WASHINGTON -- FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell appeared on MSNBC and CNN Monday to promote nearly $5 billion dollars in hazard mitigation grants now available to states, tribes and territories. The nearly $5 billion dollars in grant funding will be available through FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and the Flood Mitigation Assistance program. States, tribes and territories can apply for the grant funding which will help them complete mitigation projects to strengthen their infrastructure and find resilient, long term solutions to chronic hazards.
Criswell joined MSNBC’s Craig Melvin to discuss the funding announcements that were made last week and Monday.
“This new hazard mitigation grant funding is a great opportunity for communities across the nation to identify system-based communitywide mitigation projects that will reduce the impacts of climate change,” Criswell said. “It helps communities address those unique needs that they’re going to face.”
Following MSNBC, the administrator joined CNN’s Victor Blackwell to discuss how this funding will help meet communities’ needs.
“Climate change is the crisis we’re facing now. It is the crisis of our generation,” she said. “We are already seeing the impacts - more severe weather, more frequent storms. What we need to do is think about these future risks ... and where FEMA’s role comes in is to help reduce the impacts. We have to start shifting the way we think from an incremental approach to hazard mitigation into a system based communitywide approach ... we have to start having a focus on investing our money that’s going to have exponential impacts on a community. We develop so many of our projects based on historical risk, and while that is still important, we have to start taking action now to think about that future risk."
Criswell also addressed the growing COVID-19 Delta variant throughout the nation and how FEMA continues helping vaccinations through mobile units and our disaster recovery center.
“FEMA has been helping with this crisis ever since it started,” she said. “We have been providing a lot of ... resources and staffing and personnel to support state and local jurisdictions as they have been experiencing the various surges. The biggest thing we are doing is supporting our vaccine mission ... it is so important that we get everybody vaccinated. We are doing that with mobile vaccination clinics ... and when we open up a recovery center, we are doing that in Michigan now and we did it earlier this year in Louisiana. WE are going to continue this work.”