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Report to Congressional Requesters: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
GAO: 

March 2010: 

Disaster Recovery: 

FEMA's Long-term Assistance Was Helpful to State and Local Governments 
but Had Some Limitations: 

GAO-10-404: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-10-404, a report to congressional requesters. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

The administration is developing the National Disaster Recovery 
Framework (NDRF) in order to enhance the nation’s ability to deliver 
recovery assistance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) 
Long-Term Community Recovery Branch (LTCR) is responsible for leading 
a network of primarily federal agencies, known as ESF-14, that 
supports long-term recovery. LTCR’s experiences offer potential 
insights for developing the NDRF. 

GAO was asked to report on (1) the roles that LTCR played in recent 
disasters, (2) broad criteria and timing challenges that affected this 
assistance, (3) the effectiveness of specific coordination practices, 
and (4) the effectiveness of specific planning assistance practices. 
GAO focused on three disasters with significant LTCR involvement: the 
Greensburg tornado (2007), the Iowa floods (2008), and Hurricane Ike 
(2008). GAO reviewed agency documents and policies and interviewed 
relevant federal, state, and local officials. 

What GAO Found: 

As the federal lead for long-term disaster recovery, FEMA’s LTCR 
played two major roles in the three disasters that we reviewed—
facilitating the coordination of federal, state, and nongovernmental 
assistance for recovery and helping communities to develop long-term 
recovery plans. GAO found two broad challenges related to this 
assistance. First, the criteria for when to involve LTCR and ESF-14 in 
a specific disaster are vague, which resulted in uncertainty among 
other federal agencies in the ESF-14 network and state recovery 
officials. Second, in some cases assistance began before state and 
local governments had the capacity to effectively work with LTCR and 
ended before critical long-term recovery coordination and planning 
needs were fully addressed. 

Federal, state, and local officials said that LTCR’s facilitation of 
regular interagency meetings to coordinate federal and state partners 
helped to identify and effectively leverage recovery resources, as 
well as identify coordination problems and other concerns. For 
example, the town of Greensburg, Kansas, determined that replacing its 
destroyed water tower with one of the same capacity it had before the 
tornado would be insufficient for the community’s expected future 
growth. As a result of interagency meetings conducted by LTCR, federal 
and state agencies, and others found a way to leverage resources from 
their programs in order to build a higher-capacity water tower that 
better addressed the city’s long-term recovery needs. Federal, state, 
and local officials also identified two barriers to LTCR’s 
coordination efforts. LTCR was not always able to obtain or sustain 
the participation of all of the agencies that it sought to coordinate 
with. Even when it did have full agency participation, LTCR was not 
always able to secure the involvement of agency officials with 
sufficient authority to resolve the program problems that arose. 

LTCR’s planning assistance—including facilitating community meetings 
and identifying potential funding resources for recovery projects—
helped affected communities to develop and implement long-term 
recovery plans. In Iowa City, LTCR identified possible federal funding 
sources for specific projects in the city’s recovery plan and advised 
the city on how to prepare effective project proposals. Local 
officials credit this assistance with helping the city to be able to 
secure federal funding that it expects to receive for its top two 
recovery priorities. However, state and local officials also 
identified areas where LTCR assistance could be improved. State and 
local officials in Texas recovering from Hurricane Ike said that LTCR’
s process of ranking projects in Galveston’s recovery plan had the 
effect of fostering unrealistic expectations among the public about 
what projects would be funded. In addition, in one of the three 
disasters that we reviewed, LTCR did not effectively transfer recovery 
planning tools, such as a guide on federal funding timelines, to the 
relevant officials prior to their withdrawal from the state. LTCR 
officials recognized that their transfer of information in Texas could 
have been more effective, citing time limitations as one reason for 
the challenge. 

What GAO Recommends: 

Among GAO’s recommendations are that FEMA (1) more effectively align 
the timing and level of long-term recovery assistance to match the 
capacity and needs of affected states and localities and (2) evaluate 
the level of authority needed to effectively coordinate federal 
agencies involved in disaster recovery. In commenting on a draft of 
this report the Department of Homeland Security agreed with the 
recommendations. 

View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-404] or key 
components. For more information, contact Stanley J. Czerwinski at 
(202) 512-6806 or czerwinskis@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

LTCR Provided Coordination and Planning Assistance to States and 
Localities: 

The Lack of Clear Criteria and the Timing of LTCR Assistance Presented 
Challenges to Recovery Partners: 

LTCR's Assistance with Disaster Recovery Coordination Was Generally 
Considered Valuable, but Some Challenges Limited Its Effectiveness: 

LTCR's Recovery Planning Assistance Benefited States and Localities, 
but Some Practices Limited More Effective Implementation of Recovery 
Plans: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments: 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security: 

Figures: 

Figure 1: Emergency Support Function 14 - Long-Term Community Recovery 
Partners: 

Figure 2: The ESF-14 Assistance Process: 

Figure 3: Membership of the LTCR Interagency Coordination Group for 
the 2008 Iowa Floods: 

Figure 4: Comparison of the Timing of LTCR Involvement and the 
Availability of Selected Federal Recovery Funds following Hurricane 
Ike: 

Abbreviations: 

CDBG: Community Development Block Grant: 

DHS: Department of Homeland Security: 

ESF-14: Emergency Support Function #14: 

FCO: Federal Coordinating Officer: 

FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency: 

HUD: Department of Housing and Urban Development: 

JFO: Joint Field Office: 

LTCR: Long-Term Community Recovery Branch: 

NDRF: National Disaster Recovery Framework: 

NRF: National Response Framework: 

RIO: Rebuild Iowa Office: 

SBA: Small Business Administration: 

USDA: Department of Agriculture: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

March 30, 2010: 

The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable Susan M. Collins: 
Ranking Member: 
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: 
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Mary L. Landrieu: 
Chairman: 
Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery: Committee on Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs: United States Senate: 

Long after temporary shelters have closed, debris has been cleared, 
and critical communication and transportation systems have been 
repaired, the process of long-term recovery for communities affected 
by catastrophic disasters can continue on for years and sometimes 
decades. Congress typically appropriates billions of federal dollars 
to assist in the long-term recovery of communities affected by such 
disasters. These funds support activities provided by a wide and 
diverse range of federal departments and agencies, including the 
Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Housing and Urban Development 
(HUD), Agriculture (USDA), and Transportation; the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency (FEMA); and the Small Business Administration (SBA), 
among many others. The National Response Framework (NRF), the 
principal document guiding national recovery efforts, established a 
structure known as Emergency Support Function -14 (ESF-14) to 
coordinate long-term recovery assistance from this diverse group of 
agencies. Under the NRF, FEMA is responsible for coordinating ESF-14 
and federal long-term recovery efforts, which the agency has assigned 
to its Long-Term Community Recovery Branch (LTCR). Because of 
challenges experienced during recovery from recent disasters, over the 
last several months the administration has begun to reexamine the way 
the nation approaches disaster recovery. As part of this effort, FEMA 
and HUD are working with a broad range of federal agencies and other 
organizations to develop the National Disaster Recovery Framework 
(NDRF) to improve federal coordination in the future. 

In light of these ongoing efforts to improve disaster recovery, and in 
response to your request to examine recent FEMA experiences supporting 
long-term recovery through LTCR and ESF-14, we evaluated the 
effectiveness of the assistance provided by LTCR in three recent 
disasters. Specifically, we report on (1) the roles that LTCR played 
in recent disasters--coordination and planning assistance, (2) broad 
criteria and timing challenges that affected this assistance, (3) the 
effectiveness of specific coordination practices, and (4) the 
effectiveness of specific planning assistance practices. 

To identify the key roles and responsibilities of LTCR in disaster 
recovery, we reviewed FEMA regulations and policies, as well as 
national policy on disaster recovery, such as the NRF's ESF-14 long- 
term community recovery annex, and relevant legislation. To determine 
the effectiveness of LTCR's disaster assistance practices, we assessed 
the experiences of federal, state, and local officials involved in 
recovering from the 2007 tornado in Greensburg, Kansas; Hurricane Ike 
that affected Texas in 2008; and the 2008 Midwest floods in Iowa. FEMA 
identified all three of these disasters as having significant ESF-14 
involvement led by LTCR.[Footnote 1] We interviewed, and obtained 
documentation from, officials from FEMA and other relevant components 
within DHS, as well as SBA, HUD, and USDA--the three other entities 
identified by the NRF as "primary agencies" involved in long-term 
disaster recovery. We also interviewed and obtained documentation from 
state and local officials who had significant leadership roles in 
disaster recovery and who worked directly with LTCR and other ESF-14 
agencies. We compared the information obtained from these sources 
against criteria identified in FEMA regulations and policies, the 
NRF's ESF-14 long-term community recovery annex, relevant legislation, 
as well as our previous work on effective coordination and planning 
practices. These criteria include actions that LTCR should take to 
expedite, leverage, and increase the effectiveness of federal and 
other long-term recovery assistance. For more information on our scope 
and methodology, see appendix I. 

We conducted this performance audit from April 2009 through March 2010 
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

Background: 

During the immediate aftermath of a disaster, first responders-- 
assisted by federal agencies and others--focus on essential lifesaving 
activities. However as the urgency for response to an incident is 
being addressed, the need to begin recovery operations emerges. During 
the recovery phase, actions are taken to help individuals, 
communities, and the nation return to normal. This recovery typically 
occurs in overlapping phases, with initial efforts dedicated to 
helping those affected meet short-term needs for housing, food, and 
water after a disaster. During this phase, basic services and 
functions are restored, such as providing essential public health and 
safety services, restoring interrupted utility and other essential 
services, reestablishing transportation routes, and providing food and 
temporary shelter for those displaced by the incident. Longer-term 
recovery may also involve some of these same actions, but the focus 
shifts to restoring both the individual and the community, including 
the complete redevelopment of damaged areas. According to FEMA, long-
term community recovery addresses these ongoing restoration and 
rebuilding needs by taking a holistic, long-term view of critical 
recovery needs and coordinating the mobilization of resources at the 
federal, state, and community levels. As seen from past catastrophic 
disasters, the long-term recovery phase can begin shortly after a 
disaster, last for many years--sometimes decades--and involve the 
assistance and coordination of a wide range of governmental and 
nongovernmental entities. 

The NRF, which became effective in March 2008, presents the guiding 
principles that enable all response partners to prepare for and 
provide a unified national response to disasters and emergencies. The 
NRF was developed by FEMA and a wide range of federal, state, and 
local governments and nongovernmental entities, in response to 
challenges experienced in August 2005's Hurricane Katrina and 
subsequent hurricanes, which revealed several limitations in the 
former guidance document--the 2004 National Response Plan. The NRF 
identifies the roles and responsibilities of federal, state, local, 
and tribal governments; the private sector; and voluntary 
organizations in responding to disasters.[Footnote 2] The framework 
provides the structure and mechanisms to coordinate and integrate 
incident management activities and emergency support functions across 
all of these entities. This coordination typically occurs within a 
Joint Field Office (JFO), which is led by a Federal Coordinating 
Officer (FCO) provided by FEMA.[Footnote 3] As part of this framework, 
the NRF identifies 15 Emergency Support Functions that are used to 
help identify and coordinate the capabilities and resources of federal 
departments and agencies, along with certain private-sector and 
nongovernmental organizations. While most of the NRF focuses on the 
immediate response to and short-term recovery from disasters, one of 
the framework's Emergency Support Functions addresses long-term 
community recovery--ESF-14. 

According to the NRF, DHS functions as the principal coordinating 
agency for ESF-14. As previously noted, FEMA's LTCR carries out this 
responsibility for the department. The NRF also identifies three non- 
DHS entities as "primary agencies" for supporting long-term community 
recovery--USDA, HUD, and SBA. These agencies provide recovery support 
in their areas of expertise and assist with identifying areas of 
collaboration with other agencies, among other things. Under the NRF 
structure, LTCR is also responsible for coordinating with over 13 
other federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations that 
participate in supporting long-term community recovery (see figure 1). 
[Footnote 4] 

Figure 1: Emergency Support Function 14 - Long-Term Community Recovery 
Partners: 

[Refer to PDF for image: list] 

ESF coordinator: 
* Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

Primary agencies: 
* Department of Agriculture; 
* Department of Homeland Security; 
* Department of Housing and Urban Development; 
* Small Business Administration. 

Support agencies: 
* Department of Commerce; 
* Department of Defense; 
* Department of Energy; 
* Department of Health and Human Services; 
* Department of the Interior; 
* Department of Labor; 
* Department of Transportation; 
* Department of the Treasury; 
* Environmental Protection Agency; 
* Corporation for National and Community Service; 
* Delta Regional Authority; 
* American Red Cross; 
* National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters. 

Source: The National Response Framework. 

[End of figure] 

When ESF-14 is activated, the National Response Coordination Center 
initially provides national-level coordination and information sharing 
among the agencies for ESF-14. Once the JFO is established within the 
disaster area, the FCO may request the ESF-14 network to be deployed 
to the field location to provide on-scene coordination.[Footnote 5] 
The level of this assistance depends on each community's recovery 
needs, including the size and scope of the disaster, the community's 
ability to recover, and how much help state and local governments 
request. Although no direct funding is provided to state and local 
governments by ESF-14 or LTCR, the ESF-14 network can assist 
communities affected by a disaster in a variety of ways, including by 
providing long-term recovery experts to help identify recovery 
resources in other federal and private funding programs and by helping 
the community coordinate these resources to achieve a greater impact 
than they might have by themselves. The overall goal of this 
coordination is to expedite, leverage, and increase the effectiveness 
of federal and other long-term recovery assistance. 

While the NRF is the principal document that guides the nation's 
response and recovery efforts, the administration is undertaking 
several initiatives to develop new guidance that will focus 
specifically on disaster recovery. As noted earlier, the vast majority 
of the NRF is devoted to coordinating the nation's emergency response 
to disasters. Currently, there is no comprehensive operational 
coordinating structure to guide the many federal, state, and local 
entities involved in disaster recovery. As a first step, in 2006 
Congress required FEMA to develop a national disaster recovery 
strategy for federal agencies involved in recovery.[Footnote 6] In 
response to this mandate and because it was recognized that such a 
strategy must be comprehensive and reflect the entire range of 
recovery activities and actors, FEMA and HUD are leading a diverse 
group of federal agencies and other organizations to develop the 
National Disaster Recovery Framework. The goal of this framework is to 
establish a comprehensive coordinating structure that will enhance the 
nation's ability to work together and effectively deliver recovery 
assistance. Four objectives identified for the NDRF are (1) to define 
the federal, state, local, tribal, private nonprofit, and private-
sector roles and individual citizen's roles in disaster recovery; (2) 
to design and establish an effective coordinating structure for 
disaster recovery programs; (3) to identify gaps, as well as 
duplications, in recovery programs and funding; and (4) to establish 
performance standards for the federal support of state and local 
recovery. The administration expects to issue a final version of the 
NDRF in June 2010. 

In addition, the President requested that the Secretaries of Homeland 
Security and HUD lead a Long-Term Recovery Working Group responsible 
for examining lessons learned from previous catastrophic disaster 
recovery efforts, including areas for improved collaboration between 
federal agencies and between the federal government and state and 
local governments and stakeholders. It is also responsible for 
reviewing federal disaster recovery programs for efficacy and 
identifying methods to build capacity within state, local, and tribal 
governments as well as within the nonprofit, faith-based, and private 
sectors. Because of the relationship between these goals and the 
development of the NDRF, the group tasked with developing the 
framework has worked closely with the White House's Long-Term Disaster 
Recovery Working Group. It will provide one of the two main outcomes 
of the effort. The other outcome is a report to the President, 
expected to be issued in May 2010, which will provide recommendations 
on how to improve long-term disaster recovery. 

LTCR Provided Coordination and Planning Assistance to States and 
Localities: 

LTCR played two key roles during recovery in the disasters that we 
reviewed: (1) facilitating the coordination of federal, state, and 
nongovernmental assistance and (2) assisting local communities with 
developing long-term disaster recovery plans, strategies, or reports. 
In addition to carrying out these two major functions, each support 
operation began with a small ESF-14 advance team dispatched by the FCO 
to conduct an initial on-the-ground assessment of likely long-term 
recovery needs.[Footnote 7] This assessment helped to determine the 
amount and type of assistance ESF-14 provided. See figure 2 for a 
graphic representation of these roles and their approximate time 
frames. 

Figure 2: The ESF-14 Assistance Process: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Disaster: 
FCO requests ESF-14assessment/support: 
* LTCR advance team evaluates the impact of the event to determine 
needs and state capability and roles. 

Coordination track (interagency coordination team): 

1 week: 
Engage state: 
* Identify coordination needs; 
* Identify community support process. 

2-3 weeks: 
Convene: 
* Federal, state and local interagency team. 

1 month: 
Gather/share: 
* Identify issues and gaps; 
* Communicate; 
* Problem solve. 

2-3 months: 
Analyze and communicate: 
* Prepare analysis, resource guides, assessment report, etc. 

6-9 months: 
Produce coordination tools and information. 

6-12 months: 
Implementation: 
* State, federal, and NGO funding linking; 
* Build ongoing state, local, and federal relationships; 
* Limited ESF-14 transitional support. 

Planning technical assistance track (LTCR): 

1 week: 
Identify target communities: 
* Preliminary Community Needs Assessment Tool. 

2-3 weeks: 
Analyze and define assistance: 
* Sector analysis tool; 
* Consult local governments. 

1-3 months: 
Assist targeted local governments: 
* Launch LTCR organizing, citizen engagement; 
* Prepare strategies and recovery plans; 
* Link potential federal, state, and NGO funding sources to local 
recovery plans. 

In conjunction with the Coordination track: 
* Workshops; 
* Federal/state participation in community technical assistance team; 
* Distribute information; 
* Problem solve. 

6-9 months: 
Produce recovery plan, strategy, or report and provide recovery tools 
and aids. 

6-12 months: 
Implementation: 
* State, federal, and NGO funding linking; 
* Build ongoing state, local, and federal relationships; 
* Limited ESF-14 transitional support. 

Source: GAO presentation of LTCR process chart. 

[End of figure] 

In each of the disasters included in our review, LTCR facilitated 
coordination among federal, state, and nongovernmental organizations 
through frequent interagency meetings, and by working one-on-one with 
relevant federal and state agencies to identify and resolve 
challenges. Toward this end, LTCR held biweekly meetings with federal 
and state agencies, such as USDA, HUD, SBA, the Departments of Labor, 
Commerce, and Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency; 
the state counterparts to these agencies; state finance offices; and 
others. The number and type of federal and state agencies involved in 
the interagency meetings varied among the states, depending on their 
recovery needs, and sometimes changed during the course of the 
recovery process. In all three states we reviewed, federal and state 
officials used these meetings to identify and report on the status of 
assistance provided by each agency, and to identify long-term recovery 
challenges or concerns. See figure 3 for an example of the interagency 
coordination structure utilized during Iowa's recovery from the 2008 
Midwest floods. 

In addition to facilitating coordination during meetings, LTCR also 
worked one-on-one with various federal and state agencies to identify 
and resolve challenges. These meetings often followed up on challenges 
or opportunities that were identified during interagency coordination 
meetings or issues raised to LTCR directly by state and local 
officials. In addition, LTCR established coordination agreements with 
agencies to perform long-term recovery assessments and provide 
technical assistance related to their specific areas of expertise. For 
example, in Texas, LTCR entered into an agreement with the Economic 
Development Agency to conduct economic growth and recovery assessments 
for recovery planning for communities affected by Hurricane Ike. 

Figure 3: Membership of the LTCR Interagency Coordination Group for 
the 2008 Iowa Floods: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration of LTCR Interagency Coordination 
Group] 

LTCR Integration and Coordination Group: 

Federal agencies: 
U.S. Small Business Administration; 
U.S. Economic Development Administration; 
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; 
U.S. Department of Transportation; 
U.S. Department of the Treasury: 
ESF-14/LTCH; 
FEMA; 
U.S. Department of Education: 
U.S. Department of Labor; 
USDA Rural Development; 
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; 
USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service; 
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services; 
USDA Farm Service Agency; 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; 
Inter-Agency Levee Workforce; 
Corporation for National and Community Service. 

State agencies: 
Iowa Finance Authority; 
Iowa Governor's Office; 
Iowa State Coordinating Office; 
Central Iowa Partnership; 
Rebuild Iowa Office; 
Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management; 
Iowa Department of National Resources; 
Iowa Department of Economic Development; 
Iowa Department of Human Services; 
Iowa Department of Agriculture; 
Iowa Small Business Administration; 
Iowa Lieutenant Governor's Office. 

Nonprofit or other agencies: 
American Red Cross; 
National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters; 
DElta Regional Authority; 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

Source: GAO presentation based on information provided by LTCR and 
Iowa state officials. 

Note: The LTCR Integration and Coordination graphic in the center of 
the figure represents the collective interagency coordination effort, 
which included regular meetings involving the federal, state, and 
nonprofit organizations shown. 

[End of figure] 

The other major component of LTCR's assistance was the assistance that 
it provided to local communities in developing long-term disaster 
recovery plans, strategies, or reports. One way LTCR provided this 
support was through its facilitation of frequent planning meetings. In 
all three states, LTCR held weekly meetings with various stakeholders 
in affected communities. For example, in Greensburg, Kansas, LTCR 
conducted frequent recovery planning meetings that included the school 
board, citizen groups, business owners, and community members at 
large. In each of the states in our review, these planning meetings 
were used to obtain and document the community's views on recovery 
priorities and to develop ideas for recovery projects. 

LTCR also provided technical assistance to the local communities by 
conducting or facilitating long-term recovery assessments to identify 
the long-term impacts of the disaster, providing staff to advise the 
communities on steps to take as they developed recovery plans, 
creating planning tools that the communities used to guide their 
planning activities, and hosting workshops to discuss and share 
recovery planning lessons, among other things. In addition to these 
supports, LTCR helped communities to prioritize their potential long-
term recovery projects. 

The Lack of Clear Criteria and the Timing of LTCR Assistance Presented 
Challenges to Recovery Partners: 

Unclear Criteria regarding LTCR's and ESF-14's Involvement in Disaster 
Recovery Has Led to a Lack of Understanding and Agreement about ESF-14 
Deployment: 

One broad challenge reported by federal and state partners of LTCR 
involved a lack of understanding and agreement about the criteria used 
to determine whether ESF-14 becomes involved in a disaster. We have 
previously reported on the importance of having clear criteria to 
guide agency decisions about whether to provide disaster assistance. 
[Footnote 8] This is especially important when the actions involve 
multiple partners that must work together to accomplish a common goal. 
However, we found that the NRF and FEMA guidance on the factors that 
warrant ESF-14 involvement in a specific disaster are vague. For 
example, the NRF states that ESF-14 will be deployed "when the 
incident is likely to require significant federal long-term community 
recovery assistance." Other FEMA guidance says that deployment should 
be considered "when routine federal, state, local, and tribal disaster 
assistance mechanisms are insufficient to meet the extraordinary 
challenges of affected jurisdictions." Both criteria are broad enough 
to be interpreted differently by state and federal recovery partners, 
regarding whether these criteria were met.[Footnote 9] As a result, 
they have been interpreted differently by various recovery partners. 

Officials from the three non-DHS entities designated as "primary 
agencies" responsible for implementing the ESF-14 function--SBA, HUD, 
and USDA--told us that they were generally uncertain about why they 
were involved in some disasters versus others. The agencies reported 
that they did not understand what criteria were used to trigger ESF-14 
involvement in various disasters, and sometimes disagreed with the 
determination. For example, USDA officials told us that they thought 
ESF-14 should have been deployed for the American Samoa Tsunami that 
occurred on September 30, 2009, but such support was not 
provided.[Footnote 10] Similarly, state and local officials from two 
of the three states we visited also reported that they did not fully 
understand the basis for decisions made about ESF-14 deployment to 
some disasters versus others in their states. For example, Texas 
officials believed that ESF-14 assistance was warranted for Hurricane 
Dolly because, in their view, the hurricane resulted in a long-term 
recovery impact that was significant and overwhelmed the abilities of 
the community and state. However, FEMA determined that Hurricane Dolly 
did not meet requirements for activating ESF-14 assistance. Similarly, 
Kansas officials reported that they believed ESF-14 assistance was 
warranted in the 2007 floods that occurred in the state after the 
tornado, but was not made available by FEMA. Officials from the FCO 
office stated that these decisions are often made with the input of 
other FEMA and state officials, and are based on their collective 
assessment of what support a disaster may warrant. However, when we 
spoke with LTCR officials about criteria for activating ESF-14, they 
said it would be helpful if FEMA provided additional guidance on the 
criteria that determine whether ESF-14 should become involved in a 
disaster recovery effort. 

The Timing of LTCR's Assistance Presented Challenges to Some State and 
Local Governments: 

In two of the three states included in our review, LTCR's coordination 
and planning efforts began before state and local governments had the 
capacity to effectively work with them and ended before critical long- 
term recovery coordination and planning needs were addressed. As a 
result, state and local officials reported that they are left without 
federal coordination and planning assistance during a critical period 
in the recovery process. We have previously reported that actions 
taken shortly after a major disaster and during the early stages of 
the recovery process can have a significant impact on the success of a 
community's long-term recovery. Therefore, early involvement in 
disasters to assess the impact of response activities on longer-term 
recovery is important to a successful recovery.[Footnote 11] As part 
of this consideration, the level and focus of long-term recovery 
assistance need to be appropriately aligned with the capacity of the 
state and local governments to effectively become involved in the 
activities and with the ripeness of recovery issues. We found that the 
timing and focus of LTCR activities was appropriate and beneficial for 
certain types of important recovery needs, but not for others. For 
example, LTCR's deployment of a one-to two-person team to develop long-
term recovery impact assessments a few days after each disaster 
provided valuable insight on which federal, state, and local partners 
needed to be involved in recovery, and what long-term recovery 
challenges these partners needed to consider during emergency response 
and short-term recovery activities. Further, LTCR's efforts to 
establish an interagency coordination structure during early phases of 
disaster recovery and to begin coordination with other federal 
agencies had several benefits that we discuss later in this report. 
However, LTCR's efforts to engage state and local partners in more 
substantive long-term recovery activities while they were still in the 
midst of addressing immediate emergency response, and ending this 
assistance 6 to 8 months later, did not effectively align with the 
state and local governments' capacity or support some of their most 
critical long-term recovery needs. 

In Texas and Iowa, state and local officials reported that LTCR's 
efforts to begin intensive long-term recovery coordination and 
planning meetings just a few weeks after the disasters--while they had 
limited staff dealing with multiple recovery efforts--created an 
additional burden. For example, Texas State officials said that LTCR's 
requests that their staff produce recovery information, attend weekly 
or biweekly recovery meetings, and follow up on recovery actions 
during the early response phase created a significant burden that 
could not be met.[Footnote 12] As a result, these officials did not 
fully participate in LTCR's assistance. For example, Texas housing 
officials told us that key housing disaster recovery staff were still 
involved in administering $300 million in HUD's Community Development 
Block Grant (CDBG) housing funds for ongoing recovery efforts for 
Hurricane Rita victims.[Footnote 13] Therefore, when LTCR requested 
that they send staff to attend frequent recovery meetings a few weeks 
after the disaster, they could not afford to provide the staff and 
time to do so. Our review of LTCR's after-action report for Hurricane 
Ike confirmed that this was a challenge. According to the report, when 
working with the Governor's Disaster Recovery and Renewal Committee 
"it was clear that the amount of work that state staff was engaged in 
did not provide time for additional tasks, duties, or meeting 
participation." Similarly, LTCR and local officials in Galveston, 
Texas, reported that LTCR attempted to engage the local community in 
long-term recovery planning about a month after Hurricane Ike. 
However, because the city was still overwhelmed with emergency 
response activities, it had to delay acceptance of this assistance for 
about 6 weeks. 

Federal, state, and local officials involved in the disasters in Texas 
and Iowa also reported that LTCR's involvement ended before some 
critical recovery funding became available and before local 
governments were able to focus on developing long-term plans. 
According to federal, state, and local officials, some critical long-
term recovery funding, such as HUD's CDBG housing funds, and many long-
term recovery projects do not become available or begin until 1 or 2 
years after the disaster occurs, which is at least 6 months to a year 
after LTCR concludes its assistance. In addition, state and local 
officials reported that many local communities were not stable enough 
to effectively focus on addressing long-term recovery needs until 
about 6 months after the disaster, which was about the time that LTCR 
left. As a result, state and local officials reported that they were 
left without federal coordination assistance during a critical period 
in the recovery process. Our review of the Texas Funding Timeline 
developed by LTCR showed that some federal assistance, such as the 
Federal Highway Administration's Emergency Relief funds, was released 
within weeks of the disaster, which was during the height of LTCR 
involvement. However, the majority of the larger federal funding 
sources became available near the end of LTCR's and the ESF-14 
network's assistance or after it concluded. (Figure 4 illustrates the 
timing of the release of selected sources of federal recovery 
assistance for Hurricane Ike compared with the time period of ESF-14's 
involvement after the disaster.) 

Figure 4: Comparison of the Timing of LTCR Involvement and the 
Availability of Selected Federal Recovery Funds Following Hurricane 
Ike: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustrated timeline] 

Hurricane Ike: September 13, 2008: 

LTCR Involvement: September 13, 2008 through mid-May, 2009. 

HUD CDBG funds ($1.3 billion): 
Release of funds: June, 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

SBA loans ($637 million): 
Release of funds: March 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

HHS SSBG funds ($219 million): 
Release of funds: Early February 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

EDA disaster relief funds ($134.4 million): 
Release of funds: May 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

DOT emergency relief ($70 million): 
Release of funds: Late October 2008 through October 2009 and beyond. 

USDA rural economic development loans and grants ($45.8 million): 
Release of funds: Late June 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

NOAA fisheries fund ($7 million): 
Release of funds: March 2009 through October 2009 and beyond. 

Source: GAO analysis of FEMA and other federal agency documents. 

Legend: 
NOAA = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association; 
USDOT = Department of Transportation. 

Note: All above data are as of February 24, 2009, except for the 
figure for the SBA loans, which is current up to September 1, 2009. 
All of the figures, except for SBA loans, are based on the expected 
release of funds identified by LTCR during recovery from Hurricane Ike 
in Texas. 

[End of figure] 

LTCR officials recognized that the timing of their assistance often 
limited their ability to more effectively provide coordination and 
planning, but attributed this to the closing of JFO operations. 
According to these officials, there are several reasons why the JFO 
may close before ESF-14's mission is complete, including the fact that 
most JFO operations focus on response and short-term recovery 
activities as well as varying interpretations among FCOs on when ESF-
14's mission is complete. FEMA interim guidance identifies three 
conditions for concluding ESF-14 assistance: (1) long-term impact 
analyses are performed, (2) necessary technical support to establish 
local long-term recovery strategies or plans is provided, and (3) 
coordination of long-term recovery resources needed by the affected 
community to launch its recovery efforts is complete. However, LTCR 
officials acknowledged that they sometimes conclude their assistance 
before these conditions are met. According to the officials, one 
reason this occurs is because the life span of ESF-14 involvement is 
closely linked with the JFO operation, which typically ends at 6 
months. LTCR officials told us that when making determinations about 
when to end ESF-14 assistance, FEMA considers whether the three 
conditions above are met. However, the achievement of these conditions 
carries less weight than closing the JFO expeditiously, especially 
because all other JFO operations involve response and short-term 
recovery activities that largely draw to a close about 6 months after 
a disaster. 

Other reasons identified by LTCR for concluding their assistance 
before achieving the above conditions include different 
interpretations of FEMA's mission and authorities as well as varying 
interpretations of LTCR's mission by the FCOs. The director of the FCO 
office told us that based on his experience, FCOs generally believe 
that LTCR's mission is primarily to work with the states immediately 
after a disaster to develop a long-term recovery plan. Under this 
view, assisting states and local communities with coordinating federal 
assistance to implement their recovery plans is not the role of ESF-
14, but that of regional staff or other FEMA recovery officials who 
remain in the disaster area. However, it is not clear that FEMA 
regional staff have the capacity or interest in taking on this role. 
For example, according to LTCR officials, FEMA region 2, which 
includes New York and New Jersey, is the only region that has staff 
specifically assigned to work with communities to address long-term 
community recovery needs. In Galveston, Texas, LTCR officials 
recognized that additional long-term recovery support would be needed 
by the city after they left, and accordingly developed a 
demobilization plan that transferred oversight of remaining recovery 
duties to a regional FEMA staffer. However, the regional staff member 
met with city officials only once and had little additional 
interaction with them afterward. 

According to LTCR officials, they would like to stay involved in 
communities longer but are often unable to do so. Once the JFO closes 
there is no protocol for ESF-14 to provide additional assistance to 
the community.[Footnote 14] However, in the case of Kansas, LTCR 
developed a creative way to link back to the community. After spending 
about 6 months in the community, LTCR and state officials worked 
together to obtain about a 6-month extension of LTCR assistance, which 
included providing remote support for projects, meetings, and 
developing resources from LTCR offices in Washington D.C. A senior 
official responsible for coordinating recovery reported that this 
extension was critical to the successful implementation of many of 
Greensburg's major recovery initiatives. 

LTCR's Assistance with Disaster Recovery Coordination Was Generally 
Considered Valuable, but Some Challenges Limited Its Effectiveness: 

LTCR's Interagency Coordination Meetings and Direct Coordination with 
Partners Improved Recovery Progress: 

Most federal, state, and local officials reported that LTCR's 
assistance with coordinating federal resources helped states to 
accomplish two goals: identifying and leveraging federal and state 
resources that could be used to support disaster recovery projects, 
and identifying potential coordination challenges, such as gaps in 
funding or other long-term recovery concerns. Although the officials 
identified limitations with the timing of LTCR's assistance, they 
identified several important benefits when LTCR coordinated federal 
and state recovery partners. According to federal and state partners, 
as well as our review of some meeting minutes, the interagency 
coordination meetings facilitated by LTCR in Iowa, Kansas, and Texas 
were effective forums for identifying federal and state resources that 
could be used to support disaster recovery projects. During these 
meetings, federal and state agencies reported on the types of programs 
and assistance that their agencies offered, and collectively discussed 
which programs would best meet the unique needs of specific recovery 
projects. This identification of potential funding sources occurred at 
the beginning of the disaster recovery and typically continued for 
about 6 months after recovery began. According to federal and state 
officials, these interagency forums were especially useful because 
they resulted in identifying funding resources that are not typically 
provided as part of disaster recovery. For example, in Iowa, through 
the interagency meetings, LTCR and the state identified federal 
funding sources to support the state's desire to utilize smart growth 
concepts in rebuilding efforts, including considerations for economic 
growth, public health, and quality of life. As a result of the 
interagency coordination that occurred during the meetings, FEMA, 
Iowa's recovery office, the Iowa Department of Economic Development, 
and USDA partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency's Smart 
Growth program to offer smart growth support to assist five 
communities in their rebuilding efforts. 

As part of identifying resources, state and federal officials reported 
that the meetings were also effective forums for identifying ways to 
leverage federal and state with private or nonprofit funding to assist 
local governments in rebuilding to address longer-term rather than 
short-term recovery needs. For example, in Greensburg, Kansas, the 
capacity of the city's water tower was determined to be insufficient 
for the future growth of the community. However, under FEMA's Public 
Assistance Grant program--which was the primary funding source 
identified for the project--the community could only rebuild the tower 
back to its preexisting capacity. As a result, the project would have 
only addressed the city's immediate recovery needs.[Footnote 15] 
However, as a result of discussions held during the interagency 
coordination meetings, USDA's Rural Development Agency was identified 
as an additional funding source that could be used with FEMA funding 
to achieve longer-term recovery goals. Ultimately, USDA provided loans 
that along with FEMA, State of Kansas, foundation, and nonprofit 
funding, helped the community to build a new water tower with greater 
capacity. 

LTCR coordination efforts also assisted federal and state partners 
with identifying potential coordination challenges, including gaps in 
funding or other long-term recovery concerns. Our review of 
interagency meeting minutes showed that the coordination meetings were 
used to identify long-term recovery issues or concerns, such as 
challenges associated with rebuilding wastewater facilities or gaps in 
funding for levee systems. Federal and state officials discussed these 
challenges and, at times, identified potential next steps for dealing 
with concerns. For example, in Iowa, interagency meetings were used to 
discuss challenges with the lack of contingency planning for 
wastewater systems throughout the state, which were leading to raw 
sewage leakages in several communities. Cedar Rapids was one of these 
communities. The city had three wastewater facilities that were still 
not working or not working correctly almost 5 months after the 
disaster. During the meetings, the Environmental Protection Agency 
agreed to work with state and local officials to develop a template 
for contingency planning for wastewater treatment systems in order to 
prevent the discharge of untreated sewage after disasters. 

LTCR's coordination efforts were more effective in states that had an 
established coordination officer or office that brought various state 
agencies together to work with LTCR and to provide a strategic vision 
for local planning and coordination efforts. For example, in Iowa, the 
Governor established a system within the state for organizing the 
recovery efforts by creating the Rebuild Iowa Office (RIO), which was 
initially established through an executive order and later codified by 
the state legislature.[Footnote 16] As the principal coordinator for 
the state's short-and long-term recovery, RIO tracked and reported on 
rebuilding progress under the various disaster assistance programs, 
and provided a strategic vision for recovery planning efforts within 
the state. Moreover, RIO served as a galvanizer of state agencies by 
working with LTCR to bring the appropriate state agencies together to 
coordinate with the federal agencies. In addition, RIO staff served as 
liaisons with local communities to ensure that local recovery concerns 
were identified and discussed during interagency meetings. Once LTCR 
ended its assistance to the state, RIO continued the interagency 
coordination role formerly conducted by LTCR. LTCR and state officials 
reported having a similarly positive experience in Kansas, which had a 
senior state official, who reported directly to the Governor, to 
coordinate its long-term recovery effort. According to LTCR and state 
officials in Texas, there was no coordinating entity for long-term 
recovery in the state, which made coordination significantly more 
difficult. According to LTCR officials, its staff spent more time 
trying to identify and work with individual state agencies and was 
less effective in coordinating the use of federal and state resources 
in Texas than in the other states. 

Challenges Bringing Together the Right Agencies and Staff Sometimes 
Limited LTCR's Effectiveness: 

LTCR's inability, at times, to obtain or sustain the participation of 
all of the agencies needed limited the effectiveness of ESF-14's 
coordination. Under the NRF, LTCR is responsible for coordinating 
assistance by convening interagency recovery expertise to provide 
strategic guidance to long-term recovery efforts, and coordinating 
program application processes and planning requirements to streamline 
assistance processes, among many other things. However, according to 
documents that we reviewed, as well as LTCR and state officials whom 
we spoke with, LTCR experienced challenges getting and keeping some 
agencies engaged in coordination activities and other ESF-14 
operations. LTCR officials reported that they had difficulties getting 
some federal partners to join and remain involved in federal 
coordination efforts and to provide ESF-14 support to local 
communities. Among the reasons cited were the cost associated with 
sending staff from partner agencies into the field and challenges that 
these agencies faced in temporarily replacing deployed staff. LTCR and 
state officials reported that, over time, it became more difficult to 
keep agencies that were initially a part of the coordination efforts 
involved. According to the officials, they do not have the authority 
to compel agencies to participate in ESF-14 coordination and 
activities, therefore, they tend to only coordinate with agencies that 
are willing to expend their own resources. At times this has meant 
that not all of the necessary federal partners were involved in 
coordination. There is currently a debate about the level of authority 
that FEMA has to coordinate disaster recovery. 

One challenge that limited LTCR's ability to obtain and keep agencies 
involved in coordination activities was its inability to obtain the 
agreements that it needed to support ESF-14 coordination efforts. We 
have previously reported on the importance of having clearly defined 
and sufficient authority to resolve response and recovery challenges. 
[Footnote 17] In order to obtain and maintain the involvement of some 
agencies in ESF-14 activities, LTCR had to request agreement from the 
FCO and State Coordinating Officer to issue Mission Assignments or 
Interagency Agreements that would fund the costs associated with staff 
and travel for the agencies. However, according to documentation from 
disaster correspondences and after-action reports and LTCR officials, 
LTCR was not always able to secure these agreements. For example, 
according to LTCR's February 2009 after-action report for Hurricane 
Ike, LTCR's need to obtain support from other federal agencies, as 
agreed to under the NRF, was not fully successful in Texas's recovery 
because the Mission Assignment process used to support these efforts 
ended too soon to be useful for long-term recovery activities. Without 
these agreements, some agencies declined to provide support for long-
term recovery activities in the state. 

Even when LTCR did have the right agencies at the table, their efforts 
were limited when they did not have the right staff to resolve policy 
and program challenges. While the interagency meetings held were 
effective in identifying challenges, they were less effective in 
resolving them. One of the reasons for this was that interagency 
coordination meetings did not always include agency officials with a 
sufficient level of authority to resolve such problems.[Footnote 18] 
For example, in Iowa, through interagency meetings, LTCR identified a 
funding challenge involving SBA and USDA relating to how the agencies 
interpreted program rules regarding flower farms. Specifically, from 
an eligibility perspective, SBA considers a flower farm that grows its 
own stock to be an agricultural enterprise. However, USDA may consider 
this type of farm as not eligible if the business exceeds its family 
farm size threshold. Officials involved in the interagency 
coordination meetings did not have the authority to resolve this 
issue. A senior SBA official told us that this particular issue has 
come up in other disaster recoveries, and the two agencies have tried 
to handle it on a case-by-case basis. However, he noted that 
resolution of such conflicts is supposed to be one of the functions of 
ESF-14. An LTCR official told us that, ideally, most policy problems 
would be communicated to and resolved by senior officials involved in 
the national ESF-14 network. However, in his experience, problems 
identified by the interagency coordination group are not typically 
resolved through this process.[Footnote 19] 

LTCR's Recovery Planning Assistance Benefited States and Localities, 
but Some Practices Limited More Effective Implementation of Recovery 
Plans: 

LTCR's Meetings and Tools Enhanced the Recovery Planning of the 
Communities: 

First, LTCR provided planning assistance that according to state and 
local officials, was beneficial in helping them achieve their recovery 
goals. Types of assistance included facilitating community planning 
meetings to assist communities in identifying recovery goals and 
related recovery projects; providing communities with planning tools 
to organize and communicate their recovery goals to key stakeholders; 
and assisting communities with identifying potential funding 
resources, which led to the development of strategic recovery plans or 
reports tailored specifically for the affected communities. For 
example, according to officials in Iowa, LTCR was very effective in 
helping several of the state's communities develop recovery plans. 
LTCR held weekly meetings that involved the communities and focused on 
specific recovery areas, such as housing, economic development, and 
infrastructure. These officials specifically emphasized that LTCR was 
most effective in assisting the hardest hit communities with little 
capacity to provide their own resources, such as experienced staff. 
Similarly, in Kansas, LTCR led an intensive 12-week process involving 
many meetings and discussions among the citizens; civic groups; 
business owners; and local, state, and other federal officials to 
share ideas on how to rebuild the city of Greensburg and Kiowa County. 
These planning efforts resulted in creating long-term recovery plans 
that identified potential funding resources that were relevant to the 
specific projects. 

Second, LTCR provided communities with various planning tools, which 
provided a mechanism for these localities to organize and communicate 
their recovery vision, goals, and recovery projects to key 
stakeholders. Both community leaders and members of the public used 
these planning tools to help them carry out various steps in the 
recovery planning process. For example, in Iowa, planning aids, such 
as the ESF-14 LTCR Communication Mapping Tool, provided effective 
communication techniques for gathering and sharing information 
important to long-term recovery. Other documents, such as the ESF-14 
Decision Making Tool, provided users with a process and template to 
guide decision making during disaster recovery and can also be used to 
provide a concise way to identify and prioritize potential projects 
and programs for further development. LTCR also provided communities 
with standardized forms to assist in the collection and analysis of 
information needed to develop the goals, strategies, and expected 
outcomes of proposed recovery projects and programs. The ESF-14 LTCR 
Resource Guide provided community stakeholders with a directory of 
technical assistance resources and funding opportunities to support 
projects and programs developed through the long-term community 
recovery process. State and local recovery officials from Iowa stated 
that these planning tools were very effective in assisting them during 
the recovery process, and added that these can also be beneficial to 
communities outside of disaster recovery. 

Lastly, LTCR identified potential funding resources within the 
communities' recovery plans, which helped to provide the communities 
with a road map for accomplishing recovery goals. State and local 
officials in two of the three states we contacted stated that this 
LTCR practice was helpful. State recovery officials from Iowa noted 
that rather than giving localities a long list of federal grants to 
decipher, LTCR targeted and tied relevant funding sources to specific 
recovery projects, which was very effective in helping communities, 
particularly those communities that did not have the capacity to sort 
through and comprehend the extensive range of the federal funding 
resources. In Iowa City, officials stated that LTCR's involvement in 
developing the city's recovery plan and assistance in targeting 
potential funding sources gave creditability to the projects. LTCR 
presorted and identified potential federal funding sources that could 
fund specific types of projects, and helped the city to ensure that 
the projects included elements that the federal funding agencies would 
be looking for, thereby improving the projects' chances of getting 
approval. As a result, city officials are securing $25 million in 
funding from the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Agency 
for the top two projects in the plan that LTCR helped the city to 
develop. 

LTCR's Planning Assistance Sometimes Created Unrealistic Expectations 
within Communities: 

Local officials in two of the three states we contacted stated that 
LTCR's planning assistance had the effect of creating unrealistic 
expectations about what would be funded and built in the community. 
ESF-14 guidance identifies the importance of setting and reinforcing 
realistic expectations with the community throughout the LTCR 
technical assistance process. However, one of the major concerns 
reported by state and local officials was that the project 
prioritization process used by LTCR sometimes led to unrealistic 
expectations in the community. One of the types of planning assistance 
LTCR offers is an independent assessment of the "recovery value" of 
projects to be included in a community's long-term recovery plan. 
Toward this end, LTCR has developed the Long-Term Community Recovery 
Value Tool, which provides a standardized methodology for assigning 
proposed projects a recovery value of high, moderate, or low.[Footnote 
20] When assessing potential recovery projects in the city of 
Galveston, Texas, LTCR assigned a lower recovery value to 
infrastructure projects intended to restore the basic function and 
services of the city than to projects whose goal was to enhance and 
beautify it. Galveston City officials told us that many of the 
projects in the recovery plan were not financially or structurally 
feasible and presented an additional challenge for city leaders as 
they tried to address the community's most important recovery needs. 
[Footnote 21] Our review of the plan confirmed that all of the city's 
infrastructure projects, such as rebuilding the city's water 
distribution system, sewer lines, and major bridges, were ranked as a 
lower priority than projects intended to augment the city's beauty, 
such as enhancing the main beach area or redeveloping historic parts 
of downtown. 

LTCR officials told us that their categorization of projects is 
intended to communicate to stakeholders the relative value of the 
projects in relation to the recovery objectives, but not actually 
prioritize them.[Footnote 22] However, Galveston community leaders as 
well as state and local officials all understood LTCR's categorization 
of projects in the city's recovery plan to be just such a 
prioritization or ranking. State officials told us that they were 
unwilling to fund some beautification projects that were ranked "high" 
in the plan, and instead decided to use the limited funds available to 
support critical infrastructure projects that LTCR ranked lower. 
According to these officials, they believed that LTCR's prioritization 
of projects in the City of Galveston's recovery plan set false 
expectations for the public because residents were left with the 
impression that projects that LTCR identified as high-value should 
happen. These officials told us that this public perception put them 
in the position of having to respond to a gap in expectations. 

In addition to concerns about LTCR's communication about the purpose 
of the recovery value tool that it applied to Galveston's recovery 
plan, LTCR's implementation of the tool contributed to creating 
unrealistic expectations about what projects were most important to 
fund and build within the community. As previously noted, LTCR 
officials told us that the categories assigned to recovery projects 
were intended to communicate which projects have a direct value to 
support recovery objectives, as opposed to broader community interests 
that are important but do not support recovery challenges and needs to 
the same degree as others. However, based on our review of LTCR 
guidance on these assessments, it is not clear how the final ranking 
in Galveston's recovery plan accomplishes this goal. For example, 
according to the LTCR guidance, a project that is categorized as 
having "moderate" value "provides benefits for some economic sectors," 
but "does not have communitywide or regional impacts, has limited 
community support and benefits, is difficult to achieve and sustain," 
and/or "has less definable outcomes." Given these factors--similar to 
the conclusion reached by Galveston city officials--we had difficulty 
understanding the rationale for LTCR's categorization of all of the 
city's infrastructure projects as "moderate" value. In particular, we 
did not understand the assignment of a moderate value to 
infrastructure projects that had long-term recovery impacts, including 
projects that would allow more residents to return to the city. Such 
projects included restoring the city's five wastewater treatment 
plants that serve approximately 22,000 homes (approximately 88 percent 
of Galveston's residents) and most commercial properties. 

Challenges with LTCR setting unrealistic expectations were not unique 
to Texas. Local officials from Iowa also stated that LTCR did not 
adequately communicate realistic expectation to the community 
regarding projects. LTCR recognized this in its after-action report 
for the 2008 Midwest floods, which identified "setting unrealistic 
expectations with communities" as an issue that needed to be 
addressed. Moreover, HUD officials reported that as a federal partner, 
they have experienced challenges resulting from LTCR practices that 
set unrealistic public expectations in many other disasters, which 
they had to resolve while administering their CDBG program. 

In Hurricane Ike, LTCR Did Not Effectively Transmit Planning Tools to 
State and Local Officials before Concluding Assistance to the State: 

In one of the three disasters we reviewed--Hurricane Ike in 2008--LTCR 
did not effectively transmit planning tools to state and local 
governments before leaving the affected areas. Officials from both the 
City and County of Galveston stated that they did not receive key 
planning tools and other documents that LTCR created specifically to 
assist with their recovery efforts. One of these planning tools, the 
Texas Recovery Resource Guide, identified various funding resources 
the community could have potentially utilized to fund several of its 
recovery projects. Another, the Texas Strategic Recovery Timeline, was 
developed to help local officials identify and understand the various 
funding timelines of federal agencies. When we shared these documents 
with local officials to obtain perspectives on their usefulness, the 
official's remarked that they had never seen the documents before, but 
that they believed such documents would have been beneficial to them 
and requested copies for future use. According to LTCR officials, they 
did provide state and local officials with copies of these documents. 
However, they acknowledged that the transfer of the information, 
including an explanation of the materials and follow-up, may not have 
been effective. According to the officials, they were limited in 
transferring these materials to state and local officials in Texas 
because they were asked by FEMA leadership, including the FCO and 
region 6 leadership, to end their assistance immediately after 
developing the recovery plan. The officials said that for this same 
reason, they were unable to more effectively communicate the purpose 
of their recovery value tool as it related to the recovery plan or 
assist the City of Galveston with the plan's implementation. 

Our review of disaster closeout documents for Hurricane Ike supports 
this view, showing that LTCR staff were requested by FEMA leadership 
to leave Galveston as soon as they delivered the recovery plan despite 
the fact that they raised concerns about demobilizing from Galveston 
too soon.[Footnote 23] LTCR guidance on demobilizing its operation 
emphasizes the importance of transferring information and resources to 
local officials during demobilization. As previously noted, we found 
that LTCR did develop a demobilization plan for Texas, which included 
plans for transferring oversight of remaining duties to staff in FEMA 
region 6, but it did not include a process for transferring developed 
materials to the state and local officials. Further, as noted earlier, 
regional staff did not complete the transition activities identified 
in the demobilization plan. LTCR officials stated that the longer-term 
recovery success of a community is influenced, in part, by the 
activities that occur near the end of their assistance. Ideally, they 
would prefer to stay long enough to help communities prepare for the 
implementation of their recovery plans but this does not always occur, 
as was the case in Texas, and they are aware that several recovery 
issues remain unresolved in Galveston. 

Conclusions: 

Communities affected by catastrophic disasters often face years of 
work rebuilding shattered infrastructure, revitalizing damaged local 
and regional economies, and restoring or refashioning social and 
cultural institutions. Although the process of long-term recovery from 
such disasters presents a great many challenges, it can also offer an 
opportunity to make use of the considerable resources provided by the 
federal and state governments to rebuild in a way that addresses long- 
standing needs and goals. We have previously reported that successful 
communities are able to understand, and effectively work with, the 
large and diverse collection of programs and agencies that provide 
financial and technical support for recovery and put in place clear 
and implementable long-term recovery plans. In the three disasters we 
reviewed, LTCR provided critical assistance in both of these key areas-
-coordination and planning--and state and local officials generally 
viewed this support as constructive and beneficial to their recovery. 
Coordination meetings facilitated by LTCR brought together key 
stakeholders, providing them with the opportunities to leverage 
programs and resolve problems. LTCR also played a critical role in 
helping affected communities to develop effective long-term recovery 
plans, since they often lacked the resources and experience to 
undertake such a project on their own. Training, advice, and the large 
number of guides and other tools provided by LTCR helped communities 
to create plans that both communicated a broad recovery vision and 
included detailed information to assist the implementation of specific 
projects. 

We also identified several areas that are likely to present challenges 
moving forward, whether the federal government continues to coordinate 
and support long-term recovery through LTCR and ESF-14 under the 
existing NRF structure, or adopts a new approach such as that 
represented by the NDRF. First, in the absence of clear criteria, 
misunderstandings will most likely continue to exist among recovery 
partners about when the federal government will offer communities long-
term recovery assistance and how long this assistance will last. 
Second, while it is important that federal and state officials be 
mindful of recovery issues during the response phase, ESF-14's 
approach of engaging state and local governments in significant long-
term recovery activities while they are still overwhelmed by response, 
and ramping down recovery assistance about 6-9 months later, often 
does not align well with the needs and capacity of affected 
communities nor with many of the time frames involved in recovery 
funding. Third, we have previously reported that effective 
coordination requires sufficient authority and influence to bring the 
necessary agencies to the table and facilitate the resolution of 
challenges that may arise. But since LTCR's authority to carry out its 
role as the primary coordinator of ESF-14 assistance is unclear, it 
tends to work with agencies that are willing to expend their own 
resources. At times, this has meant that not all of the necessary 
federal partners have participated or remained engaged in long-term 
recovery coordination efforts. Fourth, communities recovering from 
Hurricane Ike in Texas provide an illustration of the barriers that 
can be created when expectations about the recovery process are not 
effectively communicated to the public, including expectations about 
what types of projects can and will be funded based on their 
feasibility, in terms of both cost and importance to state and local 
leaders. 

LTCR's experiences--both positive and negative--offer valuable 
insights about what practices and approaches are likely to work, as 
well as the challenges and limitations that may be encountered. Such 
information is especially important now as the administration is 
currently in the process of developing--for the first time--a formal 
organizational framework to guide and coordinate the many federal, 
state, local, and nongovernmental entities involved in disaster 
recovery. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

As a result of insights based on the experiences of FEMA's LTCR and 
recognizing the administration's current efforts to develop the NDRF 
and improve recovery authorities and programs, we recommend that the 
Secretary of Homeland Security, as a leader of these efforts, take the 
following four actions: 

* Develop clear and consistent criteria that identify factors that 
determine whether and how the entity responsible for coordinating long-
term recovery will become involved in a specific disaster. Such 
criteria should provide additional guidance about factors that 
determine whether the entity responsible for coordinating and planning 
becomes involved in recovery. 

* Establish, as part of the new NDRF or related efforts, a long-term 
recovery structure that more effectively aligns the timing and level 
of involvement of the entity responsible for coordinating long-term 
community recovery assistance with both the capacity of state and 
local governments to work with them and the need for coordination 
assistance, which may last beyond the operation of the JFO. One 
approach could allow for the deployment of resources in phases to 
provide long-term recovery assistance tailored to a community's 
evolving needs, and could be provided remotely when necessary, similar 
to LTCR's experience during recovery from the 2007 tornado in 
Greensburg, Kansas. 

* Evaluate and assess, as part of the new NDRF or related efforts, 
what would be an appropriate level of authority for the entity 
responsible for coordinating long-term recovery in order for it to 
foster effective coordination among federal agencies involved in 
disaster recovery and to resolve related policy and program conflicts 
that may arise. 

* Communicate more clearly the objectives and processes used when 
assessing the value of specific recovery projects to help prevent 
unrealistic expectations about the implementation of such projects 
among members of the affected community. Toward this end, FEMA should 
resolve any inconsistencies in relevant guidance or terminology and 
take steps to ensure that these assessments appropriately reflect the 
feasibility of projects, including their importance to state and local 
leaders as well as the broader community. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

On February 23, 2010, we provided a draft of this report to the 
Secretary of Homeland Security for comment. We received written 
comments on March 24, 2010, in which DHS agreed with our 
recommendations. These comments are reprinted in appendix II. In 
addition, DHS provided technical clarifications, and we made those 
changes where appropriate. In light of the work being done by the 
White House Long-Term Disaster Recovery Working Group and the role 
played by HUD in coleading the development of the NDRF, we provided a 
draft of this report to the Director of the President's Domestic 
Policy Council and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for 
their information. 

Although DHS agreed with each of our four recommendations, the 
department's written response included several substantive comments 
related to our first two recommendations. These issues are summarized 
below along with our response. 

DHS agreed with our recommendation that it should develop clear and 
consistent criteria that identify factors to determine whether the 
entity responsible for coordinating long-term recovery will become 
involved in a specific disaster; however, the department identified 
several challenges with doing so. These include the lack of, until 
recently, sufficient experience on which to develop such criteria, and 
the fact that such decisions often are made with limited information 
and therefore must rely on the judgment of FCOs. We agree that such 
decisions can often be complex and do not lend themselves to an 
automatic or arbitrary approach. However, during our review, FEMA 
officials repeatedly told us that many challenges they have faced 
resulted from the varying level of knowledge and understanding among 
FCOs regarding the role and function of ESF-14. This reliance on the 
judgment of FCOs operating under such challenging conditions is one 
reason why it is so important to have additional guidance on the 
factors to be considered when making this decision. Additional 
guidance and criteria regarding the factors to consider when deciding 
whether to deploy ESF-14 assistance will help to establish a common 
understanding among FCOs. This should also improve the transparency of 
such decisions to the federal, state, and local recovery partners and 
help minimize doubts as to whether such requests are treated fairly 
and equitably. 

DHS also agreed with our recommendation that it establish, as part of 
the new NDRF or related efforts, a long-term recovery structure that 
more effectively aligns the timing and level of involvement of the 
entity responsible for coordinating long-term community recovery 
assistance with both the capacity of state and local governments to 
work with them and the need for coordination assistance, which may 
last beyond the operation of the JFO. In its response, the department 
emphasized the importance of developing state and local recovery 
capacity and expressed concern about statements in our report that the 
federal interagency coordination efforts created additional or 
inappropriate burdens on states, asserting that ESF-14 activities 
never interfered with response or other critical activities. We agree 
with DHS regarding the importance of developing the capacity of states 
and localities to effectively recover after a disaster and that 
preplanning for recovery can be one important way to do this. However, 
it is also important for the federal government to be mindful of the 
existing capacity of state and local governments affected by a 
disaster and to adjust the focus and timing of its long-term recovery 
assistance as appropriate to align with the availability of state and 
local partners. For example, in Texas, several senior state officials 
told us that LTCR's request for state resources to address long-term 
recovery issues days after Hurricane Ike struck interfered with the 
state's ability to address more immediate demands and presented an 
additional burden on already constrained resources. Further, as we 
noted in the report, some state and local officials in Texas told us 
that they did not initially participate in long-term recovery 
activities because they decided to devote their limited resources to 
more immediate needs. 

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents 
of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days 
from the report date. At that time, we will provide copies of this 
report to other interested congressional committees; the Secretary of 
Homeland Security; the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; the 
Director of the President's Domestic Policy Council; the Administrator 
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and federal, state, and 
local officials we contacted for this review. This report also is 
available at no charge on the GAO Web site at [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov]. 

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me at 
(202) 512-6806 or at czerwinskis@gao.gov. Contact points for our 
Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 
the last page of this report. Major contributors to this report were 
Peter Del Toro, Assistant Director; Latesha Love; Mark Abraham; and 
Susan Mak. 

Signed by: 

Stanley J. Czerwinski: 
Director, Strategic Issues: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

Our review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Long- 
Term Community Recovery Branch's (LTCR) disaster assistance focuses on 
experiences following three recent major disasters--the tornado that 
affected Greensburg, Kansas (2007); the Midwest floods in Iowa (2008); 
and Hurricane Ike in Texas (2008). We selected these three events 
because their catastrophic or nearly catastrophic impact on one or 
more communities resulted in substantial long-term recovery needs, and 
they were identified by FEMA as having significant involvement by LTCR 
and other Emergency Support Function #14 (ESF-14) agencies. We then 
selected specific localities within these states that (1) sustained 
substantial long-term damage, (2) had direct involvement with LTCR, 
and (3) were identified by LTCR or their state as experiencing 
significant challenges or successes during the recovery process. 
Accordingly, we included the following localities from Iowa in the 
review: Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and Oakville. In Texas, we included 
the City of Galveston and Galveston County. In Kansas, we focused on 
recovery in the City of Greensburg and Kiowa County. Although we 
obtained preliminary information from Louisiana and Mississippi on ESF-
14's assistance in their states after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we 
decided not to focus on these disasters in our review because the ESF- 
14 function was still largely undeveloped at the time of these 
disasters and the President appointed a separate official, the Federal 
Coordinator for Gulf Coast Recovery, to coordinate federal assistance. 
Consequently, LTCR and the ESF-14 network did not perform a 
coordination role following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which was one 
of its two primary roles in providing assistance in subsequent major 
disasters. 

To identify the responsibilities of LTCR in disaster recovery, we 
obtained and reviewed FEMA regulations and policies, as well as 
national policy on disaster recovery, such as the National Response 
Framework's (NRF) ESF-14 long-term community recovery annex, and 
relevant legislation. We assessed relevant authorities, regulations, 
and legislation when necessary. In order to identify the role LTCR 
played in the specific disasters included in our review, we conducted 
interviews with, and obtained documentation from, LTCR officials, 
officials in other relevant FEMA offices, as well as state and local 
officials. 

To evaluate the effectiveness of LTCR practices in coordinating 
federal assistance and identify improvements, if any, that can be 
made, we interviewed and obtained documents on LTCR's coordination 
practices from federal officials within relevant offices and divisions 
in FEMA, including LTCR, the Disaster Assistance Division, and the 
Federal Coordinator's Office. We also interviewed officials from the 
Small Business Administration and the Departments of Housing and Urban 
Development (HUD) and Agriculture--the three other agencies identified 
in the NRF as primary federal agencies responsible for coordinating 
long-term recovery assistance. In addition, we interviewed and 
obtained documentation about LTCR's coordination efforts during 
recovery from the three disasters selected for our review from state 
and local officials in Texas, Iowa, and Kansas, as identified above. 
We conducted site visits to recovering locations in Texas and Iowa--
the two states that were most recently affected by catastrophic 
disasters (2008). We examined the information obtained in order to 
identify LTCR practices that worked well as well as those that were 
less effective. We compared this information against criteria 
identified in FEMA regulations and policies, as well as the NRF's ESF-
14 long-term community recovery annex, relevant legislation, and our 
previous work on effective coordination and planning practices. These 
criteria describe actions that LTCR should take to expedite, leverage, 
and increase the effectiveness of federal and other long-term recovery 
assistance, including agreeing on roles and responsibilities of the 
parties involved; identifying and addressing needs by leveraging 
resources; convening interagency recovery expertise to provide 
strategic guidance to long-term recovery efforts; coordinating with 
state and local governments to develop long-term recovery plans; and 
identifying and coordinating resolution of policy and program issues, 
among other things. We also identified coordination and planning 
limitations or roadblocks that may have been outside of LTCR's 
control, which affected its ability to more effectively provide 
assistance. With input from federal, state, and local officials 
involved in the review, we identified actions that can be taken by 
FEMA to apply effective practices more broadly and to improve on 
current coordination limitations. 

For the disasters that we selected, we did not choose a representative 
sample of state and local officials to interview. Instead, we chose 
individuals based upon their knowledge, experience, or leadership role 
in disaster recovery. 

* For the tornado that affected Greensburg, Kansas (2007), at the 
state level, we interviewed and obtained documentation from officials 
in the Kansas Development Finance Authority (the official included in 
our review was the Governor's Liaison for Community Recovery) and the 
Kansas Division of Emergency Management (which was the official state 
coordinating agency and grantee for many of the federal recovery 
assistance programs). At the local level, we interviewed a senior 
recovery official from Kiowa County.[Footnote 24] 

* For the Midwest floods in Iowa (2008), at the state level, we 
interviewed and obtained documentation from officials in the Rebuild 
Iowa Office (which served as the policy and coordination office for 
the recovery) and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management 
Division (which was the state coordinating agency and grantee for many 
of the federal recovery assistance programs). At the local level, we 
interviewed and obtained documentation from officials in the City of 
Cedar Rapids, the City of Oakville, and Iowa City. 

* For Hurricane Ike in Texas (2008), at the state level, we spoke with 
officials in the Texas Division of Emergency Management (which was the 
state coordinating agency and grantee for many of the federal recovery 
assistance programs), the Texas Department of Rural Affairs (which was 
responsible for administering the nonhousing portion of HUD's 
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program), and the Texas 
Department of Housing and Community Affairs (which was responsible for 
administering the housing portion of HUD's CDBG program). At the local 
level, we interviewed and obtained documentation from officials in the 
City of Galveston and Galveston County. 

* We conducted this performance audit from April 2009 through March 
2010 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 
standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit 
to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable 
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 
We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for 
our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security: 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security: 
Washington, DC 20528: 

March 24, 2010: 

Mr. Stanley J. Czerwinski: 
Director, Strategic Issues: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street, N.W. 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Dear Mr. Czerwinski: 

RE: Draft Report GAO-10-404 (Reference # 450736) FEMA 's Long-Term 
Community Recovery Assistance was Helpful to State and Local 
Governments but had Some Limitations: 

Thank you for the opportunity to review the draft report concerning 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Long-Term Community 
Recovery Assistance. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and 
FEMA concur with GAO's proposed recommendations. There were four 
recommendations for executive action. We would like to respectfully 
offer the following comments: 

GAO Recommendation # (1): Develop clear and consistent criteria that 
identify factors that determine whether and how the entity responsible 
for coordinating long-term recovery will become involved in a specific 
disaster. Such criteria should provide additional guidance about 
factors that determine whether the entity responsible for coordinating 
and planning becomes involved in recovery. 

DHS Response; DHS concurs with this recommendation. For improved 
clarity, DHS believes that the report narrative and findings must 
address several important points to properly place this recommendation 
in context. Explicit, specific or required criteria have not been set 
for Emergency Support Function (ESF) #14 deployment as there has not 
been sufficient experience with deploying ESF #14, until very 
recently, to warrant the use of specific criteria for decisions. The 
decisions made early in an event must be made with limited 
information. Rather than set arbitrary criteria that would rely on 
limited information, FEMA has issued general guidelines to FCOs and 
has relied on the expert judgment of the FCOs to guide their 
preliminary analysis and request for ESF #14 (See ESF #14 FCO Quick 
Reference Guide). These general guideline criteria should be cited in 
the report. Decisions to deploy ESF #14 are not comparable to 
decisions to authorize disaster assistance programs which, unlike ESF 
#14, bring significant financial entitlements and substantial 
expenditures, as cited in the report. 

The National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF), when published, as 
well as follow-on operational guidance will clarify authority of the 
new Recovery Coordinating Officer, the activation of ESF #14 or its 
new successor, and the points GAO raised. As the report alludes, state 
and local governments are generally unsure of when ESF #14 is 
relevant. The NDRF will help to rectify this situation by providing 
better guidance for state and local governments to be better prepared 
for the challenges of long term disaster recovery. 

DHS believes that smaller disasters have provided a substantial 
learning opportunity for Federal Coordinating Officers, FEMA, other 
federal partners, states and communities. ESF #14 deployments of all 
sizes have also proven to be useful in testing the awareness and 
ability of partner agencies to provide a minimal level of support. 

GAO Recommendation # (2): Establish, as part of the new National 
Disaster Recovery Framework or related efforts, a long term recovery 
structure that more effectively aligns the timing and level of 
involvement of the entity responsible for coordinating long-term 
community recovery assistance with both the capacity of state and 
local governments to work with them and the need for coordination 
assistance which may last beyond the operation of the JFO. One 
approach could allow for the deployment of resources in phases to 
provide long-term recovery assistance tailored to a community's 
evolving needs and could be provided remotely when necessary, similar 
to Long Term Community Recovery Branch's experience during recovery 
from the 2007 tornado in Greensburg, Kansas. 

DHS Response: DHS concurs with this recommendation. For improved 
clarity and to fully reflect findings in the main body of the report, 
DHS suggests this recommendation should also include additional 
language that emphasizes that the federal government should also be 
devoting additional attention and resources to assisting state and 
local governments to prepare for recovery and build their capacity, so 
they can effectively engage in recovery coordination and planning 
before and earlier after disasters. 

DHS is concerned about statements that the federal interagency 
coordination efforts created additional or inappropriate burdens on 
states. The timeframes of recovery supported by ESF #14 align properly 
with an early start to initiating coordination, building relationships 
for coordination, organizing state and local efforts, and launching 
the planning underpinnings that should guide recovery funding 
decisions before the funding arrives; not after decisions have already 
been made by state and local governments. In no case did any ESF #14 
activities interfere with response or other critical activities. DHS 
believes that the federal coordination activities were important for 
the magnitude and very significant funding being provided to the 
states for these disasters. We also believe that the key to addressing 
this issue is to provide additional support to states and localities, 
both pre and post disaster, to be better prepared to address recovery 
challenges early. 

The NDRF will also greatly improve the governmental framework for this 
entire issue by providing states and local governments guidance and 
tools for preparing for and managing disaster recovery, as well as 
identifying the long term support role of the federal government. 
Findings from the GAO 09-811 report (Disaster Recovery: Experiences 
from Past Disasters Offer Insights for Effective Collaboration after 
Catastrophic Events) should also be brought forward and summarized in 
this report to clarify the importance of early recovery planning, 
which is not adequately explained presently. 

GAO Recommendation # (3): Evaluate and assess, as part of the new 
National Disaster Recovery Framework or related efforts, what would be 
an appropriate level of authority for the entity responsible for 
coordinating long-term recovery in order for it to foster effective 
coordination among federal agencies involved in disaster recovery and 
to resolve related policy and program conflicts that may arise.
DHS Response: DHS concurs with this recommendation and has no further 
comment. 

GAO Recommendation # (4); Communicate more clearly the objectives and 
processes used when assessing the value of specific recovery projects 
to help prevent unrealistic expectations about the implementation of 
such projects among members of the impacted community. Toward this 
end, FEMA should resolve any inconsistencies in relevant guidance or 
terminology and take steps to ensure that these assessments 
appropriately reflect the feasibility of projects including their 
importance to state and local leaders as well as the broader community. 

DHS Response: DHS concurs with this recommendation. DHS agrees that 
the processes used to aid communities can be improved through the 
lessons and experiences of ESF #14. We will be further examining the 
appropriate tools and how they are offered and communicated to 
communities as part of the implementation of the NDRF. 

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this draft report and we 
look forward to working with you on future homeland security issues. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Peggy Mayfield, for: 
Jerald E. Levine: 
Director: 
Departmental Audit Liaison Office: 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] LTCR staff initially provided some coordination and planning 
assistance in Louisiana and Mississippi after hurricanes Katrina and 
Rita. However, for the majority of recovery, these responsibilities 
were managed by the presidentially appointed Federal Coordinator for 
Gulf Coast Recovery and the FEMA Gulf Coast Recovery Office. While we 
do not focus on hurricanes Katrina and Rita in this report, we have 
previously reported on a wide range of issues involving recovery from 
these disasters. These reports include GAO, Disaster Recovery: FEMA's 
Public Assistance Grant Program Experienced Challenges with Gulf Coast 
Rebuilding, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-129] 
(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 18, 2008); Gulf Coast Disaster Recovery: 
Community Development Block Grant Program Guidance to States Needs to 
Be Improved, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-541] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 19, 2009); Office of the Federal Coordinator 
for Gulf Coast Rebuilding: Perspectives and Observations, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-411R] (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 10, 
2009); Small Business Administration: Additional Steps Should Be Taken 
to Address Reforms to the Disaster Loan Program and Improve the 
Application Process for Future Disasters, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-755] (Washington, D.C.: July 29, 
2009); and Disaster Assistance: Federal Assistance for Permanent 
Housing Primarily Benefited Homeowners; Opportunities Exist to Better 
Target Rental Housing Needs, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-17] (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 
2010). 

[2] In response to issues raised during recovery from hurricanes 
Katrina and Rita, we have reported on the importance of having clearly 
defined roles and responsibilities of all key participants in 
preparing for, responding to, and recovering from any catastrophic 
disaster. See GAO, Catastrophic Disasters: Enhanced Leadership, 
Capabilities, and Accountability Controls Will Improve the 
Effectiveness of the Nation's Preparedness, Response, and Recovery 
System, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-618] 
(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 6, 2006). More recently, we reported on the 
importance of including nonfederal stakeholders in the process of 
revising the framework. See GAO, National Response Framework: FEMA 
Needs Policies and Procedures to Better Integrate Non-Federal 
Stakeholders in the Revision Process, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-768] (Washington, D.C.: June 11, 
2008). 

[3] The JFO is a temporary federal facility that provides a central 
location for the coordination of federal, state, tribal, and local 
governments and private-sector and nongovernmental organizations with 
primary responsibilities for response and recovery. The FCO is the 
official appointed by the President to commit the resources of FEMA 
and to task other agencies with performing response and recovery 
activities. The FCO is also the primary federal representative 
responsible for coordinating with key state, tribal, and local 
response officials to determine their needs and set objectives for an 
effective response and recovery. 

[4] ESF-14 involvement may sometimes be broader than the 13 agencies 
in fig. 1 because there are several agencies within the listed 
departments that coordinate with FEMA, and LTCR also coordinates with 
entities that are not shown here. In addition to the structure 
outlined in figure 1, ESF-14 has arranged its partners into six 
functional groups to support disaster recovery operations in the areas 
of economic development; housing; infrastructure systems; social and 
human services; community planning and capacity building; and 
environmental, cultural, and historic resources. 

[5] ESF-14 may be activated in headquarters for federal coordination 
and assessment support without deploying assistance to the field to 
provide on-site coordination and planning assistance directly to the 
states. In this report, we discuss the assistance provided directly to 
the state when ESF-14 is deployed to the disaster site. 

[6] See 6 U.S.C. § 771. 

[7] In order to carry out these activities, LTCR operates with a small 
staff of permanent employees, supplemented by contract staff who are 
hired during disaster response and recovery. For example, LTCR 
officials reported that LTCR has had one to two full-time staff from 
its creation until April of 2008. Since 2008, the office has increased 
to five staff. 

[8] We reported that developing more explicit and transparent criteria 
for decisions that trigger federal disaster assistance could provide a 
number of potential benefits, including helping state and local 
governments decide whether they had a valid request to make, enabling 
them to provide more complete and uniform information, and minimizing 
doubts as to whether their requests were treated fairly and equitably. 
GAO, Disaster Assistance: Information on Federal Costs and Approaches 
for Reducing Them, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/T-RCED-98-139] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 
26, 1998). 

[9] We also reviewed a third source of guidance, the ESF-14 FCO Quick 
Reference Guide, which contained similarly broad language. 
Specifically, the guide states that ESF-14 is deployed "in disasters 
with potential significant long-term impacts, where enhanced federal 
coordination and specialized long-term recovery technical assistance 
is necessary. State and/or local capacity for recovery will be 
limited." 

[10] American Samoa officials requested long-term recovery assistance, 
but this assistance was not provided for the disaster. 

[11] GAO, Disaster Recovery: Past Experiences Offer Insights for 
Recovering from Hurricanes Ike and Gustav and Other Recent Natural 
Disasters, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-1120] 
(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 26, 2008). 

[12] This information was obtained from senior officials in the Texas 
Emergency Management Division, the Texas Department of Rural Affairs, 
and the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. These state 
agencies are responsible for administering funds received from the 
largest federal response and recovery grant programs. 

[13] For additional information on the length of time that it took for 
state and local governments to receive CDBG funding after hurricanes 
Katrina and Rita, see [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-17]. 

[14] Under the NRF, ESF-14 functions out of the JFO. Once the JFO 
closes, ongoing long-term recovery activities transition to the 
individual agencies responsible for specific recovery programs and 
activities. 

[15] According to Public Assistance Grant program rules, state and 
local governments applying for Public Assistance Grants typically 
receive less funding in their grant award amounts if they decide to 
build infrastructure that varies from the original design. For more 
information on the operation and limitations of the Public Assistance 
Grant program, see [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-129]. 

[16] See Iowa Executive Order 7 (June 27, 2008), and Iowa House File 
64 (Feb. 2, 2009). 

[17] See [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-411R] and 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-618]. 

[18] Federal officials stated that this challenge often related to the 
lack of funding in some federal assistance programs. Interagency 
coordination meetings did not always include agency officials with the 
authority to approve dedication of agency or departmental resources to 
address the gaps. 

[19] As previously mentioned, when ESF-14 is activated, the National 
Response Coordination Center initially provides national-level 
coordination and information sharing among the agencies for ESF-14. 

[20] While other tools developed by LTCR are utilized and applied by 
the community, LTCR independently applies the Long-Term Community 
Recovery Value Tool to community plans to "produce a summary that 
captures and prioritizes the projects based on their ability to 
stimulate recovery." 

[21] Although the recovery plan listed potential funding sources, city 
officials stated that often the projects were not designed in way that 
made them eligible for the funding identified. 

[22] Although LTCR officials told us that they do not consider this 
process to be a prioritization, guidance documents they provided to us 
use the term prioritization when describing this process. 

[23] LTCR officials reported that the FCO had accelerated the 
reduction of ESF-14 staff deployed for Hurricane Ike. Concerns raised 
by LTCR officials about the staff reduction include uncertainties 
regarding the community's ability to lead, develop, and complete a 
recovery plan without higher-level ESF-14 involvement; the community's 
inability to complete the recovery planning process; and the 
community's inability to access technical specialists to further 
develop recovery projects and strategies and identify funding. 

[24] The local official in the City of Greensburg who was involved 
with ESF-14 during recovery was absent for an extended period of time 
during the data gathering phase of our review. Therefore, we met with 
the local emergency manger involved in the recovery effort. 

[End of section] 

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