Latest news with #BuildingResilientInfrastructureandCommunities
CBS News
6 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Southern California community pleading for help after Trump Administration pulls federal funding
Residents in the Rancho Palos Verdes have been living in fear that one day their homes might slide down the edge of the slope. Just when they thought they were going to be receiving funds to help, it got ripped away. Corinne Gerrard, 85, lives on a slippery slope and uses a walking stick and a cane to find and fill fissures around her house. Gerrard says areas around her home have to be filled twice a day. In Rancho Palos Verdes, a handful of landslides have been moving homes for years and recent wet winters have made things worse. "Morning chores are get up, get the shovels out, get the wheelbarrows out and start filling the fissures," Gerrard said. In August 2023, Rancho Palos Verdes was awarded a $23 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to slow down the Portuguese Bend landslide. But in April 2025, FEMA abruptly canceled the nearly $5 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program nationwide, saying in a press release it was "wasteful" and "ineffective." CBS Los Angeles has reached out to the White House for a response to the funding cut and is waiting for a response. It was a bold shift from what Mr. Trump said on his campaign trail in September last year at the Trump National Golf Course. "I want to express my support to all of the families affected by the landslides of Rancho Palos Verdes," Mr. Trump said last September. John Colich is a long-time Trump supporter whose construction company built the road outside Trump National Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes, along with some other projects. "We, he hasn't done very good on that promise. I like some of those other issues that he's taken care of, but, of course, I wish he would support the neighborhood," Colich said. Even though Colich feels the president hasn't held up his end of this promise, it hasn't changed his support for him. Colich has brought in about 10,000 cubic yards of dirt to shore up his property that sits in the canceled grant zone. John Cruikshank was the Rancho Palos Verde mayor when then-candidate Mr. Trump made that campaign promise. "We have about 600 homes, several thousand residents have been affected," Cruikshank said at the time. The former mayor, who's a civil engineer, says the federal grant would've been a force multiplier, providing more equipment to the water extraction systems the city has been funding on its own with measurable success. "The land at its worst was moving about 50 feet per year and now it's currently about 20 feet per year in the worst areas," Cruikshank said. "Some of the areas aren't moving at all anymore." The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program was originally created in 2018 during Mr. Trump's first term to help vulnerable communities with natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. CBS News analysis of FEMA data found 86 grants were previously awarded in California, worth $1.14 billion for projects like retrofitting and fire prevention. Nearly 95% of them have been canceled. Dave Bradley, the current mayor, says his city isn't being singled out because BRIC grants have been canceled across the country, while the federal government has its hands full. He says the canceled grants will have a ripple effect on the president's golf course. "It's one of the primary routes that people use to get to the golf course so if PV Drive South was impassable, I would expect it would have a negative effect," Bradley said. In less than two years, the city has dipped into its reserves, spending nearly $50 million on repaving this stretch of road, sometimes twice a day, just a couple of miles from Mr. Trump's golf course. "If I could speak to President Trump today, I would say, 'Sir, when you were out here and you saw the landslide a year ago, I hope you remember what you saw because we really are in need here,'" Bradley said. Both the mayor and the former mayor are registered Republicans who are cautiously optimistic that Washington will step in to help. Gerrard's house sits outside of the BRIC project zone, which originally included 200 homes. The land movement has about doubled since the grant was awarded. Cruikshank says 650 homes are currently in the landslide. Gerrard says she has sunk thigh-deep into the dirt several times as she tries to save her beloved home. "That's the reason I carry a backpack because my phone is here," Gerrard said. "If anything happened to me, I could call a neighbor and say 'help.'" Bracing for a distress call, while a community is already crying for help. The Department of Homeland Security sent CBS News Los Angeles a statement. "Under the leadership of Secretary Noem, DHS and FEMA have delivered robust aid since January to L.A. County, home to Rancho Palos Verdes, with $132 million in individual assistance, over 500 dedicated staff, shelter for 2,800+ households, and $3 billion in SBA low-interest disaster loans," the statement read.
National Observer
18-07-2025
- Climate
- National Observer
Do we have to take climate risks into our own hands now?
This story was originally published by Vox and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration In 2023, my husband and I bought our house in southwest Colorado, in part, because it backed up to open space. That was the dream: trails just past the fence, a scrubby network of oak and sage stretching out into the hills beyond. But a little over a year into homeownership, I was questioning the wisdom of living so close to a burnable landscape. This past winter's spate of wildfires across Los Angeles made that fear of living alongside such a combustible landscape all the more real — fear that was only intensified by the weather. In my town, winter and its all-important snow never really showed up. By spring, our snow pack was well below normal, winds were whipping and I was becoming more paranoid about my wildfire risk. It's not just people like me — living on the edge of fire-prone terrain — who may be sharing that paranoia. More than 100 million people across 20 states and Washington, DC, live in the path of the increasingly fierce hurricanes. Most of the eastern half of the United States is now at risk of tornadoes and floods have increased in frequency and intensity in both coastal areas and river valleys. Over the July Fourth weekend, extreme flooding in central Texas was among the most deadly of the past century. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information found that 2024 held the second-most billion-dollar natural disasters ever for the US — right behind 2023. This year, with its already higher-than-average fire activity and predicted busy Atlantic hurricane season, is already shaping up to be significant, too. At the same time, government cuts have undermined every critical juncture for disaster preparation. Federal programs for wildfire mitigation — proactive work such as thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns, which help prevent large-scale fires — have been halted due to staffing cutbacks and a lack of funds. Cutbacks to the National Weather Service, through reduction in force at NOAA, have already led to gaps in forecasting, which makes it harder for the public to plan for extreme weather events like the Texas Hill Country floods this month or the deadly May tornadoes, which killed at least 27 people as they swept across Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia. And the agency explicitly tasked with disaster relief is shrinking. FEMA has cut funding for its bipartisanly popular Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, a major tool for building flood-resistant infrastructure, among other resiliency projects. They've lost some of their ability to help us recover, too. FEMA, already understaffed in 2024, has lost a third of its workforce since the beginning of the year. It has scaled back training and stands to lose $646 million in funding in the current federal budget. As if that's not enough, President Donald Trump has said he plans to phase out FEMA as a whole after the 2025 hurricane season. In the face of all that, I wanted to find out what all of us could do to limit our risk. The first step was pretty basic: Instead of just spiraling about hypotheticals, figure out the specific risks in your area. For now, FEMA's National Risk Index, where you can identify the threats to your community, remains a good source. By looking through the index, I learned my county is high in wildfire risk — which I already knew — but also that the area is prone to landslides, drought and severe lightning storms. Once I knew the risks, I looked at how I could prepare. But the answers weren't obvious. I reached out to both my regional FEMA office, whose contact was easy to find online, and the national headquarters, because I wanted to know what sort of concrete things I could do to protect my home — and what kind of support I might expect if the worst-case scenario happened to hit my community. I got a short email back saying that I should contact local authorities. And so I started the real journey there, by looking at my local resources. How to harden your home The most meaningful thing you can do on your own is harden your own home against relevant disasters. I found online that my local fire department provides free wildfire assessments because they think reducing your own vulnerability can also reduce community risk. According to Scott Nielsen, my local wildfire battalion chief, the less time he has to spend at my house means more he can spend fighting other parts of the fire. Nielsen says that when it comes to mitigating fire, we can't change things like topography or weather, but we can change the fuel — and often that fuel includes our homes. When Loren Russell, who works for the wildfire division of my regional fire district, came over to assess my risks, what he said surprised me: Instead of the overgrown hill behind the house, which had scared me, he was worried about nooks in the eaves or corners of the deck where embers could get caught. He also worried about the oily junipers in the yard, which could become ladder fuels that might allow fire to leap to the tree canopies, and about the ways those canopies connected, spreading sparks across the landscape. Russell says it's always the same few things that create risk. Looking at the splintering boards of my neighbor's fence, he noted that he'd seen fires blow across whole subdivisions through fences. 'Once embers are in a fence, it's like a wick,' he says. There are strategies for personal protection too — and not just for fire. FEMA says that if you live in a hurricane-prone area, you can install impact-resistant doors (particularly garage doors), storm shingles and reinforced roof bracing, all of which help your house withstand storms. If you're in a floodplain, you can seal cracks in your foundation, move your electrical boxes higher or build berms and drains into your landscaping so water runs away from your home. There can be a range of costs for those projects, from your own sweat equity for landscaping to tens of thousands of dollars for a new roof. But there are grants and tools available to offset some of the cost, like Alabama's program to help fund home strengthening, which is run through the state insurance office. Check your state resources, like the division of emergency management. There's no perfect formula for what to do. Russell says mitigation makes a real difference, but that risk is personal, because it's also tied up in tolerance and in trying to predict the future. 'You go out and you build a concrete bunker and surround it with gravel, but,' he says, 'now you live in a concrete bunker surrounded by gravel.' Risk is personal — but what your neighbors do matters Turning your home into a bunker is expensive, unappealing, and it might not make a difference in your broader risk tolerance. And unfortunately, it doesn't really change your insurance liability. At least not yet. My insurance agent told me that they don't yet factor home hardening into their policies and pricing, even though simply being in a disaster-prone area can raise your premiums or make it harder to get insurance — and sometimes, insurance companies will simply dump policyholders in risk-prone areas. More than 100,000 Californians in fire-prone areas have lost their insurance in the past five years. Those drops don't necessarily reflect what's happening on the ground. 'We had one insurance agency that was pretty happy to drop people. I looked at their reports and didn't find them to be based in fire science,' Nielsen says about our area of western Colorado. He says they're based on zip codes, which can be relatively arbitrary, instead of on the kind of terrain and fuel supply that actually make a difference to fires. And they almost never reflect mitigation work. One of the only ways home hardening and mitigation make a difference for insurance is when it's done on a neighborhood scale. For instance, in 10 states, communities that have been certified as firewise through the National Fire Protection Association are able to get insurance discounts. That is reflective of actual risk. 'You really are impacted by your neighbor's property,' says Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at the University of California Santa Barbara. He says that the LA wildfires showed just how much broader-scale hardening — or lack thereof — impacts risk. But regional tools, like consistent fire hazard mapping programs or building code requirements for new construction, can significantly reduce risk. That's true of other natural disasters, too. Nielsen says that landscape-scale problems, such as fire, need landscape-scale solutions. Home hardening is a piece we can control, but it's networked into a bigger system of land management, risk tolerance and policy. When a tornado or a hurricane comes, it doesn't just hit one house. Nielsen thinks about what's commonly called the Swiss cheese model of risk assessment, which entails multiple layers of protection. This includes everything from the personal scale, such as hardening your roof to withstand high-force winds; to local and regional projects such as floodplain mitigation or evacuation planning; to federal tools, such as the National Weather Service or FEMA. You can visualize each layer as a Swiss cheese slice in a sandwich. They all have holes and ideally the gaps overlap, with the layers supporting one another — while stopping a threat from becoming catastrophic. That's even more true for renters and people who live in urban areas, who might not have as much control over their own homes and who are even more impacted by the places around them. Hurricanes have wreaked havoc on major cities. If that's you, ask your landlord what they've done to harden the property, ask about past damage, consider supplemental renters insurance and then get curious about municipal management such as storm drains, which divert water away from housing, evacuation routes or fire mitigation, depending on your risks. Having a lot of layers of Swiss cheese is especially important now. It's all connected. Preventative mitigation is networked into a broader system, but so is dealing with disasters when they come, whether they're fires, floods, or storms. Marshalling national resources during and after large-scale disasters has been a federal responsibility since the 1970s. That kind of coordinated response is part of how we plan for natural disasters, but the current administration is planning to cut the budget and scope of FEMA and turn responsibility toward state and local governments, which aren't always funded or prepared to manage large incidents. The scientists and field workers I spoke to for this story told me they were worried about the lack of federal investment. Moritz says that he's concerned about disaster response, but he's also worried about understanding future preparedness. 'Some of the big questions that we don't have answers for yet rely on big labs and national-level funding,' he says. 'Research-wise, a lot of Forest Service colleagues who do really good work in federal labs have been let go, or lost staff. Those are serious losses that will take a long time to get back from.' He says that there are still big gaps in the research about exactly how home hardening fits into the puzzle of resilience and what kind of choices are the most effective, but that in the face of that federal lack of support, the sort of things we can do individually or as a neighborhood collective become even more important. When there are several fires burning at once — like in Los Angeles earlier this year — responding agencies are spread thin, and every person might not be able to depend on their help, Mortiz told me. That makes education shared among neighbors even more important. 'That's the scale you can make a difference,' he said.
Axios
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Trump administration sued by 20 states over FEMA funding cuts
The Trump administration is being sued by 20 states who are seeking to block the cancelation of a grant program that helped protect against potential natural disasters. The big picture: "By unilaterally shutting down FEMA's flagship pre-disaster mitigation program, Defendants have acted unlawfully and violated core separation of powers principles," says the lawsuit that was filed in Boston, Mass., on Wednesday on the program, which has helped states, local and territorial governments and Tribal Nations work to reduce their hazard risk. Driving the news: FEMA announced in an April that it was ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program and canceling all BRIC applications from fiscal years 2020-23. The post announcing the cuts that appears to have since been removed was titled, "FEMA Ends Wasteful, Politicized Grant Program, Returning Agency to Core Mission of Helping Americans Recovering From Natural Disasters." The suit that led by Washington and Massachusetts argues that by "refusing to spend funds Congress directed toward BRIC or trying to spend them on other programs" the administration had violated the Constitution and unlawfully intruded on Congress' "power of the purse." Zoom in: "The impact of the shutdown has been devastating. Communities across the country are being forced to delay, scale back, or cancel hundreds of mitigation projects depending on this funding," the states argue in the suit. Projects that have been in development for years, and in which communities have invested millions of dollars for planning, permitting, and environmental review are now threatened. And in the meantime, Americans across the country face a higher risk of harm from natural disasters. For the record: Most of the states suing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Acting FEMA head Cameron Hamilton, the Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are Democratic-led. The states suing the administration are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
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Business Standard
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
20 states sue FEMA over cancelled disaster resilience grant programme
Twenty Democratic-led states have filed suit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, challenging the elimination of a long-running grant programme that helps communities guard against damage from natural disasters. The lawsuit contends President Donald Trump's administration acted illegally when it announced in April that it was ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities programme. FEMA cancelled some projects already in the works and refused to approve new ones despite funding from Congress. "In the wake of devastating flooding in Texas and other states, it's clear just how critical federal resources are in helping states prepare for and respond to natural disasters," said Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, where the federal lawsuit was filed on Wednesday. "By abruptly and unlawfully shutting down the Bric programme, this administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives." FEMA did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. It said in April that the program was "wasteful and ineffective" and "more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters". The programme, established by a 2000 law, provides grants for a variety of disaster mitigation efforts, including levees to protect against floods, safe rooms to provide shelter from tornadoes, vegetation management to reduce damage from fires and seismic retrofitting to fortify buildings for earthquakes. During his first term, Trump signed a law shoring up funding for disaster risk reduction efforts. The programme then got a USD 1 billion boost from an infrastructure law signed by former President Joe Biden. That law requires FEMA to make available at least USD 200 million annually for disaster mitigation grants for the 2022-2026 fiscal years, the lawsuit says. The suit contends the Trump administration violated the constitutional separation of powers because Congress had not authorised the programme's demise. It also alleges the programme's termination was illegal because the decision was made while FEMA was under the leadership of an acting administrator who had not met the requirements to be in charge of the agency. The lawsuit says communities in every state have benefited from federal disaster mitigation grants, which saved lives and spared homes, businesses, hospitals and schools from costly damage. Some communities have already been affected by the decision to end the program. Hillsborough, North Carolina, had been awarded nearly USD 7 million to relocate a wastewater pumping station out of a flood plain and make other water and sewer system improvements. But that hadn't happened yet when the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal damaged the pumping station and forced it offline last week. In rural Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, town officials had hoped to use more than USD 4 million from the BRIC program to improve stormwater drainage and safeguard a vulnerable electric system, thus protecting investments in a historic theatre and other businesses. While the community largely supports Trump, assistant town manager Erin Burris said people were blindsided by the lost funding they had spent years pursuing. "I've had downtown property owners saying, What do we do?'" Burris said. "I've got engineering plans ready to go and I don't have the money to do it.
16-07-2025
- Politics
20 states sue FEMA for canceling grant program that guards against natural disasters
Twenty Democratic-led states filed suit Wednesday against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, challenging the elimination of a long-running grant program that helps communities guard against damage from natural disasters. The lawsuit contends President Donald Trump's administration acted illegally when it announced in April that it was ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. FEMA canceled some projects already in the works and refused to approve new ones despite funding from Congress. 'In the wake of devastating flooding in Texas and other states, it's clear just how critical federal resources are in helping states prepare for and respond to natural disasters,' said Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, where the federal lawsuit was filed. "By abruptly and unlawfully shutting down the BRIC program, this administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives.' FEMA did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. It said in April that the program was 'wasteful and ineffective' and 'more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.' The program, established by a 2000 law, provides grants for a variety of disaster mitigation efforts, including levees to protect against floods, safe rooms to provide shelter from tornadoes, vegetation management to reduce damage from fires and seismic retrofitting to fortify buildings for earthquakes. During his first term, Trump signed a law shoring up funding for disaster risk reduction efforts. The program then got a $1 billion boost from an infrastructure law signed by former President Joe Biden. That law requires FEMA to make available at least $200 million annually for disaster mitigation grants for the 2022-2026 fiscal years, the lawsuit says. The suit contends the Trump administration violated the constitutional separation of powers because Congress had not authorized the program's demise. It also alleges the program's termination was illegal because the decision was made while FEMA was under the leadership of an acting administrator who had not met the requirements to be in charge of the agency. The lawsuit says communities in every state have benefited from federal disaster mitigation grants, which saved lives and spared homes, businesses, hospitals and schools from costly damage. Some communities have already been affected by the decision to end the program. Hillsborough, North Carolina, had been awarded nearly $7 million to relocate a wastewater pumping station out of a flood plain and make other water and sewer system improvements. But that hadn't happened yet when the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal damaged the pumping station and forced it offline last week. In rural Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, town officials had hoped to use more than $4 million from the BRIC program to improve stormwater drainage and safeguard a vulnerable electric system, thus protecting investments in a historic theater and other businesses. While the community largely supports Trump, assistant town manager Erin Burris said people were blindsided by the lost funding they had spent years pursuing. 'I've had downtown property owners saying, 'What do we do?'' Burris said. 'I've got engineering plans ready to go and I don't have the money to do it.' ___ Associated Press reporters Jack Brook, Michael Casey and Gary D. Robertson contributed to this report. ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
