Strategies state officials can leverage to improve wildfire recovery

Unlike the broader FEMA PA program, only three categories of work are recoverable by the FMAG program: Category B (emergency protective measures), Category H (firefighting) and Category Z (administrative costs).²

Track costs by category of work: During the response phase, confirm that all categories of work are being tracked both accurately and separately. This investment in upfront separation and tracking will allow an impacted jurisdiction to more rapidly formulate distinct projects that are clearly separated by the required category of work. Additionally, given the FMAG program’s limited categories of work compared to PA, it is paramount to identify costs that are not eligible to be claimed in the program. For example, the FMAG program does not allow for the recovery of comprehensive debris management costs or permanent repairs to public infrastructure damaged by the fire.

The cost for pre-positioning federal, out-of-state and international resources is eligible within the FMAG program if the resources are ultimately used on the declared fire.

Assemble a detailed pre-positioning request package: State emergency managers must promptly request approval to claim pre-positioning cost from their respective FEMA Regional Administrator. To fully recover the costs of pre-positioning assets, it is critical to assemble a detailed pre-positioning request package, which includes the essential elements of information required by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). This package should include at a minimum:

a. A list of all eligible resources being claimed for pre-positioning, which details estimated cost, hours and location used.

b. A technical narrative justifying the need to pre-position, which includes indicators such as forecasts, statewide fire conditions and resource availability.³

Fire conditions leading to the initial FMAG declaration may lead to additional fires within the same jurisdiction, which would then be subsequently declared with separate unique FMAG declaration numbers.

Proactively document work performed for each fire: Jurisdictions face enhanced challenges with grant management and project formulation when managing multiple FMAG declarations, which stem from fires in geographic or temporal proximity and when resources are shared between fires. Such a scenario increases the risk that documentation, such as activity logs, timecards and invoices, may not maintain distinct incident separation and allocation. To mitigate this risk, it is a leading practice for the incident management team to proactively communicate to responders the need to track costs separately between multiple fires. The objective is to conclude the response with accurate and fire-specific supporting documentation that the grant specialist can use to formulate projects for separate declarations.