Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

April 2005 Volume 8 - Number 3

Mitigation Updates...

Pre-Disaster Mitigation Competitive Grant Program - Miami Dade County

By William Haynes

In fiscal year 2003 (FY03), $26 million was allocated for the State of Florida as part of the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Competitive (PDM-C) Grant Program. In 2005, $255 million will be available, which consists of current and previous year allocations that have not been expended by awarded localities. Approximate totals of $144.6 million and $97 million have been respectively allocated for FY04 and FY05. Florida’s portion of FY04 and FY05 allocations are currently undetermined. The goal of this program is to consistently provide the financial support of mitigation activities to help minimize the impacts of disasters and address the fiscal and administrative impacts of response and recovery. Since the devastation of Hurricane Andrew, and the resulting $25 billion tab ($156 million of which was racked-up in Miami-Dade County) FEMA has been focusing more on how mitigation can lessen the potential for overwhelming recovery costs, due to a lack of preparedness.

The Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program is a competitive application process whereby localities and jurisdictions may submit funding applications for evaluation by a technical panel. This evaluation relies heavily on the result of the applicant’s benefit-cost analysis, which may be modified based on the panel’s perceived validity of the results. This is a fiscal year 2005 (FY05) change from prior years, where a numerical weight was previously applied to the benefit-cost ratio based on the panel’s confidence in the analysis results. Additionally, another significant change between FY03 and FY05 is the elimination of the non-competitive component of the grant program.

In FY03 grant recipients in Miami Dade County included the following:

Miami-Dade Co. School Board Jefferson Annex Wind Retrofit $ 654,599

Miami- Fleet Maintenance Garage Retrofit Storm Shutters/Doors $ 564,968

City of Opa-locka-Localized Flood Control $ 1,418,296

Miami Dade’s grants for FY03 total 10% of awards for the State of Florida. The focus of two of these grants is the retrofitting of common structural weakness points, such as roofs, doors, garage doors, and windows. These represent potential penetration points for heavy wind gusts that increase the internal pressure and cause subsequent structural failure. The approximately $650,000 grant for the Miami-Dade County School Board will help provide for windows to be equipped with hurricane barriers and storefront doors to be replaced with missile-resistant glass units. The approximately $565,000 grant to retrofit Miami-Dade’s Fleet Maintenance Garage will help bring a crucial facility, where vehicles belonging to “first responders” are repaired and maintained, up to the region’s stringent building codes.

The $1.4 million awarded to the City of Opa-Locka will be used to upgrade the drainage facilities for the Alexandria Gardens Apartment complex in what Michael D. Brown, undersecretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, called “an essential humanitarian effort.” The combined impact of Hurricane Irene (1999) and a subsequent tropical storm left over 200 residences and entire sections of Opa-locka under water (American City & County).” The situation in Opa-locka is reflective of the problems that many small communities in Miami-Dade experience as a result of independent and often insufficient drains and sewers.