Listen to the whole interview with Thad Leugemors and Lucy Morgan CPA below:

When the unthinkable happens and disaster strikes YOUR community, Federal grants can make the difference between recovery and years of economic devastation. I recently interviewed Thad Leugemors, a Program Execution Manager for Tetra Tech on how to navigate the maze of Federal grants for disaster recovery and hazard mitigation Navigating Federal Grants. Thad offered a wealth of experience for governmental units and others working with Federal agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (FEMA)

What Starts The Disaster Recovery Process?

The public face of a Federal disaster declaration is usually a State Governor making a request to the President for relief, but what goes on behind the scenes before that? There are two numbers that states have to meet in order to be federally declared as a disaster:

• One is per capita loss in the affected county.
• The next is the per capita loss that must be met for the whole state.

Here’s an example: If a medium sized county has flooding and $200 million in damage, that county and the governor of the state will make a direct request to the President and the Federal government for a Federal disaster declaration. Once that declaration is made, that immediately triggers the availability of FEMA grants. More details are covered in Federal Code 44-Emergency Management and Assistance that sets out the parameters for which disaster grants are written and administered for these different forms of assistance to municipalities Navigating Federal Grants.

What Types of Federal Funds Are Available After a Disaster?

There are two primary categories of assistance:

• Individual Assistance (UA)
• Public Assistance (PA)

Public Assistance grants were the focus of this interview. These types of Federal funding are designed to help municipalities and others cope with uninsured municipal losses. So Public Assistance is all about public losses, it does not cover losses by private individuals. Examples of this include things like:

• Washed-out roads
• Damaged bridges
• Flooded buildings
• Other types of property destroyed by tornadoes, earthquakes, storms, etc.

What Is the Role of Federal Grants For Disaster Recovery and Hazard Mitigation?

The Federal government plays a huge role in responding to both natural disasters and man-made ones due to the depth of the Federal resources. In most cases, the local resources are simply insufficient to deal effectively with amount of infrastructure damage and related costs.

Ready to Improve Your Grant Management?

How about you? Would you like to be a better grant manager? We have another grant management training seminar coming soon. Click here to get all the details! Hope to see you there! Author: Lucy Morgan CPA, MBA CEO, Compliance Warrior Author of “Decoding Grant Management-The Ultimate Success Guide to the Federal Grant Regulations in 2 CFR Part 200” The 2nd Edition is now available on Amazon in Paperback and Kindle versions.