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FEMA released the 12th annual National Preparedness Report, which provides an overview of the nation’s current disaster risk and capability landscape and outlines progress toward achieving the national preparedness goal of a secure and resilient country. This year’s report continues to highlight the reality of rising costs and the frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change as a challenge being faced across all levels of government.
From analyzing 2022 data and looking at trends over decades, FEMA identified preparedness for ongoing community-level risk factors from large-scale disasters and cyber threats, gaps in individual and household preparedness and the lack of building code adoption as key areas for improvement to increase national resilience.
Building community-wide resilience sets the foundation for successful response and recovery efforts. Governments need to work with non-governmental partners and the private sector to ensure holistic preparedness and a full understanding of both the impacts of disasters and the capabilities needed to manage them. This year’s report provides concrete recommendations that partners and stakeholders across the whole community can take to increase the nation’s resilience.
To read the full report, go to fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness#reports.
On Friday, Dec. 1, the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation continued its tradition of honoring America’s fallen firefighters with the annual Fire Hero Family Tree Lighting.
The tree lighting took place at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Chapel on the National Fire Academy campus as part of the foundation’s annual Winter Family Retreat. After the ceremony, families placed holiday greens at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial.
The Fire Hero Family trees feature ornaments from the families and departments of America’s Fire Heroes from around the country and will remain on display in the Chapel throughout the holiday season.
 U.S. Fire Administration Dr. Lori Moore Merrell delivered remarks at the Fire Hero Family Tree Lighting to honor fallen firefighters.
U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Academy met with the National Native American Fire Chiefs Association (NNAFCA) to discuss a brand-new Chief Officer Development Program for Tribal Nations fire and EMS leaders in 2024. The goal of the new course is to address the uniqueness of leading and working in Tribal Nations.
To help launch the Chief Officer Development Program, the National Fire Academy is organizing the first two deliveries of the program. Each run of the program will span two days and give participants opportunities to complete the program based on the current class offerings. Participants who successfully complete the program will receive a National Fire Academy certificate and will be able to seek college credit for their work.
The academy offers hundreds of classes off-campus each year around the nation to thousands of state, local, tribal and territorial fire and EMS personnel and allied responders free of charge, thanks to a solid partnership with state fire training directors.
FEMA seeks feedback on the draft guide, “Climate Adaptation Planning for Emergency Managers,” until Feb. 9, 2024, to help emergency managers incorporate climate adaptation into emergency management planning efforts.
FEMA will host a series of 60-minute webinar sessions to provide an overview of the draft guide and include facilitated discussions with stakeholders to help improve the existing draft and gather feedback from all community partners. The guide is designed to walk state, local, tribal and territorial partners through the Six Step Planning Process identified in the “Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans,” highlighting existing climate mapping tools and potential funding resources.
FEMA is seeking feedback that can be incorporated into the guide, particularly real-world case studies. A line-numbered version of the draft guide is also available to allow individuals to provide comments on specific areas within the document.
To review the document and learn more about the webinar sessions, visit the FEMA website.
If you work in state, local, tribal, territorial government, emergency management, or a child-centric organization, it’s important to make sure your community is prepared to help children before, during, and after disasters. FEMA developed a suite of materials to help you collaborate between governments and organizations, enhance understanding, and incorporate children’s needs into your plans, policies and programs. Resources on the Community Preparedness: Integrating the Needs of Children workshop page provides a unique opportunity to strengthen the relationships between key members of your community and can play an essential role in improving the entire community’s ability to prepare for and respond to disasters.
You can use the manuals and guides to conduct interactive workshops either in person or online to foster meaningful engagement between community partners to advance disaster preparedness planning. The workshop was intentionally designed to:
- Teach participants about the unique needs of children and their families and what organizations can do to incorporate those needs into their emergency management plans.
- Provide flexibility so different audiences can customize it to fit their needs.
Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand the importance of integrating child-specific concerns throughout their community’s emergency management program(s).
- Identify necessary stakeholders to include in planning efforts.
- Examine policy and program planning requirements that should be assessed for child-specific needs.
- Incorporate child safeguarding principles into planning efforts.
Visit the workshop website to download the instructor and participant guides, presentation slides and an informational one-pager that can be used to promote the workshop.
FEMA helps people before, during and after their worst days. To do this, we ensure our work meets the needs of all communities and individuals we serve by removing barriers so they can access our programs. A critical part of this work is ensuring the civil rights of those we serve in all the work we do, from grants to disaster relief.
DHS and FEMA advanced these efforts by publishing the fact sheet: Protecting Individuals from Discrimination Based on Actual or Perceived Shared Ancestry or Ethnic Characteristics. This fact sheet is now available in multiple languages, including Hebrew, Spanish, Punjabi, Yiddish, Arabic and Urdu. The resource describes Title VI protections for individuals of all faith traditions, such as people who identify as Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist.
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies to all programs and activities supported by federal financial assistance. These protections are wide-ranging and provide important tools to prevent and curb discrimination and prohibit certain forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic and related forms of discrimination and bias.
This historic interagency effort expands our commitment to further protect the civil rights of faith-based communities. It is part of the DHS initiative to implement the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism and clarifies that Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic and related forms of discrimination and bias in federally funded programs and activities.
For more information, visit DHS.gov.
FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has launched a campaign to raise awareness of increased flood risk due to wildfires.
The Flood After Fire campaign began Nov. 6 and will continue through Jan. 21, 2024. It uses historical burn scar data to target counties in regions 6, 9 and 10 that have experienced wildfires in the past five years.
Because charred soil and burnt vegetation are unable to absorb water, homes and businesses are at greater risk of dangerous mudflows and flooding every time it rains for up to five years after a wildfire. The campaign encourages homeowners, business owners and renters to purchase or renew their flood insurance policies to protect themselves against the increased financial risk of flooding.
Paid media tactics for the Flood After Fire campaign include radio, banner ads, paid search and more, reaching a broad English- and Spanish-speaking audience. The campaign includes email outreach to insurance agents to help them better understand this unique risk and support their clients.
For the first time, the campaign also features paid social media ads on Meta—Facebook and Instagram—allowing the NFIP to broaden its reach and share important resources with a larger audience.
Learn more about the risk of #FloodAfterFire at floodsmart.gov/wildfires. This page is also available in Spanish at floodsmart.gov/incendios-forestales.
FEMA will host a webinar to provide information, guidance and answer questions related to duplication of benefits for Public Assistance applicants who receive patient care revenue related to COVID-19 projects.
The webinar will include information and updates on the Standard and Alternate Methods for project reviews and participants will have an overview of Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center efforts to improve process efficiency.
This webinar will build upon and reflect the initial guidance shared during the Summer 2022 webinars. The COVID-19 Patient Care Revenue Duplication of Benefits Update and Q&A Webinar will be held at 2 p.m. ET on Dec. 15.
For more information on FEMA’s COVID-19 recovery efforts, visit Bringing Resources to State, Local, Tribal & Territorial Governments | FEMA.gov.
The Planning Guidance for Responding to and Recovering from Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) Incidents: After the Initial Response provides planners with a framework for the sustained response to and recovery from a radiological dispersal device incident occurring anywhere within the United States, its territories or in tribal nations.
This publication provides a starting point to enable emergency planners, responders and jurisdictional leaders to identify, prioritize and implement response and recovery strategies tailored to specific radiological dispersal device scenarios they may face.
This guidance includes how to best determine and select protective measures, remediation options and incident objectives, as well as a socioeconomically responsible long-term recovery effort. It will also help emergency planners and leaders formulate timely, effective and equitable decisions in the face of incomplete data and high levels of uncertainty, as is often the case in the early phases of an incident involving radiological materials.
To access the document, visit https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/hazardous-response-capabilities/oet-tools.
The 2024 Southeast Private-Public Partnership Summit will be held in Pearl, Mississippi, from Jan. 31 to Feb. 1, 2024. This two-day event brings together non-governmental and private sector partners with federal, state, and local emergency management representatives. Emergency managers in the private sector will join in discussions about the challenges we face as emergency management leaders to better help survivors.
The summit will be hosted by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, FEMA Region 4 and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Participants will include Deputy FEMA Administrator Erik Hooks and emergency management professionals from the private sector.
The summit will include interactive discussions about the challenges we face during disasters, giving us the opportunity to:
- Exchange ideas and solutions with private sector risk management specialists.
- Participate in facilitated discussion sessions to better understand the private sector capabilities.
- Gain a better understanding of how, in true partnerships, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.
- Garner has a better understanding of how the private sector operates during a disaster through simulated events.
Register for the summit by visiting the 2024 Southeast Private-Public Partners Summit | January 31, 2024 - February 01, 2024 (eventcreate.com). Hotel information will be emailed to you once you register.
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FEMA Webinar Focuses on Disaster Resources from Other Federal Agencies
FEMA will host a webinar on Wednesday, Dec. 13, focused on Other Federal Agency disaster assistance resources, capabilities and mechanisms that support survivors.
Co-hosted by FEMA’s Voluntary Agency Liaisons and the DHS Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the webinar will highlight resources, tools or examples of practices that explore different disaster resources supporting people before, during and after disasters.
The webinar will be held at 2 p.m. ET on Dec. 13. Please register at ZOOM using the passcode: FEMAVAL.
For further questions, please email FEMA-VAL@fema.dhs.gov.
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FEMA Hosts Webinar on How to Develop an Incident After-Action Report in Spanish
FEMA will host a webinar on how to develop after-action reports for real-world incidents from 1-2 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 14. This webinar, held by the agency’s Continuous Improvement Technical Assistance Program, will emphasize approaches for completing incident after-action reviews outlined in FEMA’s National Continuous Improvement Guidance. Please note that this webinar will be presented in Spanish.
To attend the webinar, register in advance by visiting the event page on FEMA.gov and click the "Register Here" button. If an issue arises while registering or logging in, email FEMA-CITAP@fema.dhs.gov.
Participe en el seminario en línea en español de FEMA sobre cómo desarrollar un informe de resultados de un incidente
El Programa de Asistencia Técnica de Mejora Continua (CITAP, por sus siglas en inglés) de FEMA organizará un seminario en línea en español sobre cómo desarrollar informes de resultados (AAR, por sus siglas en inglés) para incidentes en el mundo real, de 1p.m. a 2 p.m., hora del Este, el jueves 14 de diciembre de 2023. Este seminario en línea enfatizará los enfoques para completar revisiones posteriores a la acción de un incidente descritos en la Guía Nacional de Mejora Continua de FEMA.
Los AAR siguen siendo el producto más común de mejora continua en el manejo de emergencias. Durante este seminario en línea, FEMA equipará a los participantes con un enfoque posterior a la acción sistemático para identificar y desarrollar las fortalezas y mejores prácticas potenciales y abordar áreas de mejora. El seminario en línea también revisará los recursos enfocados en el desarrollo de AAR que están disponibles en el sitio web del kit de herramientas de preparación de FEMA.
Para asistir al seminario en línea, inscríbase con anticipación visitando la página del evento en FEMA.gov y haga clic en el botón "Register Here". Si surge alguna dificultad al inscribirse o iniciando la sesión, por favor comuníquese a través de correo electrónico a: FEMA-CITAP@fema.dhs.gov.
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Application Period Now Open for Vanguard Executive Crisis Leaders Fellowship
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced that the agency is accepting nominations for the 2024 cohorts of the Vanguard Executive Crisis Leaders Fellowship. The program brings together the most experienced crisis leaders from different sectors, including federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private, academic and non-profit.
There will be three cohorts in 2024: February/April, May/June and July/August. Each cohort will comprise 25 participants representing federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, academic, non-profit, philanthropic and private sector crisis leaders. The application for all 2024 cohorts closes Dec. 15.
Executive leaders interested in applying should submit their resume, personal statement and preferred cohort dates to fema-emi-superintendent@fema.dhs.gov. For additional details on the application process, visit www.training.fema.gov/programs/vanguard.
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Tribal Consultation Informs Cyber Grant Program
On Nov. 1, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) held their eighth tribal consultation to discuss the Tribal Cybersecurity Grant Program with dozens of tribal representatives. The application deadline for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Tribal Cybersecurity Grant Program is Wednesday, Jan. 10.
Consultations began in June 2022 to provide structured communication for tribal input and feedback, with the goal of using this feedback from Tribal leaders and representatives to shape policies and procedures for grant programs. This includes the Tribal Cybersecurity Grant Program, the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program and the Emergency Management Grant Program, among others.
The tribal cyber grant program, which began in FY 2022, provides funding to federally recognized tribal governments to address cybersecurity risks and threats to information systems owned or operated by or on behalf of tribes. The most recent consultation is being used to improve the program for FY 2024.
The FY 2023 program funding is $18.2 million, including unused rollover funding from the FY 2022 State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. To learn more about the Tribal Cybersecurity Grant Program, including several changes based on input from the consultation, visit FEMA.gov.
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FEMA Publishes Resources for Developing BRIC and FMA Grant Applications
On Oct. 12, FEMA announced $1.8 billion available in funding for the Fiscal Year 2023 Building Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) and Flood Mitigation Assistance grant programs. The BRIC funding level will be $1 billion and the Flood Mitigation Assistance funding level will be $800 million.
FEMA published several program support materials and launched a series of webinars and on-demand videos that provide important resources and information for prospective applicants and sub-applicants. These resources can be used to help develop applications for these two FEMA hazard mitigation grants. The application period for both programs closes on Feb. 29, 2024.
These program support materials are resources to help state, local, tribal and territorial governments prepare applications for this grant cycle. The following program support materials are:
Information about the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities and Flood Mitigation Assistance Funding Opportunities Webinar Series is available online and includes an opportunity to watch the video or download the presentation. This webinar provides an overview of and guidance on how to request Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Direct Technical Assistance in fiscal year 2023. More information about this opportunity is available on the BRIC Direct Technical Assistance webpage. Please complete this form by Feb. 29, 2024.
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FEMA Announces $211M to Fund Dam Safety Grants
FEMA will commit more than $211 million in funding to enhance dam safety efforts across the nation to ensure that communities have the critical infrastructure needed to protect against disasters and prevent flooding.
The Rehabilitation of High Hazard Potential Dams program is making about $185 million available, and another approximately $26 million is available through the National Dam Safety State Assistance Grant Program. The investments funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help protect communities from flooding, avoid disaster costs and strengthen resilience to climate change.
The National Dam Safety State Assistance Grant Program is available for any state or territory with an enacted dam safety program. The state administrative agency or an equivalent state agency, is eligible to apply. Each eligible state or territory may submit only one grant application. The funding opportunities are open now and will close on Feb. 29, 2024. Available opportunities may be found on Grants.gov.
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FEMA Administrator Unveils New Tribal Strategy Progress Report at National Congress of American Indians Convention
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, speaking to more than 2,000 tribal leaders and emergency managers at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) 80th Annual Convention, unveiled FEMA’s first of its kind 2023 Tribal Strategy Progress Report and announced the opening of registration for the ninth annual Tribal Nations Training Week, to be held in March 2024.
The training will be held March 9-16, 2024, at FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama. For nearly a decade, FEMA has provided no-cost, in-person training for tribal leaders, tribal emergency managers, communications, information technology, grants, health care staff and even Indian Health Services staff. In 2023, 215 students from 77 Tribal Nations attended, and FEMA seeks to increase participation for 2024.
The 2023 Tribal Strategy Progress Report and accompanying Fiscal Year 2023 FEMA Tribal Engagement Map are available on the FEMA Tribal Affairs web page.
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FEMA Announces Second Round of Funding to Mitigate Repetitive Flooding
Another $300 million in Swift Current funding is available to help property owners across the nation become more resilient to flooding. This funding opportunity is the second time that FEMA is using funds from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for Swift Current, part of the Flood Mitigation Assistance program. Swift Current makes homes safer and more resilient for National Flood Insurance Program policyholders with repetitively flooded properties. To be eligible, buildings must be insured through the National Flood Insurance Program.
FEMA will work with states, Tribes and territories to explore their participation during this cycle. Potential applicants who have questions may contact their FEMA regional office. The application period opened on Nov. 15 and the last eligible disaster declaration date is May 31, 2024. The funding opportunity is available on Grants.gov.
As we approach the end of the year, FEMA extends its appreciation for your support to our collective mission of helping people before, during and after disasters.
During the holiday season, FEMA's Bulletin will be on a brief hiatus. Please note that the FEMA Bulletin will not be published on Dec. 26 and Jan. 2.
The FEMA Bulletin will resume on Jan. 9, bringing you a new year filled with updates and resources for emergency management and preparedness.
In the meantime, visit FEMA.gov for any immediate information or updates.
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