FEMA administrator outlines federal response to Hurricane Ian

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• Amna Nawaz:

  And for a look at the federal government's response to Hurricane Ian, I spoke earlier today with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

  Administrator Criswell, thank you so much for joining us.

  We are speaking now as Hurricane Ian is making landfall in Florida. Already, hundreds of thousands of people there don't have power. What is your message to the people of Florida as they are bracing for this storm and the potential damage it'll bring?

• Deanne Criswell, FEMA Administrator:

  You know, as we are seeing Hurricane Ian make landfall right now.

  I still want to remind people that this is a slow-moving storm. They need to make sure that they are keeping themselves and their families safe right now. Our number one priority has been and continues to be search-and-rescue after the storm passes. As we understand that there's some people that didn't evacuate, we want to make sure we're getting into those hardest-hit areas to find people that need our help the most.

  So we're going to focus on that. We're going to continue to prioritize those types of search-and-rescue resources into those areas. We also know that power is — we're going to see more power outages across the state. This is just the beginning. This storm is continuing to move. Power is definitely a priority for us and making sure that we can restore that.

  We also know there's a number of people that are dependent, medically dependent, on power. So we have worked closely with the private utilities, with the local utility companies, the Department of Energy, and we have staged resources to make sure that we can support those critical facilities such as hospitals with any power-related needs that they might have.

• Amna Nawaz:

  We have already heard from Governor DeSantis, saying that there will be widespread outages.

  And Florida's biggest utility is saying that several people in Florida, many of their customers could go days without power. So what is FEMA prepositioning? What are you staged to do to try to get people that power back as quickly as possible?

• Deanne Criswell:

  Yes, Amna, with storms like this, these types of catastrophic impacts, we always see power outages. And, in some parts, it does take days, because not — it's not always the generation side, but it's getting that transmission in that distribution side back connected to homes, so we can restore power.

  We have staged a lot of resources, generators to come in and support primarily critical facilities, especially hospitals. We know that Florida has a really robust capability. And many of the hospitals, if not all of them, have a strong generator capability. But we want to make sure that we have redundant capacity to support any of those types of critical infrastructure needs as they may arise.

  But we have also brought in the Army Corps of Engineers, and they have got personnel ready to go to do emergency power assessments, so we can prioritize where we need to restore power, as well as where we might need to use these types of generators to keep these critical facilities running.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And I heard you say search-and-rescue is a priority. Does that mean, for those who did not evacuate, FEMA will be able to come and help them?

• Deanne Criswell:

  I think there's a couple of pieces on this, right?

  There's definitely some people that did not evacuate. But we're seeing really significant impacts from the storm even well inland with the amount of rain that's happening. Water is not our friend in this situation. And people can be impacted on the coast, but they can also be impacted inland.

  And so we have put together a complement of search-and-rescue resources from both our urban search-and-rescue teams, the Department of Defense, the Department of Interior, the Coast Guard, to complement the really capable resources that are already in the state of Florida. And we have actually chopped those resources down to the local officials so they can use them to get into the areas where they know there's going to be the greatest need.

• Amna Nawaz:

  There are some folks already predicting in disaster modeling this could be one of the costliest storms in U.S. history, estimates of anywhere from $45 billion to $70 billion.

  What do your estimates show you? What are you anticipating here?

• Deanne Criswell:

  Yes, I'm really focused right now on making sure that we're doing everything we can to save lives. We're going to have a lot of time to work through the recovery process and the stabilization of this incident, so we understand what the impacts are.

  I don't doubt that this is going to be one of the costliest storms. But our focus right now and our priority is making sure we're doing everything we can to save lives.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And, of course, we will be following the storm as it hits through Florida in the hours ahead.

  But I have to ask you while I have you, Administrator Criswell, you were also just in Puerto Rico last week, where they're still recovering from Hurricane Fiona. Hundreds of thousands of people there still, 10 days later, do not have power. When can they expect to have that power back?

• Deanne Criswell:

  Yes, we are still actively engaged in the recovery process in Puerto Rico. I got a briefing earlier today on the status, and I know that the power continues to get restored across the island.

  I was just there a week ago, as you mentioned, looking at the impacts from Hurricane Fiona. The parts of the island that I think we're still looking at having to restore power are those parts that are in very hard-to-access areas and those mountainous areas. It's going to take some time to put the power poles back up and reconnect them.

  But what I will say is that what I saw there is that, as they were installing new poles, they're bringing in poles that are going to be more resilient to the future impacts, poles that are going to withstand hurricane-force winds, I believe up to 145-plus miles per hour. That's the type of recovery we want. We want to make sure that, as we're repairing things, we're restoring things, that we're doing it in a way that's making them more resilient to future impacts.

  But we're going to — we're continuing to push with the commonwealth on making sure we get all the resources in there to help them restore the power as quickly as possible.

• Amna Nawaz:

  But when you say it'll take some time, is that a matter of days or weeks?

• Deanne Criswell:

  You know, I think we're — I don't know what the number was this morning. I think it was somewhere around 70, maybe 75 percent was restored. Those last few always take the longest, because they're in the hardest-to-reach areas.

  I don't have a good estimate for you right now.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Administrator, I need to ask you about a report that came out last week.

  It examined FEMA's response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico back in 2017. And it found massive disparities, a bigger response, a faster response in Texas, more money for individual assistance in Texas. What do you make of those disparities? And how do you make sure that they don't continue?

• Deanne Criswell:

  One of the things that I have been super focused on since I took over this position is to make sure that we are having an equitable delivery of our programs to individuals across the United States and the territories that we are charged to serve.

  And we have made a lot of changes in our programs to make sure that we are meeting the needs of those populations that need it the most, those underserved communities, those communities that have had the greatest impact and have the greatest need.

  We are going to continue to do that. And I can't speak to the decisions that were made then, but I can tell you that this administration, under the leadership of President Biden, we are focused on making sure that everybody has an opportunity to get the assistance that they're eligible for and that nobody is left behind.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And, finally, you have said that climate crisis is the crisis of this generation. And we know its role in fueling more frequent, more extreme weather events.

  We also know we're not taking the necessary steps to address it. So does that mean more and tougher work for your agency ahead?

• Deanne Criswell:

  I think what we're seeing is certainly an increase in the number of storms, the intensity of the storms, which just means that they are going to be more complicated as we go through the recovery process.

  We have to get ahead of that. And one of the things that we have been very focused on through our mitigation programs is really investing in helping communities understand what their future risk is going to be, so we can do mitigation measures to help reduce that impact. We can no longer plan our responses or plan our mitigation projects based on historical risk that we have faced in the past, because we're seeing it change.

  And so we have to take those measures now to do that. And, if we don't, it is going to be harder and harder to keep up with the response 10, 20 years from now, if these storms keep growing at the level that we're seeing them grow.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That is FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell joining us.

  And, Administrator, we wish you and your team all the best of luck, and with some difficult days ahead. Thank you.

• Deanne Criswell:

  Thank you very much, Amna.