FEMA makes nearly $5B available to at-risk areas for disaster preparation, recovery

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden's administration is earmarking close to $5 billion to help U.S. communities become better prepared for natural disasters and extreme weather events, like hurricanes and tornadoes, the White House said Monday.

Officials said more than $4.6 billion will be available in resilience grants intended to motivate communities to build infrastructure that can better withstand emergencies and mitigate related damage.

"Failure to properly invest in our transportation systems can lead to disrupted service, unsafe travel conditions, severe damage and increased maintenance and operating costs, deficiencies which disproportionately burden disadvantaged urban, rural, and tribal communities," the White House said in a statement.

"[We are] taking steps to ensure that underserved communities will receive access to needed funds from these programs."

Officials said the billions in new funding will be available through three Federal Emergency Management Agency programs.

Not only is the money intended to avert disaster and damage, the effort is designed also to help communities recover after the fact.

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, started in 2020, includes $1 billion in grants to states, local communities, tribes and territories to reduce vulnerability. The White House said it's doubling funding for the program and giving more to tribes.

More than $3 billion will go to the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for areas covered by a major disaster declaration -- and there will be $160 million for the Flood Mitigation Assistance program.

Monday's announcement came hours after a landmark U.N. report sounded a severe warning about the ongoing effects of climate change. It said global temperatures worldwide are on track to surpass a crisis level in about a decade that experts and officials have been trying to avert.

The assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, its first since 2013, said human activity has caused severe heat waves, heavy precipitation, more frequent and sustained droughts and stronger tropical storms.

Unless serious action is taken in the near term, the report says, the effects of global warming will become evermore "widespread, rapid and intensifying."