The News Not Noise Letter: Disaster Funding Fracas
FEMA needs cash and Congress is on vacation – er, “recess”. Plus: a rare astronomical phenomenon lights up the sky, and how did a thrift shopper turn $4 into $250,000?
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Hello and happy (almost) end of Summer! We are off next week and will be back on September 11 ready for a new fiscal year full of spending fights, failed AI regulation, Trump legal dramas, GOP debates, Elon meltdowns and more. Today — before we get to News That Doesn’t Suck — an update on a disaster declaration for FEMA.
FEMA, Funding and Natural Disasters:
FEMA announced it’s temporarily limiting federal support for disaster recovery because it’s nearly out of money. According to the FEMA database, the agency is handling 53 “Major Declared Disasters” from this year alone; plus it’s still hurricane season so more can be expected and governors have submitted pending requests for still more declarations. The Administrator says the numbers are “unprecedented.”
Anticipating a shortfall, earlier this month the White House asked Congress to approve $12 billion in additional FEMA funds. But Congress hasn’t acted because members are on recess – until Sept 5 for the Senate and Sept 12 for the House. Meantime, new disasters have driven up the costs of response; so today the President upped his ask to $16 billion.
It’s possible some members will try to block the request because it’s tied to funding for Ukraine and the Southern border and you know how that goes. For now FEMA says it’s limiting itself to “immediate needs funding” such as life saving measures in Maui and Florida. That means other projects, like reimbursing local governments for infrastructure repairs related to past disasters, are being put on hold.
This is probably the right time to point out that the entire US government runs out of funding at the end of September so Congress will be in one of those “will they or won’t they” shutdown dramas for the next few weeks. The White House is asking Congress to pass a short term funding bill – called a Continuing Resolution – to keep the government operating while they haggle.
On those disasters:
Hurricane Idalia: Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Wednesday morning as a Category 3 storm. The storm swept through Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and according to Poweroutage.us just over 100,000 people are still without power in Florida and Georgia.
Maui Recovery: Meantime in Hawaii, the Lahaina fire is estimated to have damaged or destroyed 2200 residences and businesses, which is about 75% of all buildings in Lahaina. The University of Hawaii estimates it’ll cost $5.5 billion to rebuild Lahaina.
FEMA Work: This week I interviewed Ann Bink, with the FEMA Office of Response and Recovery. She told me:
There are roughly 1000 FEMA personnel on Maui.
They’ve helped 5000 residents get temporary hotel housing.
They’ve paid out $17 million to 4000 residents.
They’re working with the Small Business Administration and local government to make more funding available to residents. Note: FEMA often stays in a community for years after a disaster, helping with environmental issues and infrastructure rebuilds.
Extreme Heat Data from USAFacts: We have explained how extreme heat is making natural disasters more intense. As extreme heat becomes more common, we asked USAFacts to tell us more about how intensifying heat is impacting our lives and health.
There were 1,714 heat-related fatalities in the US in 2022.
This is more fatalities than any other weather-related cause. The next highest weather-related cause in 2022? Hurricanes.
More than 1 in 5 heat-related fatalities occurred in Americans aged 15-44.
You can find out more about how extreme heat is impacting Americans’ lives (and deaths) at USAFacts here.
USAFacts is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to making government data more accessible. They are a News Not Noise content partner.
And Now, Some News That Doesn’t Suck:
Blue Supermoon or Super Blue Moon? Whichever you want to call it, Wednesday night saw an extraordinarily big, bright full moon. A supermoon occurs when the full moon is at its closest distance to Earth. A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month — and unfortunately, it doesn’t actually look blue. Supermoons occur 3-4 times a year, and blue moons occur once every 2-3 years, but they rarely happen at the same time. The next time a blue supermoon/super blue moon occurs will be in 2037.
A Thrifty Find: You never know what gems you might find in a thrift shop. An anonymous buyer purchased a painting for just $4 from a consignment shop in New Hampshire in 2017. Now that very same painting is up for auction — and could sell for $250,000. How does a painting that valuable wind up in a thrift shop? Its journey is unclear, but the painting has been identified as an rare original oil panel by Newell Convers Wyeth — an early 20th century illustrator. It was intended as a cover illustration for a 1939 novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona. A thrift store shopper bought the painting for its frame and stuck it in a closet where it stayed for years. When she recently pulled it out she wondered if the painting might have value and posted it to a Facebook group called Things Found on Walls. She was connected with a curator who knows Wyeth’s work, and validated it as the real thing. The painting will be auctioned by Bonhams on September 19 in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Last week’s poll: We included a random poll in last week’s newsletter and now we bring you the answer: “all of the above". Well done, 61%!
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