 Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us for the webinar today. My name is Jessica Unger and I'm the Emergency Programs Coordinator of the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, or FAIC. We're so pleased to be able to offer today's program as a part of a webinar series that addresses the needs of Alliance for Response communities and other cooperative disaster networks nationwide. These programs are made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We hope that you'll be able to join us for the other programs in this series and you'll see that we have several sessions coming up later this month. We'll be addressing topics that are essential to cooperative disaster networks, including how to put together successful tabletop exercises, how to communicate effectively during an emergency, and how to successfully seek funding for your projects. Before we dive into the presentation, a couple of technical notes. On your screen you'll see several boxes, including one labeled chat on the left side, one labeled web links, and one labeled files on the bottom. Use the chat box to say hello, ask questions, and share information. If you post a question, you'll receive a response either from me or my colleague Tiffany Emig. Any questions will be noted, collected, and I will ask them of the presenter. To use the web links box, click on the link that you want to see in order to highlight it blue. Then click on the browse to button to go to that site. In the files box, likewise, click on the file that you want to download, highlight it blue, then hit the download file button. If you are unable to attend any of the upcoming sessions, don't fret. We will record all programs and host the sessions on AIC's YouTube channel, which is at youtube.com-user-ai-conservation. It's more easily accessible via the web link box, which you can see below. The first opportunity to test that out, and you note that actually the link will take you directly to the previous recordings for the past webinars in the series, and that link will be where you will find all future programming as well. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Alliance for Response Initiative, I wanted to give a bit of context about the history and goals of the program. Alliance for Response began almost 15 years ago with a key mission in mind, to help communities more effectively protect their cultural and historic resources. The immediate objectives are to build relationships, initiating an ongoing dialogue between cultural institutions and emergency managers and first responders, to educate cultural heritage and emergency management professionals, working to raise awareness of the need to protect cultural and historic resources within communities, encouraging disaster planning and mitigation at archives, historic sites, libraries, and museums, and finally to develop strong ongoing networks to facilitate effective local response. Today's session really works to hit on all three of these goals. We'll be tapping into the knowledge base of emergency professionals to gain insight into the public assistance process, building relationships between our communities, educating ourselves, and developing those tools that can be helpful in building more effective network and response. Many of you might be familiar with Alliance for Response as an initiative of heritage preservation, but in May of 2015 heritage preservation closed its doors. Fortunately many of its programs transferred to the foundation of the American Institute for Conservation at that time. Alliance for Response and other emergency initiatives at heritage preservation joined forces with the emergency initiatives currently underway at FAIC, including the National Heritage Responders, formerly known as AIC CERT, a team of trained collections care professionals who provide on-the-ground support for impacted cultural heritage institutions. You can find out more information about the National Alliance for Response Initiative and the existing networks by visiting our website at heritageemergency.org slash AFR. Again you can access the link by clicking on the web links box below. As those of you who have been through the public assistance process know it can be somewhat difficult to decipher especially when you're dealing with responding to and recovering from a disaster. So for today's program we're so fortunate to be joined by Chris Holmes and our discussant Rick Lord who will help walk us through this process. Chris has been the chief of public assistance programs for the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, DHSES, for 13 years. DHSES administers FEMA disaster recovery programs in New York and its portfolio for the public assistance infrastructure repair program currently approaches 20 billion for various open disasters with 16 billion related to Superstorm Sandy alone. Before moving to DHSES headquarters Chris served as the regional director for nine DHSES Hudson Valley in Catskill counties. Chris's work experience also includes logistics and management positions in the private sector, 12 months stint at the United States African Command, AFCOM, and Stuttgart, Germany and supporting emergency management professionals in developing nations through the Department of Defense's state partnership program. Chris has a BS from Union College and is connected to New York. Rick Lord is New York State's New York State Hazard Mitigation Officer and the chief of mitigation programs for the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services in the DHSES which administers FEMA disaster recovery programs in New York. Key mitigation projects include protecting critical New York City infrastructure using 9-11 funds, acquiring homes at risk for flooding with 120 million, 128 million provided after Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, and resiliency projects utilizing nearly 1.5 billion in mitigation funding received as a result of Superstorm Sandy. Previously he served as Deputy Chief of Public Assistance under Chris Holmes, our featured speaker today. Rick also spent 22 years with the New York State Historic Preservation Office, SHIPO, where he performed technical and compliance reviews for state and federal undertakings including those funded by FEMA. Prior to that he worked with low and moderate income property owners to rehabilitate neighborhoods around the New York State Capitol in Albany. He received a BS and BRC degrees from Rensselaer Institute in Troy, New York in 1981. Before I turn things over to Chris and Rick, we wanted to get a sense of who is on the webinar today. So to that end we have just a few quick poll questions. First up, are you currently involved with an Alliance for Response Network? Please go ahead and share your responses. Great, and I'll go ahead and broadcast the results. So it looks like not everyone chimed in, but of those of you who did we have a majority who are currently involved with AFR, but quite a few who are not. So I hope that those of you who are not involved will consider either becoming involved with a local group or possibly even forming your own. Okay, next question. For those of you who are involved with an Alliance for Response Network, are you familiar with those outside of your own region? For those of you who have joined us on previous Alliance for Response webinars, you'll recognize some of these slides and these questions as well, but it's really helpful to see who here is involved currently with Alliance for Response and your knowledge of others in other networks. So it's great to see that those who are involved do tend to have good lines of communication open with other networks. Another question. If you're here in the U.S., what region are you from? Generally the northeast, southeast, midwest, southwest, or west. Okay, great, a lot of east coast representation. And final question. Hopefully this is going up over. It's not seeming to... Oh no, it seems our final poll question. There we go, it's open now. Have you ever applied for public assistance after a disaster? So we're just curious who's familiar with this process. Great, thank you so much. So it looks like many of you have not had this experience before, so I think it's going to be very helpful for those who've never been through the process to learn a bit about what that looks like in order to make sure that you have all the appropriate information prepared. Great, well thank you all so much for your input on that. And with that, I would love to turn things over to our wonderful speakers for today, Chris Holmes and Rick Lord. Good afternoon everyone, this is Chris Holmes out of the lovely, warm and wet area of Albany right now, taking some of that southeast moisture here and enjoying it as it melts all our snow. For those of you that are familiar with our two colleges, this is one of the few times that you'll see a Dutchman from Union and an engineer from RPI actually collegially participating together, but we really do enjoy it and are looking forward to being able to walk you through the public assistance process. I'm going to warn you right up front that this stuff is indeed made out of governmentium, which means it's incredibly dense, it's awfully boring and it has a moisture content right about halfway between sawdust and toast, but it is important and it can catch you significant additional dollars after you have a disaster declared and help you recover from what happened to you. Hey everybody, it's Rick. I'll chime in here. I'm the agency preservation officer in addition to running the mitigation programs. Obviously when bad things happen to our communities and we're dealing with applicants, our programs work well together because what mitigation does is make things bigger, better, stronger for the next time and there's multiple ways that the FEMA program does and we'll get into that. Anyway, it's very good to join folks if you find the information helpful. All right, with that, we'll kick off into and put you through what we call an applicants briefing. This is one we've actually given and presented after we received a federal declaration for some severe winter storms and flooding that we had in New York a couple of years ago. You'll notice it's labeled FEMA 4204-MY-DIS, disasters that are declared get a federal number and that's how they're referred to inside baseball. You hear a lot of folks talk about hurricanes by name or storms by name, but they're referred to in the federal parliament says the actual declaration number. That is a supplemental keyword here as we're not going to be able to do everything we'd like to to totally rebuild you after an event. There are rules and laws that will prevent us from doing everything we'd like to, but we are going to work with our local, state, and federal partners to capture as much as we possibly can for you to help rebuild your facility and also repay you for emergency actions you've taken to protect yourself during the event. The process starts with getting the declaration and then we're going to come out and do a actual damage assessment and you should be looking for your county emergency manager should be reaching out to the county that you're in reach out to that county emergency manager and let them know that your facility experienced damages. Yeah and this is a good point consistent with the goals of the AFR I mean it's all about encouraging discussion and collaboration and understanding what happens before something bad actually does so hopefully everybody knows who their point of contact is we're going to give you a New York state centric view but most states would work this way as well. The whole process is really set up on the fact that most emergencies are local and when the locals can't handle it it's too large the state steps in and then similarly FEMA comes in when it's a large event and the state needs assistance so but it would be really important for institutions that haven't yet reached out or figured out who really would be their point of contact to start that dialogue get someone into your place so they know what's going on local fire departments things like that as well so having that information on your you know who to call list would be pretty important. So once we get that information in and do a damage assessment with our federal partners and we see that we meet the required thresholds and we'll bore you with what those are specifically right at this moment we're going to go ahead and conduct an applicants briefing in the declared counties and this is another one where the notification will go out for a variety of means but predominantly through the county emergency manager and this is where we are going to invite everybody that thinks that they have sustained damages from the event and wants to get money we invite them to come and hear what they have to do to get it and this is what we're walking you through you will then submit a request we're going to come back and start rolling up our sleeves at a kickoff meeting and actually working to write projects we're going to complete those projects don't worry about the phrase validation that's an inside baseball kind of thing for us and then the funds will get distributed it says DHSES but FEMA funds the state and then once an applicant completes work and pays for it the state will then reimburse the applicant for the actions they undertook and will close out the project and hopefully have taken care as much as we can a couple key things here we have a deadline for submission and as as we go forward and as there's a bigger crunch on federal dollars for everything deadlines are becoming more and more important so we have 30 days after we have had a disaster declaration to get your request for public assistance into the system now we can request some extensions we can provide extenuating circumstances but the bottom line is if you get your request in early you get services earlier and repaid earlier yeah and in our state the request for public assistance is not you know everything written up and everything evaluated it's a it's a form where you give basic information express your interest and maybe give some preliminary estimates then we'd sit down with you and and go through very specific projects if your community you know they come and they tell us how many bridges and culverts and schools and hospitals your facility hopefully it's contained or you may have satellite offices in more than one location but having the basic information that that would come later so at least in new york the request for public assistance this 30 day deadline is getting the basic information in and making your making it known that you're interested in participating absolutely the next piece we're going to talk about is who is allowed to put in for a request for public assistance you know we have restrictions on who can receive these federal grant funds it's basically state agencies county governments city governments and then the group that we're talking with now and everybody's interested in this certain private nonprofit organizations and we're going to go into some a little more detail on that next slide or two and the native american tribes are tribal organizations and you have to fit in one of these categories to hit that maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid that you see there and become an applicant private nonprofits this is one where people get a lot of questions who is actually eligible as a private nonprofit to put in well we break it down into two basic categories you've got your critical pnps which are fire emergency management emergency medical services hospitals utilities power water sewer communications and educational institutions the good news is for these facilities or these organizations that are deemed critical is we're going to treat you just like you were a government that can also be the bad news we're going to treat you just like you were a government but you get to apply directly for all of your categories of assistance to the federal government and receive funding for them a lot of folks say well my my educational institution is a private college doesn't matter we can absolutely fund and pay for eligible damages to private educational institutions as long as they're part of the overall higher educational system non-critical pnps include things like senior citizen centers daycares museums zoos libraries and for those for those organizations it's really critical that you work with us and look at your mission statement to show how you provide a service to the public sometimes we'll get folks that provide wonderful services to folks dying of cancer and kids and provide a lot of medical support to them but they couch it in terms that it's a recreational camp and then it becomes very difficult for us to be able to get them into the federal system we've been successful in new york state before but it requires you to take a look at what is it that you really do and what services do you provide so it's critical to take a look at that as you get ready to go forward private nonprofit requirements that we have you have to complete the a whole package that includes things like your duns number if you don't know what that is that's your done in broad street number bylaws for your organization your mission statement for your organization tax exempt letter and then we evaluate when i say we it really is female will evaluate and determine whether your private nonprofit is indeed eligible and that's where again your mission statement becomes very very critical to take a look at what it is that you do especially for those non-critical private nonprofits like museums library zoos explain what your mission is and who it is that you're doing the outreach for uh sometimes sort of more p&p's are affiliated with religious organizations we can still get those folks in as well but you have to be able to split out how much of your organization provides services to the general public and how much of your organization and structure that was damaged provides strictly religious portions of education so that's uh that's kind of a critical package there and we'll help you fill that out and work that through with you next thing that comes up is your facility bottom line on this is you have to own it or be legally responsible if you release it take a look at your lease and see what is it that i'm responsible for repairing if you as the uh person in the lease are responsible for fixing the damage then the federal government can reimburse you for those repairs has to be an active use at the time of the disaster now that means it can't be slated for demolition and tear down but if you're using something that used to be say a school but you're using it for storage we can still do some repairs on that but we can't make you back to school qualifications we'll do the repairs based on bringing it back to the storage the use that it was being uh accomplishing before the disaster occurred the work we're going to talk about here what can be done we can do both what we call emergency work which is basically removal of debris and taking those emergency protective actions to protect your facility either before or immediately after the incident that hits you i'll use the example of a flood or a hurricane that's approaching if you know that you're going to be flooded or you suspect it and you've taken sandbags and had folks come or paid a contractor to come and sandbag all around your facility and you rented a generator to be able to provide backup power generation those would be emergency protective actions taken prior to the event we can get you reimbursed for those if immediately after the event all your records and your archives got soaked and inundated and you took immediate actions to prevent mold inside the facility and try to dry out and protect as much as possible we can also pay you a reimburse you for those actions that were taken yeah there's one thing to stress here though the the actions that you take before the storm hits the sandbagging things like that that stuff would be eligible only if we actually get the presidential declaration right and there are a lot of times where i mean people assume that every time we have you know more than more than normally bad weather that we're going to get a declaration and that's not the case so it you know at some point there's a there's a balancing act obviously bottom line and and the you know the value of the cultural material certainly we really encourage everybody to do whatever they would do whether or not FEMA's coming to town but people do need to keep that in in mind and understand that just because you do something when it when a storm is coming it may not be reimbursable we have a certain limits on how long we have to complete the work after we have the declaration for the emergency work i talked about removing your debris and taking those emergency actions you get six months to get the work done and your state can grant you another six months without having to ask approval from the fed so you get a total of one year from the declaration date and then for permanent work you get 18 months and your state can grant you up to an additional 30 months so a total of four years past that declaration date if you can't finish the work within the one year or four years then we have to make a request for FEMA additional supporting documentation explaining why and timelines in order to get an approval for extension by FEMA approvals used to be much more readily granted for all good reasons the federal government's taking a closer look right now at those extensions and making sure that we have reasonable timeframes associated and that we are actually really conducting the work rather than just kicking the can down the road on things that are difficult to bond and fund a little bit more about that emergency work clean up clean up removal of the storage and disposal of debris and the definition of debris is real simple debris is something that wasn't there before the event was caused by the event and has to be removed people ask me a lot of times especially if you're in a coastal area are boats or cars that got pushed in by the flooding debris no they're not there's a separate process that covers that you can be reimbursed for that as well but because they're registered vehicles and there's legal procedures that need to be gone through where they're not considered to be debris in the standard sense and then we talked a bit about those emergency protective measures access protection emergency services relocation of things whether it be personnel records or important documents artworks things like that if you know that you have to move it to get it out of harm's way and we have a declaration we can probably get you some reimbursement for that and actually Chris could you speak about when when communities can and can't remove debris from private property I'm thinking some of these institutions may not you know their community may have an opportunity to remove the debris for them sure yeah generally speaking you can't remove debris from private property for example if it's somebody's house and there's a bunch of stuff down in the backyard trees down the local government could remove it they just can't be reimbursed for it however in the immediate aftermath of a disaster you'll often see folks that have taken their flooded you know they take their trees that they've cut and they haul them to the curb or they take all the rugs and carpets and drywall and insulation that's been flooded out and wet and they take it to the curb the local government can indeed remove that debris that's brought curb side and be reimbursed for that so they can provide that support to their government by to the locals by doing that likewise if your private residence has sole access and it's blocked by debris say you are along a driveway that's the only way in and it's a half mile long and you can't get in because there's trees down the local government can go in and cut those trees out for you would be reimbursed but the bottom line is we can't pay the property owner directly you have to be remember that first slide of mesolos pyramid there you got to be the eligible applicant permanent work don't worry about these categories basically it means your roads your bridges water control your building itself the equipment inside of that building or outside of it and then we have my favorite one category g all others if we're not really sure what it is we but you own it you maintain it and you use it and it's a permanent facility we'll call it category g other parks and recreation come into the nuts and bolts of what's really important here is our project worksheet and this is essentially the contract that you're going to sign and enter into with the federal government and state government that's going to give you the description or give us the description of the damage in the locations we're going to capture whatever actual costs that you may or may not know that that you may know at the time and then for the cost that you're not sure of we will use a estimation process using either some some tools such as cost estimating format you'll hear it referred to a cef or rs means we're going to write a comprehensive scope of work in the bottom line of the scope is this should tell somebody exactly what it is that you're going to do and what the cost is for that your estimated cost or your actual cost okay it's really really critical on this because I'm in government I've got a bs and everybody from government needs one of those I also have an nug I don't know how many are familiar with that particular degree but it means I'm not unusually gifted and so two years after an event somebody like me that's not unusually gifted needs to be able to pick up this project worksheet and understand what it is you intended and what the cost estimates were that you had on it so take a good bit of time working on that reviewing it and making sure it's clear and easy to understand special consideration sheet basically this is where we make sure that we don't violate any laws or regulations related to either historic preservation or the environment and this is where we're going to capture those consultations and coordinations we need to do and Rick can speak a little bit more to some of those yeah and we've got slides coming up about that yeah so this this gives you a list of kind of the things that might be needed for a project worksheet as Chris said there's no contract per se but the project worksheet is about as close as you're going to get to a contract it's it's what FEMA agrees to fund and it's and it's run through the state it speaks about the scope it speaks about the materials it speaks about the project limits in a in a scenario with a highway department you know how many linear feet of road were damaged how much riprap will be dropped for an institution that might be how many linear feet of a rod iron fence need to be repaired things like that so the bottom line is you know you're going to have to explain people are going to evaluate the damage the project worksheet is standalone so if anyone reading that should understand you know what the event is what the damage is what the fix is the materials to use that at some point everybody doesn't wait you may have done some work whether it's emergency or you've actually started the permanent repair so in those cases you might have real receipts and real estimates which is even you know a real quote which is better than an estimate so you may have already bought the materials that you need to to fill to patch the holes or fix the fence so to the extent you have real numbers and real data bring that along to the meeting because it only informs the project worksheet but at the end of the day all that stuff goes and comes into into play what you're paying for staff what you're paying for contractors people you need to bring in salaries fringe overtime all that stuff is captured and essentially I mean we keep saying that this is like a contract if you stick to the scope and do the work even if the estimate is off even if FEMA said it's going to cost $56,000 and you spend 65 you will be reimbursed for the actual cost not the estimate and there and we get into numbers there are threshold project worksheets but as long as you stick to the scope you'll be reimbursed we're talking about numbers here there's two different ways that you can get paid either by having a small project which is any work that's going to be less than $123,000 or a large project is anything more than that there are advantages to both ways of doing it we'll explain those in a second or two here and it's important to stress that the federal government doesn't make you hold the federal government FEMA coming in will reimburse 75 percent of the eligible expenses in larger events that can go up to 90 percent but if you know if you're planning on a regular event plan for 75 percent good point Rick thank you small projects are written for your estimated or actual cost in other words if you know exactly what the what it cost you to rent that generator provide power we're going to pay you for the cost of that generator but if you're not sure if you're still doing some work and you believe it's going to be less than and reasonably less than that $123,000 you provide us a reasonable estimate or help develop on with your state and federal team and we'll pay you on the estimated cost most states will pay I don't say all of them but the majority of states will pay that project based on the estimate in advance the nice thing about a small project is if you have it cost you say you thought it was going to be $80,000 to do the work but you actually were able to accomplish it for $68,000 you get to keep that additional funding we're not going to come back to request you to reimburse the federal government send the money back to the Fed you get to keep it if an overrun and it cost you more than the 80,000 estimate we can capture those dollars for you but there's a process we have to go through this a bit challenging we have to wait till you're done with all your work and all your small projects then basically conduct an audit to see how much did you have on in underruns on some and does it balance the overrun yeah and that's that's why we say it's challenging but the benefit to that is Chris said is at least here and in many states a small project you're going to get the money you're going to get the money based on the estimate even if you haven't completed the work or all of the work and the thought process behind that is to get the money on the street and start jump you know jump start some of these smaller projects and you get to keep the small change that's left over that doesn't mean you get to overestimate every project they're going to watch you for that but absolutely get to keep the reasonable reasonable estimate that you didn't spend large projects again written for estimated or actual but the nice thing about a large project is if you don't know what the costs are going to be we're going to give you an estimate you're going to be paid for the actual cost of the work when you complete it even if it goes over that estimate so if your estimate was two hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars to complete the work you did everything in accordance with what your scope said you followed all the laws rules and regulations but the project cost came in at three hundred and forty eight thousand dollars we're going to pay you the three hundred and forty eight thousand dollars so do you want to talk about the payments or are we coming to that later well we can cover it a little later some states do this and some states don't in in new york we will provide you progress payments for your projects so in other words if you had a that two hundred and fifty eight thousand dollar project and remember this is a reimbursement we pay you after you've completed and paid for the work and if you have a two hundred fifty eight thousand dollar project and you've got fifty eight thousand dollars that you've completed and paid for you can put a request in to us to have a progress payment and we'll reimburse you for those fifty eight thousand dollars and in new york state will walk you all the way up to the full amount that was obligated and then if you've gone over we have to wait until FEMA reviews our request for the additional funds agrees with us and provides those additional funds to us we're going to talk about some inside baseball stuff that's a little boring but very important as well a lot of times when people are damaged by a disaster they say you know I hadn't I had a facility that only had one floor and I really needed two and this is a great time since I'm rebuilding to add that second story terrific can you do that absolutely can you receive federal funding for that additional second story no because you're increasing the functioning capacity we restore you to what you were before as closely as possible with some other things we can throw in but if you want to increase functioning capacity you can do that however we're going to cap you at the estimated cost to restore that single floor that existed prior to the event so be careful when you decide you want to do an improved project because you have cost overruns in the original it's too difficult to separate out from the improvement the addition of the second floor and you're going to wind up not being able to be reimbursed for that can be an effective tool but you need to be careful essentially in an improved project you you cut you live with the estimate and another example is you know a fire station or something that has two bays and they wanted the third if the estimate is done based on restoring the two bay the two bay function and then everything above that is is borne by the owner so once that estimate is set that's what you have to live with so improved projects can be good if you're given you know certain circumstances but it's something that's chris indicates should be thought through pretty carefully and folks in other states certainly talk with your public assistance officers and see what they recommend alternate projects this is where you have a facility that was damaged you decide you want to do something completely different you don't want to restore it at all you can actually be reimbursed for a significant amount of funding to do something completely different it's called an alternate project basically you just have to service the same basic area and community that you were servicing before i'll use an example where local jurisdiction had a trail that included a railroad bridge over a creek and it was an old bridge it had been heavily damaged by the event was going to cost a couple of million dollars to be restored they didn't want to do that because they'd had some significant problems and challenges with that particular bridge for a variety of reasons they were allowed to abandon that facility you render it safe and secure they put up a couple jersey barriers to prevent people from driving down and then they said can we take the funds that would have otherwise been used for that and repair the roof over our municipal pool and i think they did some work on one of their libraries as well and the answer was you absolutely can't you get a reduction in the total amount of funding available from fema and for private non-profits it's a bigger reduction than for local governments but you'll get a slight reduction in the total amount of funding available but the nice news is you can use it for all sorts of different things equipment building a new facility someplace else providing mitigation and to prevent damage at another facility in a different location that you own all sorts of things open for you and you can mix and match the things that you do it's pretty flexible insurance this is one that i'm going to talk about you have to obtain and maintain insurance after the event and the amount that the federal government gives you for the award so if you have a a or you're damaged by severe winds your roof is ripped off by a wind event and you didn't have insurance in place the first time fema is going to require you get the amount of funding that they paid you to replace your roof if you have insurance in place the first time they're going to say okay what is your insurance company pay you they're going to reduce whatever fema would have paid you by the amount you received from your insurance we will pay the deductible to you we'll always pay the deductible but we will reduce it by the amount of reduce the award by the amount of insurance you would have received there's a slightly different thing with floods more than slightly different floods you have to obtain and maintain flood insurance if you don't have flood insurance in place at the time of the event fema is going to tell you that they have to and they do by law reduce you by the amount you would have received had you had an nfip policy in other words we're going to pretend you had a policy in place and reduce you by the amount you would have received from that standard policy which generally is 500 000 for the facility and 500 000 for the contents of the facility we can and will pay even if you didn't have flood insurance for those items that would not have been covered by a standard flood insurance policy lots of stuff this located subgrade is not insurable under a flood insurance policy and those items that exceed the 500 000 contents and 500 000 for the facility itself would be covered by fema but you will be absolutely required to obtain and maintain insurance for that and you're going to be required to show that proof of insurance when we go to close the grant otherwise we can't refund you yeah i mean the thought process behind this is obviously they want to fema you know the federal government considers themselves the the the last place to go for assistance they'd rather have you do insurance and things like that so that's why the first bullet you know that you need to carry insurance is the same really for the flood insurance program fema as fema is the actual agency that runs that program so when people don't carry policies there there aren't premiums coming in and there's bigger hits on the system so that's why that's why the requirement is there so it it might be a good thing for folks to check with their insurers their carriers and see what they're covered for what their deductible is and what happens if you're if you're in an airflow plane what you know what coverage you have and and what you're eligible for one of the things we're always going to look at is called hazard mitigation there's two types there's the hazard mitigation that my colleagues fricks program manages called 404 that's a section of the Stafford Act basically everything we're talking about in here is allowed and called for under the Stafford Act so this is the mechanism that we use to be able to get the funding the other mitigation is called 406 and that's covered under my program this is the easiest mitigation to get because all you have to do is be an eligible applicant and have been damaged by the event and basically we can put additional funding into your project to make it bigger better faster stronger so that we don't have to come back the next time the flood or the windstorm comes along and hits you we can do all sorts of things fairly easily if the overall mitigation proposal that you have say you see this road here with a culvert that's undersized that rips it out if you want to put some wing walls in and upsize that culvert and it costs 15 percent of the overall restoration it's going to cost me 100 grand to build the new one and I can put $15,000 of upgrade size that can be approved right there in the field by the FEMA staff we can go up to 100 percent of that damage if it's on a pre-approved list from FEMA and they're working to expand that list which we really like to see and we can even go above and beyond that it's like the Ronco commercial but wait there's more we can go above and beyond that by conducting a benefit cost analysis to see if we have a lot of pre a lot of history of disaster damages there and we can pay more than the cost to restore that project we can go up to whatever shows that benefit of at least one and I'll let Rick talk a little bit more about that because that's starting to wander into his world of the 404 dance yeah but before I get to that piece I mean the beauty of the Stafford Act is that it's really very forward-thinking and very comprehensive and and as Chris mentioned the goal is to not come back the goal is to break the cycle of disaster damage so if you have a culvert or any kind of a facility and it may not come into play quite so much with not-for-profits but if obviously the baseline is really to get you back where you were before but if there are new codes and standards that have come into play since that facility was built in terms of e-graphs or things like that that's covered as well you can do a codes and standards upgrade to make it you know bigger better stronger bring it up to code make it safer you can also do mitigation under Chris's program as he's talking about it it generally has to be tied to the damaged feature and then on top of that there's the hazard mitigation grant program which I run and the good news is if you're determined as a private nonprofit to be eligible for public assistance repairs you're automatically eligible for the HMGP and that that pool of money is established as a percentage of what FEMA spends in the overall disaster so if you remember from the introductions my HMGP for Sandy is almost 1.5 billion it's an immense event it's a huge pot of money but it lets us so it is capped in a way and it is competitive but it lets you go even above and beyond the damaged part of your facility to make the overall site or building or you know warehouse laboratory conservation labs stronger so you can do codes and standards you can when you're actually doing the repairs you can make that part more robust and then you can add more mitigation measures at other places in the building or on the site and so it's a pretty comprehensive approach to you know to repair and and getting back on your feet and the goal is that that you know we don't have to come back you don't have to suffer through this again so that that hazard mitigation grant program as I said the pot is established based on a percentage of the money that FEMA gives to the state the state has a hazard mitigation plan every state has one or they couldn't get any of the monies that we're telling you about so you no matter where you're calling from your state has a plan in New York we we do countywide hazard mitigation plans as well where all the jurisdictions all the communities participate and cultural institutions are invited to to participate as well so you might want to check with a county and talk and look see what your mitigation plan covers that could give you some ideas if you're if you're if your site is or your library is hit by a flood or some other event there might be some things in the plan that give you ideas on how you can make it stronger the next time around and and to the extent that you're consistent with a local plan and consistent with a state plan you do better in the ranking process because the state sets priorities and then the local jurisdiction set priorities and that and the nice thing about and I'll go back to my side of the house the nice thing about the 406 mitigation we're not competitive if you're damaged you're eligible for 406 mitigation for your permanent work you don't need to have a plan your state doesn't even need to have well your state does have to have a plan to get to get public assistance but you don't have to have a county plan and don't have to be participating in a plan in order to be able to get 406 mitigation and we're not capped we're not capped for the for the disaster or you know for the project as long as the bca is met we can keep adding mitigation to your project and we can keep adding mitigation to the overall disaster codes and standards are not considered to be mitigation so if you have to build to meet codes and standards outstanding we're going to pay a reverse year for that and if you have something additional above and beyond those codes and standards that make sense we'll add that to it so it's a great program you can tell we're both pretty excited about it because we love getting the money in there up front we really do dovetail and work together on this and we love not having to come back and see in the future so you don't have to listen to this kind of presentation ever again yeah and every dollar crispens makes my pot bigger so it all it all works so other other special considerations and that's kind of a catch all I think there's eight or nine or maybe as many as 10 questions now it's the things kind of above and beyond the things that might trip somebody up and the things that FEMA needs to consider and take into account as they develop the worksheet and and and get you into a place where we can fund your your your rebuilding under under special considerations we've already covered insurance and that's one of those things whether it's a in a flood plain or or not just traditional standard insurance EHP stands for environmental and historic preservation as a federal agency FEMA needs to you know worry about wetlands and endangered species and all the other things that that people are you know aware of these days as well as the the historic and cultural environment and things that are on the national register of historic places or things that have tribal significance so EHP covers the essentially the natural and the and the built environment and and impacts that these projects can have to that we do protect restore enhance that natural and built environment the National Historic Preservation Act 1966 that's probably the one of the larger ones that folks know besides the the NEPA the National Environmental Policy Act those really are the two heavy hitters endangered species can come into play depending on where your facility is but again know anything that you that you know up front if you know your site is on the national register or state local state register bring that information along when you start talking about a project worksheet for your damage you folks are probably better attuned to a lot of this stuff than most but generally structures need to be more than 50 years old there can be exceptions for something that's the work of a master or an extremely rare type and things of that things can have local state or national significance as well and it's not just buildings as you see from the list it can be landscapes it can be bridges one of the rides at Coney Island is on the national register so it's a variety of things we even have an art deco water treatment plant down in Westchester County so but again I think that many of the folks on the line are perhaps more attuned to to what might be historic and what needs special care and that's that's why you're on here anyway and the nice thing about the EHP provisions are if you're required by your State Historic Preservation Office or Tribal Historic Preservation Office to conduct actions or add different materials or make it look like it looked before the costs of that and it's considered a regulatory requirement and the costs of that become eligible and here we are talking about cost as you see this is the tip of Maslow's period which is supposed to be the most self-actualized and easiest to get or least least important to get to anybody out there think that this one hasn't been getting bigger and bigger as the as the years have gone on I doubt there are this is becoming a little more scrutinized but we have the wonderful phrases like reasonable and necessary and reasonable is kind of what's reasonable to me in New York might not be reasonable to somebody in Wyoming as far as cost to work on a road the big thing we have to do is be able to show that we attempted to get it done for the most reasonable price available so if we we'll talk about procurement if we put out bids and we got five bids and we picked the low bid that's probably going to be considered to be reasonable by FEMA we have to make sure we comply with all federal state local laws and regulations when we're doing this work to include procurement and bidding we're going to talk about that you keep hearing me come back to that we have to offset by insurance and purchase discounts have to be deducted if we've got them and equipment costs are usually reimbursed that's if your trucks your other types of vehicles and equipment at mileage or hourly half day or more gets you a full day and I'll talk about this for just a second less than half day equals actual hours I tell my applicants pick the one that's going to be most advantageous to you you're going to have to stick with it we're not going to mix and match in one day one week you're getting mileage the next week you're looking for hourly so we'll work you walk you through that process as well procurement this is one you're going to hear me talk about you got to comply with all federal state local procurement requirements and one of the things that is really getting scrutinized by those office of inspector general folks and remember this is their field of dreams we have built it they will come they're going to come and take a look and they're going to make sure you procure appropriately within your own local or your own procedures for your organization as well as your local and state and federal laws specifically look to the minority women business enterprises you've got to look to mwbe and make sure you're following those requirements you also have to make very very sure that if you're going out for no bid you know it's an emergency I would strongly encourage you to take a look and see if you have procedures that define how and when you do that and make sure that you're following those procedures if you don't have them now get them in place yeah this is that that that's what I was going to cover or discuss now this is a good point for that because it is I mean the whole mantra is really follow your own process so you can have we can have two local governments side by side and one allows up to a month for no bid as long as they've declared an emergency and one only allows two weeks and FEMA is going to hold them to their policy so they're side by side they have different standards one has to stop after two weeks the other can continue to go no no bid for an additional two because it's what they have set down as their as their procedures and and law depending on you know we have large and small institutions we have people that are very sophisticated and have developed plans and we have folks who rely on volunteers and aren't open as often so this would be a good time to look at procedures maybe even go online see what other you know work within networks to see what other museums libraries and things have in place if you don't have something or kind of benchmark it and see what makes sense to change on yours so look look to set some of these things down in print before something bad happens and you're in a little better place in terms of what you might do in terms of procurement if you have folks on call what you can do without going to bid things like that XPs but talk about labor and materials so you can either have force account which includes your fringe benefits for the emergency work debris removal and those emergency actions we talk about we're only going to give your permanent employees their overtime because they would have been working for you during the day anyway temporary employees are going to get regular and overtime because you had to bring them in special just for this event for permanent work the good news is if it's your force account your own employees we're going to pay both the overtime as well as the regular time because the only reason they're doing that work is because of the disaster event and we can include travel and per diem for those employees performing those eligible activities you can take materials out of stockpiles or you can go and buy them you have to use them for eligible work and document document document you know we're going to reimburse you for the cost to replace those materials or the cost that you pay to have those materials put into your stockpile so that's how we're going to work that donated resources this is usually for the most part only eligible for your category a and b emergency work and this is when folks come and donate pretty much labor or you know equipment to take care of something and we can offset your non-federal share we can't pay you for volunteers because you don't pay your volunteers but we can absolutely help reduce that 25 percent burden that's on you and we'll calculate a credit for that and FEMA will reduce the overall cost to you to have done that work so you can get a credit for those donated resources yeah so if you have a friends group or a volunteer group people who help support your site and you bring them on board after something after a flood or other event make sure you have sign-in sheets make sure you keep track of their time their hours and that kind of thing it'll make the process all the all the more easy contracts we're going to talk about some types of contracts that are absolutely great and some that are pretty awful lump sum contracts absolutely allowed to be utilized again remember procure appropriately for all of these it's easy to monitor and it works well because you don't have to really document and take care of all the quantities time and materials contracts please be careful with these FEMA will give you up to 70 hours on these and then want you to rebid to a different type of contract and you absolutely have to have a cap and monitor the work and that makes good sense because if you think about it no contractor has ever tried to take us to the farm by just taking a lot longer to get something done and not be in saying he's doing something when they're not we actually put several contractors in jail in one of our major debris events in Buffalo who were trying to falsify load tickets for the removal of debris ineligible contracts these are the kiss of death you cannot enter into these if you do you will not be paid cost plus percentage of cost contracts there is absolutely zero incentive for your for your contractor to keep his costs down and the federal government and state government if they're paying anything into this have zero desire to support that the other ones are debarred contractors there's a debarred contract list and they're pretty much every state and the federal one as well and you cannot do business with them otherwise you will not be reimbursed and what i like to call the wimpy contract for disaster work today i will gladly pay you on thursday if you say that your contract is dependent or in any way shape or form linked to fema coming to town that is the kiss of death and you will not get reimbursed so be very careful when you enter into your contracts project notification this is when we send you when fema sends to you the notice that says hey we've looked at your project worksheet we're going to obligate which is we're going to say we're going to give the state to release to you on reimbursement up to this amount we're going to send a form that's a project completion form along with it bunch of stuff read that project worksheet carefully make sure it looks like what you think you submitted because sometimes they change and we're supposed to notify you and let you know and make you aware of it sometimes this doesn't happen so if one of these things does not look like what you signed and agreed to and there's a problem you've got 60 days to throw the coaches challenge and let us know that it needs to be corrected and appeal that project worksheets written determination of what we're going to do for you yeah and usually at least at least here when you get a booklet like that in new york state and i have to assume everyone operates the same way it you'll you'll you'll know who to contact it'll tell you who to contact but remember when you sat down with folks to give them all that information so that they could write the project worksheet sometimes it's a fema state team sometimes depending on the scale of the event and and how complex the projects are they may split up and you may only be dealing with a fema person or state person but because of the way the system works you really want to have a name and a phone number for one or two state people and and they would be your point of contact you wouldn't you wouldn't go to fema because again think about you know not for profits and local governments working up through the state and then the state working with fema so at some point though you sat down you gave them that information if the project worksheet doesn't look like it incorporates all that or somehow different than you expected give those people a call sit down and go over it line by line and get to a good place it's kind of losing my voice all right and here's one that's important for us funds can be at risk when you don't as an applicant because like i said this is dense and complex and we're just skimming the surface for you you need to ask questions ask questions during your applicant's briefing ask questions during your kickoff meeting ask questions when fema's writing your project worksheet for you and ask questions when you get it back or you're getting paid you need to follow your contract procurement procedures this is getting huge i'm seeing a lot of oig interest in this now follow your scope of work do what you say you were going to do if you need to change your scope because you ran into something that you didn't anticipate you can but you got to let the state and federal government know in advance that you've run into the issue and get their approval to do the work before you start making that change get your permits coordinate with your ship out when we say ensure administrative continuity if you're getting ready to retire don't do what one little mayor in a village did for us and leave a bunch of stuff literally in a brown paper bag that said fema stuff for his follow-on mayor who opens up about eight months after he should have turned a bunch of stuff in so make sure that you brief your relief as we like to say keep your records complete clear and accurate right from the minute you start doing the work whether or not fema is in town don't wait for us to come to do what you need to do but record what you did and then meet the deadlines work with your federal and state staff to make sure that you're meeting the deadlines because it makes it a lot easier for us to make sure that you get paid yeah and and depending on the size of your institution you may or not you may or may not have a robust staff but the skill sets that people need in this process or you know if you have someone who's your facility's point of contact or they're in charge of your facility or they're your go-to person for how to keep the building and the site up you also obviously there's a large fiscal component so you want those folks involved and if you have any one of the project management experience or even just a a third person who kind of a real good at administration that might become your team on a smaller a smaller project at a smaller site but all those things come into play and having more than one person involved does help to ensure that continuity and then basically where you get the additional information your first point of contact is going to be your FEMA state team that's there working to write those projects up well they're what they call their joint field offices open which is generally for around they try to make it as quickly as possible but usually 90 days is the minimum amount of time you'll see a joint field office open your county emergency manager you've heard us talk about them a bunch of times they're very critical components to making sure that you're identified when something happens your state emergency management website as well most states have one and that's ours FEMA's website they've got a bunch of policy digest that we can talk about and rick's tossed on our parks state historic preservation office and the national park service are all great contacts and links yeah and also um Jessica loaded some good documents that the many of the FEMA documents are here on the file section for people to download and open also um again this was a this was a brief prepared for our state but the links on the web links include all the states for your state emergency management agency so our counterpart agencies in your state you should be able to find there there's also the secretary of the interior standards the for everything from reconstruction to to whatever and then the rehab standards are the ones that are used in the section 106 review for the national historic preservation and then there's the the conference of state historic preservation officers so those links should help you find you know counterpart agencies in your state and they do what we do yeah one thing i'd like to bring up you'll see the the policy digest and the other things listed under FEMA.gov that's all been consolidated into a new public assistance that they call the Papa G a new a new consolidated policy guide that gets all the policies and fact sheets and everything gathered up under one but the FEMA website will take you to that and give you the latest and greatest there hasn't been huge changes but a few a few shifts and that's where you're going to get that so we can get we can get a more updated link to Jessica and to distribute so i'm seeing there's a couple folks had wanted us to talk about some things people mentioned the Stafford Act i'm not quite sure what folks had in mind but again the Stafford Act is from the from the 70s pretty much everything that the federal government brings to bear after after an event is spelled out there everything you know from from business business assistance you know things that enable SBA to do what they do individual assistance where where many homes are destroyed or severely damaged they can we can get a we can have individual assistance covered under the declaration so that people people can call that 1-800 number to to register and get assistance to help with lost possessions and home repairs that's a program that doesn't begin to bring people back to where they are but also under the Stafford Act is you know the public assistance program which we've talked about and then the hazard mitigation program that i run and and again that pot is a percentage of of all the infrastructure repair funds and the the monies to individuals there's also there's crisis counseling there's there's you know many many smaller components that people don't people aren't aware of but the Stafford Act covers many many of the response it's a good mechanism that allows the the feds to to really help on on many levels and in many ways so i don't know if that answers folks questions so and Lori had mentioned someone else had another question too oh would we consider an AFR chapter a PNP that's not that's not really a determination that we'd make that's a FEMA determination but again you'd need you know if you haven't become if you haven't got an IRS letter you're you'd have to see if you qualify that way either a 501c or a d or an e IRS determination yeah the big thing to remember is basically for private non-profits and you know i'll share it's a challenge with private non-profits oftentimes the criticals are very easy very easy determination we don't have any problems but our experience in sandy where we have more than 9000 private non-profits in the greater metro area many of whom provide some complex services or some complex links to provide services to the new york city government we had a real challenge in figuring out what they were doing who they were doing it for how they were doing it the bottom line is you have to provide some type of service to the general public that's of a governmental nature and so the the keyword there really or the key phrase is to the general public so if your organization however it's configured can show us that it does that in their mission statement in their bylaws and how they're structured and their explanation of what it is that they do then we can probably get you into at least some support one thing i didn't bring up about private non-profits is for those critical ones like i said we treat you like government we can pay you for everything for the essential but non-criticals i'll use a museum or a zoo for an example we can pay you for those emergency protective actions and debris removal actions that you undertook but for damage to your facility and equipment we are required to have you go to the sba first and request a low interest loan and every time a major disaster is declared the sba loan program is open to the private non-profits for that disaster if sba denies your loan you take that denial letter you show it to us we show it to fema and then we can reimburse you for the actions that you're going to take to fix your facility and repair your equipment but you have to go to the sba first and be denied before we can do more than that debris removal and emergency action type stuff so i'm going to talk a little bit about that hazard mitigation grant program that comes along remember i i said under public assistance if you're deemed an eligible applicant to get you know your your facility repaired you're automatically an eligible applicant under the hazard mitigation grant program the requirement would be that you you're in a community that's covered by a mitigation plan a fema approved mitigation plan they last for five years if you're in new york state most of our counties have them and the state has a plan so that's the way that would work the state sets priorities in its plan and also for each grant cycle it can set priorities and where that comes into play if you think about an event it's a flood event perhaps the state's priorities would include number one would be removing houses from flood plains or elevating houses that are at risk and so based on the event that can that can really set set the stage for what this how the state establishes its priorities i see there's a question regarding your hours of operation there's nothing that i've ever seen in any fema guideline that defines when your hours of operation need to be in order to meet the the requirements as an eligible private nonprofit i can think of instances where maybe that they've got some organizations that maybe open well after the standard in the attempt to get youth youths off the street and into productive learning environments and provide cultural resources education and opportunities for at-risk youth that might be open in the midnight hours that could be something that could be well argued as the eligible private nonprofit and lori you had mentioned the five percent initiative that again comes under my program we get that pot of money the state establishes its priorities whether it's buying properties or focusing on you know communications or transportation or emergency infrastructure i can give you some examples from sandy we've replaced 106 bridges in new york state that are that were subject to scour many years ago we had a throughway bridge that collapsed and i think well i think about 10 people died in that so we we're very you know concerned about that obviously and so we've we've identified using federal highway standards and with state dot we actually replaced 106 bridges we're also building a statewide it's called a mesonet it's a weather monitoring station that does just about everything i mean seven we have 125 stations pretty much in a grid across the state 17 of them have lidar you know two or three miles into the clouds to tell you what the precipitation is going to be when that's up and running that's going to give us really good data to give it an advance warning and to let people understand what's coming so that's that's the kind of thing on a large event where the where the dollars are large and to take advantage and do things that we hadn't haven't been able to do before smaller events sometimes it's communities you know roads that wash out making sure that evacuation routes are safe kind of continuity of government so depending again encourage everybody to look at to find out what how you're covered by a mitigation plan if you're in our state you're covered by a county plan many larger jurisdictions larger cities parishes may have a plan also but but see who's covered you and what their priorities are what's established because and and work with them if you have something that you think needs to happen either your facility or in your neighborhood because maybe maybe they missed something and so those plans once approved by FEMA can be updated and if you're if you're listed in the plan you kind of have a leg up on the ability to get funded for a project after after disaster declaration and tami i see you've got a question private college libraries a private college library would qualify as a critical facility part of a critical facility because it's part of the private college so that's the good news you're going to get treated as a government that library is part of that college you wouldn't even have to be open to the general public as long as there's an accredited institution so like you for example my alma mater union college if they got horribly devastated by a flooding event and their library was damaged they would be reimbursed for all the actions they took to repair the library even though it's not open to the general public and the folks from Schenectady aren't wandering in wherever they feel like just folks on the other end do you think of anything we've missed or should cover oh well i just wanted to jump in at this point and say thank you to you both for your eagle eyes and keeping an eye out for the questions that were coming in the chat window and likewise thank you to those who have already asked them i want to encourage anyone at this point who had questions about any of the content covered to go ahead and share those in the box there and i also want to go ahead and i give a quick shout out to lori foley who's with fema and the spessonian who has very graciously provided the link for the new public assistance program policy guide that was mentioned so you all can see that in the chat window and i went ahead and uploaded it into the web link box as well but thank you for giving some more definition to the pmp question that carl had regarding afr's and of course for talking a little bit more about the stafford act i did see that glenda had a follow-up question which i'm not sure was fully addressed about policy guidelines to specify things like having specific hours and just wondering if not specifically when but just that you have some specifically communicated days and hours of operation uh again this would be i don't believe so i've never seen that as a requirement uh we'll have to be an issue if someone yeah the only the only way i would see as being an issue is if uh somebody from fema as they were getting ready to write your project worksheet or somebody from the state if they were getting ready to write your project worksheet was hearing well they say they're a pmp but they're never open anytime i go there they don't have published hours and or we go and there's nobody there but that's that's not any part of any policy that i've ever seen yeah yeah i mean the objective for the pmp is to provide a government-like service to the public so if you're if you're hardly ever open you may get a question okay the most the most critical thing is really your mission statement your bylaws and and and what it is that you do being able to clearly show how you provide some type of service to the public this of a governmental nature right great thank you for that um and lori just jumped in to say that um there's there might be language that's used with instrument of museum and library services grant applications that require um minimum number of hours open to the public so perhaps that's where that thinking comes from um so i see there's a little bit of um action happening in the chat window so we'll just hold on a little bit longer see if any other questions come in um and i want to remind everyone that um you should all be able to um as a participant in this webinar be able to if you want to click on any of the links that are included in the presentation itself they should be able to take you to those sites that are currently up on this final slide of chris and ricks and i think we might end up wrapping a little bit before the end of our hour and a half um but um okay so donna was just jumping in with another thought on this that public libraries wouldn't have difficulty demonstrating that they perform a public service and there was a little yeah donna's absolutely right there's never a problem with the public library uh the only issue we have is sometimes the libraries especially in our rural communities will not realize they have to apply to the sba to get there to see if they can get a loan to repair their facility or the other permanent work categories for their their major equipment so they just need to make sure they do that but public libraries are never an issue yeah i mean really there's one thing to take home two things sorry no no in advance who you look to for this information how was information disseminated in your state about a disaster declaration in in new york we put the information out on our web page we push it out to our regional offices to the declared counties and those counties help set up the applicant briefings it may be slightly different in your state but you know you you want to know who to call to say or what web page to check to see if there's a presidential disaster declaration a day or two after something you know major happens in your area the other piece is get that request for public assistance in no matter how it works in your state in our in our state it's a one-page form it it that's the uh the 30 days and that's that that's your interest that shows that you have interest that you want to do it from that point on they'll be contacting you and setting up the meetings and doing things but getting that paper in is key because as chris said we've you know years ago it was really easy for FEMA to extend things now people are tightening belts making sure rules are met that projects as you said you know we're not kicking the can we're spending the federal money quickly efficiently and and doing the right thing so just get the paperwork the very first piece in at the right time and then they'll be calling you for you know to get in touch and that request and sometimes people get really a little twitchy about that request for public assistance because it asks for a poc and they're afraid that it it it obligates you to do something it doesn't you can withdraw it at any time if you decide you don't have damages or you don't want to seek reimbursement uh there's no harm no foul go ahead and put it in we'll take a look at it and then we can work with you but if you don't put it in we don't know you exist yeah you literally have no ability to work with you until we get that you want to get your foot in the door but you can always pull it out so that's a great point definitely um Liz is wondering are there extensions granted in circumstances where there is a widespread disaster in a specific area and FEMA and local agencies are overwhelmed absolutely uh we did that for sandy uh we got several extensions for the rpa deadline simply because of the massive amounts of damage and the in the incredibly dense urban area would have made it almost impossible for us to get uh these rpas in within 30 days so we will and your states will work to extend that when we can uh but i use the same basic rule of thumb we're all you know we're kind of bureaucrats you know so pieces of paper hit our desks and the piece of paper that got there first is probably the one that's going to be action first so you know we know you're going to get overwhelmed but we'll work with you and even if the deadlines passed i would encourage you to still submit your rpa because if you have a good enough reason we'll work with and every state i know will work with you and work with FEMA to get you included uh it's not to our interest to exclude anybody from these reimbursement processes and our friends from FEMA have been very good when we've been worked with them one-on-one i got a a local volunteer fire department that just for whatever reason didn't realize they should have applied and i was able to get them in a full two years after the actual declaration date of sandy uh because we would have gladly done everything had they known they didn't we we found out why we still got the that's great um so tammy has a question as well just wondering if you can talk about public assistance for recovering cultural heritage collections for example archival and manuscript collections museum objects etc that's a good question we've got there's a couple different pieces in place there we can reimburse you for a lot of actions needed to protect or restore those resources we can't pay you for the replacement of those resources i can't go out and get you another van go because your van go is destroyed by the flood and fema can't reimburse you for that but if for example you have archive materials uh historic photographs that require protection you got a freeze drying and uh or you know transferring them to another medium so at least the visual image is still there because they're going to deteriorate too rapidly or in some way shape or form we can usually get a significant amount of funding for reimbursement for those actions so it's going to require some additional detail and work but when it comes to protecting or restoring from the event we can usually reimburse you if it comes to replacing from the event we generally can't and that's where you're going to be looking towards your insurance policies to ensure that you've got adequate coverage for those yeah but that raises a good point to talk about mitigation again because if you think about where the where the materials were stored what they are what they're susceptible to um basements or bad yeah i mean think about we're not going to put them in the same place do we do we build an addition on the back and it's the cost of that an eligible mitigation expense or you know some other rehabilitating some other part of the facility at a higher elevation that's that's not in current use or move some shifts some things around some of that work might be eligible as mitigation so that we can protect the manuscripts the collections and and again not have to do this you know repeatedly great question tammy thanks for for raising that and great response chris and rick believe you know a lot of people on the webinar really appreciate those insights so i'm not seeing any other questions so i want to go ahead and take the opportunity now to just once again remind everyone about the upcoming programs happening in this webinar series in the files box down on the bottom part of the screen you can download the promotional flyer for the full series i encourage you to share this with anyone who might be interested in these topics they were designed for alliance for response networks in mind but you will welcome anyone who's interested i'm going to go ahead and also just pull over a link to an evaluation for today's webinar um please just take a few moments to fill out it's a brief 10 questions survey but the information is incredibly valuable to us in shaping future programming um so i just i want to take the time to once again thank everyone for joining us today you all had really excellent questions and insights and of course a special thanks to our wonderful presenter chris holmes and our discussant rick lord you both have a wealth of knowledge on this topic and we're so grateful that you were able to take the time to to share that with us so you're very welcome and thank you guys for letting us bore your socks off i think you i think you'll agree i was right dry toast dry but we appreciate it well it's i think it's so important for everyone to have this information up front rather than trying to decipher all of this after the fact so um i hope everyone will take away from this program the importance of lining up your sources of information uh so knowing where to go to for declaration info and um getting all your documents and everything else in order uh i want to give one final shout out to our funders national diamond for the humanities thank you for making this series possible i want to say thank you um to everyone once again have a wonderful thursday and we hope to see you at our next session which will happen um a week from today on thursday the 19th at 1 p.m eastern thanks again rick thanks again chris madda you're welcome rick lord has left the conference