Tips from FEMA

credit: Climate Central

FEMA by the Numbers – 2024

Understanding the Difference Between Individual Assistance and Public Assistance

     FEMA’s assistance programs offer critical support to affected individuals, government entities and certain private non-profits to support their recovery efforts from major disasters quickly and efficiently.  Following a presidential major disaster declaration, FEMA may provide two main types of possible assistance: Individual Assistance and Public Assistance. The Individual Assistance program provides support to individuals and households, while the Public Assistance program provides support to communities and the public.

Individual Assistance

FEMA’s Individual Assistance program provides direct financial assistance to eligible individuals and families who have sustained losses due to disasters. This program directly helps those with uninsured or underinsured basic critical needs. Through the Individual Assistance program, FEMA offers several types of financial and direct assistance to eligible individuals and families, including homeowners and renters.  Housing and Other Needs Assistance may provide:

  • Money to help pay for alternate housing while the residents are displaced from their disaster-damaged property.
  • May reimburse for hotels, motels or other short-term lodging, a disaster-damaged primary vehicle and other essential costs.
  • Money to help clean and sanitize a resident’s home, which is intended to help prevent additional losses and protect health and safety.

Money provided through Individual Assistance is a grant and does not need to be repaid. This type of assistance is not considered taxable income, and accepting a FEMA grant will not affect your Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or other federal assistance programs.

To find out if you can apply for disaster assistance, visit disasterassistance.gov to find out if your area has been declared for Individual Assistance. Affected residents canapply online, at aDisaster Recovery Center, through theFEMA App or by calling the FEMA helpline at☎️1-800-621-3362. Learn more about FEMA’s Individual Assistance program atIndividual Assistance | FEMA.gov.

Public Assistance

The Public Assistance program provides supplemental grants to state, tribal, territorial and local governments, and certain types of private non-profits, to assist communities in quickly responding to and recovering from major disasters or emergencies.  Federal funding is available to eligible entities, including state and local governments, and certain private non-profit organizations, such as schools, hospitals, houses of worship and public utility districts.  Although funds are awarded to government entities and certain private non-profits, the Public Assistance program is intended to benefit the public, including neighborhoods, cities, counties and states.  Under Public Assistance, FEMA may offer two main types of assistance:

  • Grant funding for emergency protective measures and debris removal (emergency work).
  • Grant funding for permanent restoration of damaged facilities, such as roads, culverts, bridges, water control facilities, utilities, public buildings and parks in designated areas, including cost-effective hazard mitigation to protect the facilities from future damage (permanent work).

Public Assistance dollars are used to:

  • Clean up disaster-related debris.
  • Repair roads and bridges.
  • Restore utilities and water systems.
  • Rebuild buildings and equipment that provide community services, including schools and hospitals.

Learn more about FEMA’s Public Assistance program atAssistance for Governments and Private Non-Profits After a Disaster | FEMA.gov.

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Download today on iOS or Android. 

Learn more on the FEMA App webpage.

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STAY INFORMED

🔶🔶Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area, how to get emergency alerts, and where you would go if you and your family need to evacuate.  Make sure your family has a plan and practices it often. Click here to learn more.

🔶🔶 There is a Disaster Center Pennsylvania Page on the FEMA website.  On it you will find Federal Disaster Links, State Disaster Links, Disaster Center Links, Weather Updates, and much more.

🔶🔶FEMA has produced Updates to FEMA Programs for People with Disabilities.  Learn more. You can also learn more about FEMA’s programs with the disability community at Home Repairs and Improvements for Survivors with Disabilities: FEMA Quick Reference Guide.

🔶🔶 Click here for the latest map of the FEMA Regions, annotated with the names of the FEMA Voluntary Organization Liaisons in each region.

🔶🔶 For the latest FEMA VAL updates and VAC Snapshot Reports (distributed every Friday) go to VOISE Dashboard.  Go to the FEMA VAL Donations Unit Dashboard for donation offers and needs. You can sign up for FEMA reminders and operational updates by sending an email to FEMA-VAL@fema.dhs.gov.

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🔶🔶 The National Business Emergency Operations Center serves the nation by connecting business and industry organizations with FEMA’s federal disaster management operations. The National Business Emergency Operations Center is a free staffed virtual platform that provides business, industry and government agencies a venue to share situational awareness updates before, during and after a disaster.  If you know of organizations that would benefit from the National Business Emergency Operations Center membership, please have them contact FEMA’s Office of Business, Industry and Infrastructure Integration team by emailing nbeoc@connect.gov to join today!  For more information, visit National Business Emergency Operations Center | FEMA.gov.

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FEMA has produced a blog – Lessons Learned from Recent Disasters Help Shape Stronger and Safer Communities.  Learn how communities are taking proactive measures and using community cooperation to enhance resilience, ensuring a safer future for all.  Read the blog.

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Explore valuable insights from recent disasters, highlighting how communities can become more resilient. Following the impacts of hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, FEMA shares key takeaways aimed at shaping safer communities.  Learn how communities are taking proactive measures and using community cooperation to enhance resilience, ensuring a safer future for all. To learn more about how to enhance resilience in your community, visit FEMA.gov. 

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🔶🔶FEMA has revised its National Disaster Recovery Framework. The revised framework includes feedback and recommendations from the public submitted earlier this year.  Key revisions focus on clarifying roles and responsibilities, detailing the federal recovery support function structure and its role in supporting local recovery goals, enhancing collaboration across the whole community and providing practical resources to assist in recovery planning efforts.  The framework explains the federal government’s roles and responsibilities for organizing and deploying disaster recovery assistance. It also enhances effective collaboration among federal, state, local, Tribal Nations and territorial agencies while informing nongovernmental partners.  For more information, visit National Disaster Recovery Framework | FEMA.gov. 

🔶🔶 A new online educational game designed to teach high school students about decision making during disasters is now available!  Disaster Mind challenges and encourages participants to make critical decisions in the face of three simulated disaster scenarios: a flood, a wildfire and a blizzard.  Complicating their quest, a mysterious guide creates challenges for the participants during game play.  See also the  supporting educational materials.

🔶🔶 FEMA Releases Prepare with Pedro Storybooks

🔶🔶 FEMA produces hazard information sheets, which are short, two-page summaries of research-based guidance and advice for actions you should take to prepare for, protect against and recover from specific disasters or hazards.  As hurricane season approaches, take time to understand and prepare for how a hurricane could affect you by downloading FEMA’s Hurricane Hazard Information Sheet. Because hurricanes and other weather related events can result in power outages, you should also prepare yourself and your family for the loss of power by downloading FEMA’s Power Outage Hazard Information Sheet.

🔶🔶 Need to contact a government agency?  The A-Z list provides the contact information for federal agencies, departments, and offices in one convenient location so you can quickly find:

  • Websites
  • Emails
  • Phone numbers
  • Mailing addresses

Find Contact Information for Federal Agencies

🔶🔶 FEMA and the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers (RCI) have created the Disaster Preparedness Guide for Caregivers to help them navigate unique challenges that may arise during disasters. While caregiving can be overwhelming at times, taking three essential steps—assessing needs, engaging a support network, and creating a plan—can help caregivers feel more prepared and in control when disaster strikes.  The Disaster Preparedness Guide for Caregivers includes tailored information and resources for three main caregiver audiences: those who can involve their care recipient in their planning, those who can engage a support network to aid planning, and solo caregivers. It provides key considerations caregivers can use to identify their care recipient’s needs and how they may change during a disaster.

🔶🔶 News about the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

  1.  NFIP Will Soon Have an Option for Monthly Payments.  FEMA is in the process of allowing NFIP policyholders to choose monthly installments for their annual flood insurance premiums. See this FAQ page for more information. Please note:  This option is not yet available but will be launching soon!
  2. New Tool: NFIP Online Quoting Tool.  FEMA has released an online quoting tool where property owners can create a flood insurance quote based on a home’s address and characteristics. This tool can help homeowners communicate with their insurance agents to ensure the best coverage. Check out the tool here. 

🔶🔶 John A. Miller, FEMA Region 2 Mitigation Liaison, has written an article, “Worried About Extreme Weather? – You Are Not Alone”.  He writes, “According to a recently released survey by LendingTree of nearly 2,000 consumers, about half are fearful of climate change-related hazards effects on their homes, with severe storms making up a quarter of the hazards of worry. Worry is not only based in personal safety and physical impacts. A quarter of respondents were concerned about reduced property value in the next ten years, while seven in ten think the increasing risk will make insurance more expensive (20% say they have already experienced in increase), with more than a third worried they will be dropped by their home insurer.”  READ FULL ARTICLE

🔶🔶 FEMA and the National Endowment of the Arts proudly announces the release of the Fact Sheet on Art and Culture: Helping People Before, During, and After Disasters.  This fact sheet adds to ongoing conversations about how individual artists and the art community at-large can lend their vision and skills to build communities more resilient to disasters which we covered on FEMA and NEA’s Webinar on Disaster Resources for Artists and Art and Cultural Institutions (youtube.com) Feel free to also check out Inspiration Book: Arts and Experiential Learning (fema.gov) and Guide to Expanding Mitigation: Making the Connection with Arts and Culture (fema.gov).

🔶🔶The Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR) is a free, national online source for sophisticated climate data down to the neighborhood level.  ClimRR provides easy access to climate data to integrate future conditions into Hazard Mitigation Plans, land use plans, infrastructure design, and FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT).  ClimRR data is available for changing hazards: extreme temperatures (hot and cold), cooling and heating degree days, heat index, wind, fire weather index, precipitation/no precipitation under two carbon emission scenarios. The updated portal lets users visualize and analyze future climate hazards combined with local demographic and infrastructure data. Enhanced features include:

  • New Consolidated Local Reports Assessing Future Climate Hazards and Community Impacts
  • New Maps, Charts & Visualizations
  • Improved Educational Features to Interpret Climate Hazard Data Points 

Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

Billion Dollar Disaster map

The U.S. has sustained 360 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2023). The total cost of these 360 events exceeds $2.570 trillion.

Read Full Article

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SHIELDS READY CAMPAIGN

CISA’s Shields Ready campaign is about making resilience during incidents a reality by taking action before incidents occur. As a companion to CISA’s Shields Up initiative, Shields Ready drives action at the intersection of critical infrastructure resilience and national preparedness. By taking steps in advance of an incident, organizations, individuals, and communities are better positioned to quickly adjust their posture for heightened risk conditions, in turn helping to prevent incidents, to reduce impact, and get things back to normal—or better—as quickly as possible. Being part of the resilience journey makes for more resilient people, organizations, and communities.

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Stay Connected with FEMA Disaster Operations

Click here for current FEMA disaster information.

Has Your FEMA Claim Been Denied

Learn more about FEMA Individual Assistance.

Doing Business with FEMA | FEMA.gov – 

Learn about the four-step process your organization can follow to do business with FEMA, in accordance with the Robert T. Stafford Act.

SBA Office of Disaster Assistance

The Office of Disaster Assistance’s mission is to provide low-interest disaster loans to businesses of all sizes, private non-profit organizations, homeowners, and renters to repair or replace real estate, personal property, machinery & equipment, inventory and business assets that have been damaged or destroyed in a declared disaster.

Resources from the U.S. Small Business Administration:
    Disaster Assistance Loans For Businesses and Non-Profit Organizations
    Disaster Assistance Loans for Homeowners and Renters
    What Houses of Worship Need to Know About the FEMA Disaster Aid Process

Various Tips and Tools from FEMA

++    Tools to Recover | FEMA.gov – FEMA has collected frequently used tools and information to help you communicate and get started with the recovery process.

++ Flood Safety Tool Kit – Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in the United States and can happen anywhere it rains. At any given time, floodwaters can cause millions of dollars in damage. This toolkit offers important information to prepare you for floods, prevent injury, loss of property, and even loss of life.

++    Frequently Asked Questions About Disasters – Get answers to frequently asked questions about emergency shelters, disaster assistance, flood insurance and more.

++    Disaster Multimedia Toolkit | FEMA.gov – The resources on this page are ideal for external partners and media looking for disaster recovery content to share on social media during and after a disaster, including: social graphics, flyers and announcer scripts, accessible videos and animations in multiple languages.

++    Disaster Text Messaging Resource Kit – Communication can be limited following a disaster. This resource kit offers text messaging information you can share with survivors when only text messaging is available in a service area.

++   FEMA in Your Language | FEMA.gov – Disaster survivors can find translated information about disaster assistance programs, emergency preparedness, response and recovery activities, and flood insurance. The information comes in various formats and is available for sharing and downloading. Additional resources will be added periodically, so please visit often.

++    Save Your Family Treasures | FEMA.gov – FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution co-sponsor the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, a partnership of more than 60 national service organizations and federal agencies created to protect cultural heritage from the damaging effects of natural disasters and other emergencies.

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program:

How to Start Filing Your Claim   

How to File a Flood Insurance Claim English | Spanish 
Starting Your Recovery: FEMA’s Flood Insurance Claims Process English | Spanish 
Wind vs. Water Damage English | Spanish

Other Quick Resources about the NFIP

Read More

Whether you’re a renter or a property owner, take a moment to consider adding flood insurance to your financial safety net. Bottom line: basic home and renters policies don’t cover flood repairs, but you can fill that protection gap. Not sure if you have flood risk? Take this quiz.

Home insurance prices are at an all-time high in many parts of the US today, but protecting your assets is still so important. If you’re not in a high flood risk area, adding that protection won’t be a budget buster. If you have an NFIP policy but are considering dropping it, make an informed decision before you do. The fact is – all states have some flood risk.

Flood insurance details:

  • You can add flood coverage through a private flood insurer or the National Flood Insurance Program.
  • There will be a waiting period from the date you buy it to the date it kicks in. (30 days for an NFIP policy).
  • Flood insurance can be very affordable, depending on your location.
  • Use this link to learn about your area’s flood risk, contact an insurance agent or call the NFIP at 877-336-2627.
  • If you have a mortgage and your home is in a Special Hazard Flood Zone, your lender will require flood insurance.
  • An NFIP policy provides $250,000 max to repair flood damage to your home.
  • An NFIP policy provides $100,000 max for belongings but not automatically. You have to ask for and pay for this additional coverage.
  • An NFIP policy will NOT cover temporary rent if your home is uninhabitable after a flood. Most private flood policies cover that expense.

Contact your insurance agent or company and ask:

  • How much will it cost to insure my home and belongings for flood damage?
  • Can you help me compare the cost, coverages, and options in an NFIP versus adding coverage to my existing policy through a “flood endorsement” or private flood insurer?
  • Would a flood rider or endorsement give me more than $250,000 in coverage? Will it cover temporary rent?

The Pennsylvania Insurance Department (PID) has announced that Insurance Commissioner Michael Humphreys, as Chair of the Flood Insurance Premium Assistance Task Force (the Task Force), is seeking public input on the accessibility and affordability of flood insurance throughout the Commonwealth. The comment period will close on February 5, 2024.  The Task Force will review and analyze existing statutes, procedures, practices, processes, and rules relating to the administration of flood insurance in Pennsylvania, and recommend potential programs that provide premium discounts, programs that incentivize local governments to support flood mitigation efforts, and how to increase the number of people who purchase flood insurance through the national flood insurance program or the private flood insurance marketplace. It was established by Act 22 of 2023.  Public comment on flood insurance may be emailed to ra-in-policyoffice@pa.gov, or comments may be mailed to PID’s Director of Policy and Planning, Office of the Insurance Commissioner, 1326 Strawberry Square, Harrisburg, PA 17120. Comments are requested by February 5.

Pennsylvanians impacted by flooding should visit PID’s website for resources that can help guide property owners through filing insurance claims, and tips to avoid repair scams. More information on the NFIP and private flood insurance is available on the Insurance Department’s one-stop Flood Insurance page, and more information on guidance following a severe weather event can be found on the Disaster Recovery resource page.

Consumers with questions or wishing to file a complaint can contact PID’s Consumer Services Bureau by visiting its webpage, or by calling 1-877-881-6388.

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FEMA has collected frequently used tools and information to help you communicate and get started with the recovery process. Go to https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover.

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Key Infographics:

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