comes from too many different federal agencies down to the local and state level. And its too difficult to understand what youre entitled to, how to use this funding in concert with one another, and it leads to deobligations, confusion, and more frustration on your part, the citizens part and the disaster survivors part. This is the time to fix those problems and streamline the federal governments support down through a local governor to the local level to achieve the governor and the local governments goals and responsibilities, not my goals and roles and responsibilities. Okay . We have to increase predisaster mitigation. Youve got to get hit to have access to billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars of mitigation funding. Thats reversed. Its backwards. It doesnt make sense. We need to move 404 section money out of the stafford act to a blue sky day up front place where people can plan out mitigation strategies rather than having to get hit and then figure out how to do mitigation. Its a regressive formula. It needs to be changed. We have to ensure that state and local governments have their own ability to push out lifesustaining commodity distribution for water and meals. It cannot be solely on the shoulders of the federal Emergency Management agency to push food and water out. Every state should have a capability. Large cities should have their own capability. Our support should be designed to backfill that community, not supplant it fully. We have to make sure we find low to nocost ways to truly implement a true culture of preparedness within our citizenry. We dont have it. And its 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 and they are when a tornado hits or when a flood occurs. And we need to give tangible skills from cpr to how to shut off water valves to how to be properly insured. Not only as a homeowner but as a business owner. We have to fix the nfip business process. I run a program that is structurally broken every a. It goes into debt every time we have a major event, and i have to come ask for supplementals. We continue to go into debt. Katrina forced it into debt. Sandy forced it into debt. Harvey, irma. Forced it into debt. Weve got to fix the structure of that framework and weve got tone sure affordability but fix the structure. I run a program that is not financially solvent. Ive got about 100 more ideas i can share and i look forward to working with you but im here in the spirit of improvement. I look forward to having a fruitful discussion today. Thank you. Thank you. That was very spectacular. I love that outside the box thinking. Okay . Let me remind our panel here that were going to be on the clock and were going to try to stick to it but ill do a little courtesy over but not a whole lot. Well, that was a blitz, and id love to hear the other 100 ideas youve got. And lets hope we can figure out a way to do those things. So you start off with kind of the big picture, and thats right where we need to start. Series of questions concerning the big picture. Whats the status of fema at this time and the impacted states response in 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 . And with more than 80 of femas workforce currently deployed to support ongoing Disaster Response activities, are you concerned with femas ability to respond if another catastrophic event occurs . Great question. In regards to harvey and irma we are rolling forward he in the initial recovery and longterm recovery it faces. The Biggest Challenges that face us are housing. Obviously. Congressman, you hit the nail on the head. There arent enough manufactured home and travel trailers and in some cases hotels to service, and were never going to be able to move fast enough to put people back in their homes. Fema is not a housing expert, by the way. I often question whether or not fema should be in charge of Disaster Recovery housing. Thats another discussion that we should probably have. But the bottom line is its on my plate. I recognize it. We work with it every day. Housing is tremendously different. Not just from texas but the california wild sfooirs, which is one of the most disturbing events ive ever been a part of in my career based on the urban the urban nature of those wildland fires. The Housing Mission is tremendously different there because theres nothing to rebuild. Its been burned completely down versus where we have to go into harvey and we have to understand what can be rebuilt versus where we need to bring in manufactured homes or how we transition people out of hotels to other options. You know, rent them if youve got them. Apartments that may be available. So each this is the Biggest Issue that we face. In puerto rico obviously is the power. Its an antiquated power system that were rapidly trying to figure out day in and day out on how to get in there. The complexities of it being an island and the logistical complexities. You know, adds to it. Everything that we do in puerto rico is hard. Thats not a complaint. Its just a reality. Its hard. So power and housing is also the problem in puerto rico. When youre trying to fix problems in puerto rico putting a tarp on a house is not easy because theres 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 its trying to figure out who actually owns the home. Or you know, those i