 its resources on small ones.
FEMA's failures with those hurricanes are well-documented. But this has been overlooked: The day Harvey made landfall near Houston, 4,948 emergency workers were deployed to other disasters or were unavailable, meaning that almost half of the agency's emergency workforce was tied up when the first sheets of rain began to inundate large parts of Texas. Harvey would prove to be the wettest hurricane in U.S. history; it unleashed 60 inches of rain.
"FEMA is dying a death by 1,000 cuts," said Brock Long, who served as FEMA administrator until March, in an interview. "When Harvey hit, we didn't have enough staff in my opinion to be able to deploy to the largest events. We were out in the field staffing too many small to medium disasters."
"When the Stafford Act was created, it was not the intent to take care of the routine, reoccurring disasters," former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said, referring to the 1988 law governing disaster response. "We've declared disasters when states were sitting on $1 billion in reserves."
"It's like stepping into a buzz saw the minute you say they're not going to get a [disaster] declaration," Fugate said.
Those deployments leave "a fraction of the agency's capacity to prepare for and respond to complex catastrophes and national security emergencies," FEMA said in an evaluation of its response to the 2017 hurricanes. "These constraints affect the agency's readiness to respond without unacceptable delays."
FEMA's solution was to have states manage small disasters while the agency reimbursed their costs and helped them get better at responding to the events. That would keep FEMA workers available for major disasters.
That goal hasn't been achieved. Now the agency is in an even more precarious situation than it was two years ago. There hasn't been a permanent administrator at FEMA since Long left five months ago.
After tornadoes hit Ohio in late May, the agency approved Gov. Mike DeWine's request for aid and opened nine recovery centers to help individuals and families get emergency grants. Disaster aid is requested by governors and approved by the president, who issues a "disaster declaration" following FEMA's recommendation.
"When you start to add up all of these small and modest-sized disasters, they make a dent in the capacity of the federal government. But it also sends a long-term negative message to states and local governments that we don't need to be as prepared as we ought to because the federal government will continue to offer assistance," said Gavin Smith, a former director of a Department of Homeland Security resiliency research center in North Carolina.
The strain on FEMA comes as states have pulled back financially. In 2017, aggregate state spending on emergency management agencies plummeted to $466 million, according to the latest biennial report of the National Emergency Management Association. That's less than a quarter of the $2.1 billion spent by states in 2003.
States handle many small disasters without FEMA, and they need federal help for larger events, said Brad Richy, the association's president.
"When you start talking about rebuilding public infrastructure that's been damaged, that's a huge challenge for any state to take on," said Richy, who is director of the Idaho Office of Emergency Management.
States have resisted FEMA's efforts to cede disaster oversight. When FEMA said in 2001 that it would "devolve major management" of small disasters to "interested states," state officials weren't interested.
"A lot of states don't have full-time disaster teams. They don't even have disaster reservists," Zimmerman said. "They're like, that's what FEMA does, so why would we do it?"
At a Senate hearing in April 2018, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) voiced a concern shared by many small-state lawmakers when she questioned Long's wish to pull FEMA back from disasters that cause a couple of million dollars' worth of damage. "In my state, that's a huge disaster," Hassan said.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) appeared to support Long, telling him that if states "get addicted to FEMA, they're going to be less inclined to really produce that culture of emergency preparedness that you're talking about."
Corbett's $24,530,675 estimate seemed solid. It included a county-by-county cost breakdown, six pages of weather data and a 10-page narrative.
FEMA sets a dollar threshold based on the population of each state. When state officials seek FEMA aid, they must show that disaster cleanup, infrastructure repairs and public safety will cost more than their state's threshold.
FEMA validated Corbett's estimate, and President Obama approved Disaster 4149 on Oct. 1, 2013.
Corbett's estimate was way off. But it opened the door to a smorgasbord of federal help that can funnel billions of dollars into a single state.
FEMA's public assistance pays 75% to 100% of cleanup, repairs and public safety. The Individual Assistance Program gives households up to $34,900 for temporary housing and other emergency expenses. Hazard-mitigation grants pay communities to windproof buildings, move them out of floodplains and take other preventative steps. And the Small Business Administration gives business owners and homeowners low-interest loans.
And if the state's damage estimate turns out to be wrong, there are no consequences.
When FEMA closed the books on Corbett's Pennsylvania disaster in January 2019, the cost of cleanup and repairs turned out to be $15.9 million — 39% below the estimate.
If Corbett had projected the damage correctly, FEMA would have rejected his request for aid. A $15.9 million disaster in a state as populous as Pennsylvania would fall well short of FEMA's cost threshold.
Ruth Miller, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, said the overestimates occurred because the request was put together by people who "were new to the job or unfamiliar with" FEMA's process for disaster funding.
Corbett's erroneous estimate was part of a long and costly pattern of governors overstating damage — and FEMA approving them.
State officials didn't tell FEMA about the insurance coverage because they didn't know about it until after the disaster aid was approved, said Micki Trost of the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
"States are biased because if it's marginally close to the threshold, they're going to do everything they can to show enough damage to get to that threshold," said Fugate, the former FEMA administrator.
FEMA is supposed to scrutinize aid requests by assembling "damage assessment field teams" of federal, state and local officials to "validate damage and evaluate impact," according to FEMA's Damage Assessment Operations Manual.
"We're trying to get the best information we can in short windows," Fugate said. "A lot of damage is hard to see."
Fugate downplayed the significance of overestimates that result in unnecessary federal aid. "If you end up declaring something and it wasn't that bad, the only people who get excited about that are auditors," he said.
In 1986, FEMA developed a simple approach to assessing state capabilities. Rather than analyzing state finances or revenue potential, FEMA decided that states would be able to handle disasters that caused damage equal to the state's population.
FEMA's approach was built around what it called an "indicator." That was the amount of money a state would have to spend per state resident to get FEMA aid.
Instead, it's $1.50. That's "artificially low," according to the GAO and "not a measure of a jurisdiction's fiscal capacity to address the damages caused by a disaster."
FEMA's concessions have forced federal taxpayers to pay states $2.2 billion in disaster aid that would not have been paid under FEMA's original plan for increasing its indicator, E&E News found in analyzing the 647 disasters. That's in addition to the $1.2 billion that FEMA spent unnecessarily on disasters that fell short of cost thresholds.
FEMA itself acknowledged in 1999 that the indicator "may not be the best measurement of a state's capability" but said it is "simple, clear, consistent."
Fugate's solution was not so simple and clear. He proposed in 2016 replacing the indicator with a "disaster deductible" that would require states to invest in prevention through steps such as strengthening building codes and mitigating hazards. States could not get FEMA aid until they made investments — the so-called deductible — to reduce disaster damage.
"As long as we are pricing risk so low, there's not much incentive for states and locals to make changes that need to be made in the face of growing disaster costs," Fugate said.
"It's all about money," he said. "State and local governments have transferred almost all of their risk for natural hazards to the national taxpayer."
Q: how to watch object state in React.js Here is my app code:
const [myState, setMyState] = useState(() => {
    return {
        flag1: false,
        flag2: false
    }
})

useEffect(() => {
    console.log(myState)
}, [myState])

setMyState({...myState, flag1: true })

Last row triggers useEffect() but console output shows old state:
{flag1: false, flag2: false}

What am I doing wrong? I want to watch when all flag fields and once these are true - then I'll execute some code in use