Thread by @SamLMontano

I have never seen US emergency managers panic over anything as much as they do when someone suggests cutting EMPG funding.

So, we thought we should probably do a bit of research on it. #EMGTwitter

@Gerber_Chavez_ @amsavitt @tbcorbin & @DowneyDavia

The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) is a ~$355 million annual grant program that gives a few million dollars to each state for preparedness-related needs.

This is not a perfect program but for now, it's what we have.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/Z…

EMPG funding is used for a range of things including upgrading equipment, funding education programs, plan development, and most importantly paying emergency managers salaries.

Practitioners and academics have been very clear that this grant must be protected.

You might be like "why is everyone being really intense about $350 million?" In the scheme of what we spend on disasters annually $350 million is pennies?

Well, because EMPG is pretty single handedly holding up a large portion of the US emergency management system.

And if you're like, "Okay, if that's true then why would Congress take it away?"

Well, for one, Congress isn't very bright.

And also, we have a bit of PTSD from DHS' post-9/11 grant thievery.

(Also a big name in our field keeps suggesting it should be eliminated. He's wrong.)

But anyway.

There is a pretty straightforward formula used to determine the amount given to each state but then things get wild from there....Each state gets to decide how to spend their portion of the EMPG funding. Some states are forthcoming about this process. Others are not.

Some states are largely keeping the funding for the state EM agencies, while others are portioning it out to some or all local municipalities, (or some combination of). However, a clear picture of what states were doing with the EMPG funding hadn't been empirically studied...

So, we did a little FOIA and got FEMA to give us the EMPG data. [Incidentally, this data is now available on open source if you want to use it.] One caveat here is that FEMA's data collection process is bananas.

We spent MONTHS cleaning this data to the point of feeling confident in what we have but, frankly, it's not that hard to collect this kind of data. FEMA has to do better with this.

I digress.

So, anyway, as a starting point we really just wanted to know where the EMPG funding is going. From the data we had we were able to look at the county level.

This study's findings indicate that high population, high demographic diversity, a strong economy, and high risk (measured using both the NRI score and the number of federal disaster declarations per county) increased the likelihood that a county would receive EMPG funds.

This analysis shows that rural counties are receiving less EMPG funding. Importantly this is only looking at the county level so it does not include states that distribute funding at the municipal level (e.g., Mass) and it does not include funding going to tribal EM.

This research is just an initial swoosh through the EMPG data (more to come!) It's really important that we get into a position of being able to actually empirically measure the effectiveness of EMPG bc that can help us understand how to fund & distribute it.