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Although natural disasters have been known to destroy life and property, few calamities have hit the United States hard as Hurricane Katrina. More than 1300 people lost their lives; quantitative losses amounted to more than $75 billion. Has this spurred new government initiatives in research on disasters and their mitigation? The $80K grant by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to UMR might lead one to conclude thus.
However, according to Dr. Ronaldo Luna, Associate Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at UMR, the proposal for this grant was submitted last summer, long before Katrina struck. David Hoffman, Associate Research Engineer at the Natural Hazards Mitigation Institute at UMR further clarifies, "Hurricane Katrina only slowed the funding several months as FEMA personnel were busy reacting to the hurricane and did not have time to process the grant application. The original UMR grant application was submitted through SEMA (State Emergency Management Agency) last January. All of the FEMA PDM grants go through the SEMA, the grantee, to the other applicants who are sub-grantees. SEMA acts as the administrative agent for FEMA. We were notified in July that our grant was selected for funding but some expense items were disallowed because UMR had not submitted adequate documentation. This required that the application be revised which was completed in early August. Then Hurricane Katrina hit in late August causing the paperwork processing slowdown. The funding agreement and authorization were completed as of January 3, 2006." Hoffman is the leading researcher on this project.
According to Hoffman, the total grant money is for $105,932 with $79,317 (~75%) coming from FEMA and $26,614 (~25%) in UMR matching funds. FEMA requires a 25% match for this type of grant, a Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Grant. Almost all of the funding is related to personnel salary costs, with only $3000 allocated for travel and printing. The salary costs would cover reimbursements for Hoffman, Luna, a graduate student, University administrators and Physical Facilities personnel. How does this allocation compare with other schools that have received FEMA grants? "I have not checked this, but we asked for the maximum allowed." Hoffman adds, "We asked for what we thought would be needed to do the UMR Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Plan."
What would be focus of the project? "We will consider all applicable natural hazards/disasters as those are what FEMA is providing the grant money to do. We will also consider to a limited extent some man-made hazards/disasters but FEMA will not pay for that in this grant. The applicable FEMA natural hazards we will consider are earthquake, windstorm, fire, flood, freezing, mud/landslide, severe ice storm, snow and tornado. Non-applicable FEMA natural hazards we will not consider are coastal storm, hurricane, tsunami, typhoon and volcano," says Hoffman. The primary goal is to prepare a mitigation plan for UMR and get it approved by FEMA. Only after FEMA has accepted a mitigation plan for UMR, or any other entity, will it accept additional PDM grant applications and consider funding the additional PDM grants to "build" ("bricks and mortar") actual mitigation projects. As with the planning grant, the project grants require a 25% match with FEMA funding the remaining 75%.
Historically have such grants been allocated to schools before? "Yes, but it is not popular says Luna. This is not traditional research, so it needs a campus commitment between administrators, faculty, staff and students," says Luna. Hoffman adds that the Metropolitan Community College - Kansas City is another Missouri school to have received a similar grant under the FEMA PDM program (see SEMA Mitigation Newsletter, http://sema.dps.mo.gov/mitnews.pdf.
About the researchers, Hoffman has a long standing interest in natural hazards, mitigation and engineering solutions. "My previous job at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Land Survey, until I retired, was as the natural hazards geologist/engineering geologist. This involved identification, evaluation, dissemination of information, research and mitigation of natural hazards, especially earthquakes. After retirement I came to work part time at UMR to work with the UMR Natural Hazards Mitigation Institute (NHMI). I had worked on a number of collaborative projects with NHMI prior to coming to work at UMR," he adds.
Luna is interested in identification of hazards, vulnerabilities and development of mitigation strategies.
With this project, UMR makes its forays into disaster mitigation research. This could provide crucial solutions for planning strategies before a disaster strikes or responding adequately after it has struck. As Luna puts it, "Our vulnerabilities based on the potential hazards- that is what we are to research."
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