Members present for the House Tribal Affairs are Representative Schwonke, Representative
Freer, representative Underwood, and myself, Chair Dibert.
I will now pass the gavel to community and regional affairs co-chair Donna Meers, who
Thank you chair diver for hosting this joint hearing the community and regional affairs members present are we got a full house
Representative St. Clair representative Nelson representative Prox representative Holland representative Hall co-chair
Representative him shoot and myself co chair Donamiers. I'll let the record reflect. We have a quorum to conduct business
I'd like to remind members and staff
who are allowing members to use electronic devices
during committee meetings,
but please silence your cell phones
and be subtle about it.
Also, staff and members of the audience
may not approach the table.
If you need to pass a note to committee members,
please get the attention of my committee aid.
Talia Ames, where's Taliah?
She'll be right back.
Oh, there you are.
You're in a different spot.
I'm not used to cheering in this room.
And she'll take care of you.
Thank you, Talia, and thank you
Co-chair Hymn-Shoots Committee aid,
Dr. Brouwer for supporting this,
as well as Chair DiBert's Committee
aid on Maria Alcontra for your collaboration
for putting this together.
Lastly, before we get started, I can't forget to thank
the CRA recording secretary, Sophia Tenney,
and helping us from the Juneau LIO is Chloe Miller.
Today's agenda, we have one item on our agenda today,
which is an update on the Alaska State Emergency Operations
Center presented by Brian Fisher, the Director of the Division
of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
in the Alaska Military and Veterans Affairs Department.
Dr. Fisher please come welcome to this joint hearing.
to approach the testifier table,
put yourself on the record
and proceed with your presentation.
Please note that we do have a hard stop today at 9.45
to allow time for members to get to the 10 a.m.
I-Surf fiscal analysis presentation at Centennial Hall.
Please, community members, clarifying questions
as we go through the presentation,
but we hope to have the bulk of the discussion afterwards.
So thank you very much.
Good morning chair mirrors chair diver co chair him shoot members of both committees
Thank you for having me this morning for the record Brian Fisher the director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Like chair said we are in the Alaskan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs
Thank You for The Opportunity to come and testify today give an update on the state Emergency Operations Center and what my agency has been doing
I could say kind of bottom line of front. We're tired
I was down, did a lunch and learn last session and spoke about what the center does and what our agency does
and how we collaborate specifically with you and the legislature when we're responding to disasters and incidents around the state.
Little did I know we were fixing the face, the largest disaster that I have worked on in the 31 years that
I've been with our Agency, so the storm, that multiple storms that hit the West Coast starting with up in
followed by the remnant of Typhoon Halong. Honestly, has been the biggest disaster that I've had
to deal with in my entire career there. I thought the earthquake in 2018 was big. This one is bigger,
it's bigger and different than the Typhoon Murbok remnant in 2022. So our agency has
been incredibly busy. It always is, but this year in particular has pretty extraordinary.
I will go through the presentation here, have plenty of time to answer your questions.
I did receive a list of questions before today, so I'll try to
answer most of those as I go though the
presentation and then obviously have
plenty time for any additional questions that you all have.
Just a reminder, this is the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Organization chart.
So I work for major general SACs, the adjutant general for the department.
I'm one of the divisions in the agency, including the Alaska Army and International Guard,
the Alask State Defense Force, and Naval militia,
the Military Youth Academy and our admin services and veterans affairs agency.
So, I am one the division's of department there.
My agency is all state employees, all states' villains.
We don't have any of the military members that work directly in our agency.
So we're kind of, the state employee side of
the agency there.
Our operation section, we really have two components to that.
The first is the state emergency operation center.
It's a facility on joint base Elman door,
Richardson, but it's more a concept.
We certainly COVID specifically show,
we're able to show that the emergency operations center for the State.
doesn't have to be in a physical location.
We did most of our work during the response to COVID-19,
remotely, mostly from our homes,
but this is a couple of pictures
of what the center itself looks like.
It's in the Alaska National Guard,
Readiness Center, Anjo and Base Elmendorf Richardson
and the basement there.
The majority of folks, and I'll get into this
a little more on future slides,
the majority folks that staff this facility
when we have an incident going on around the state are not.
necessarily employees of the department, there are other representatives and partners from other
agencies. We have space there for numerous state agencies that we typically partner with in response
non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Civil Air Patrol,
all sorts of other folks that come in there, central location for us to coordinate the state's response.
So I'll talk a lot more about the the EOC moving forward use that as the acronym
Our response section that's our folks that go deploy to the field to your communities and your districts when the incidents happen to help coordinate at the local level
In general in all phases of emergency management from preparedness to response recovery and mitigation
As I think you all are well aware, everything really starts and ends locally.
So we are there as the support mechanism to provide that support to local government.
And that could be a municipality or a tribal government, we work directly with both of
those forms of government wherever the disaster may happen.
So my response staff are the ones that will go out and assist with the initial assessments.
They help communities draft their local disaster decorations and requests for state assistance.
And then as I said coordinate all of the the state agencies and any federal agencies that may come
Come into play depending on the size of that disaster
That may be occurring
so as we're
Chaining sides. I just like to note for the record that we've been joined by representative Carrick and representative story. Thank you
Thank You chair
I want to talk a little bit about kind of a process here in response like I mentioned all disasters start and end locally
So when an event occurs, we expect the local community and the
local forms of government that are in the community to take the
necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the event.
Things like
putting out sandbags or fighting a fire or opening shelters and
evacuating people locally from danger areas. Most of the time,
those shelters are in partnership with the school districts. Many of our
communities, that is the primary shelter location as the
school facilities.
So, we have an expectation that the local jurisdiction is going to handle that.
At the very end of the process, when I go away and if the federal emergency management
agency is part of it, if we had a federal disaster and they go
Everything that's left is there for the community
to deal with moving forward as well.
So it's very important that our agency and my folks
are keeping that in mind that we're there
to support the local government, governmental entities.
We're not there to take over, we don't take
over we are there
to respond to the needs and the priorities
of local governments to
support their residents or their tribal members.
And it is just our job to help support them there.
At that level that's typically, you know, I would say probably within the initial 24 to 96 hours of an event, that is 100% local.
We do expect that local jurisdictions have reserves and have contingency funding to be able to take care of small incidents as well as some of the
initial responsibilities that a local government normally has and funded at their level.
When it exceeds their capacity and that could be financially, it could
be for technical assistance,
it can be additional resources and personnel to respond to whatever that
event might be.
The local jurisdiction will will contact the state emergency
operation center and submit a request for state assistance that may or may not
include a requests for the governor to declare a state disaster emergency
under the Alaska Disaster Act.
Title 26 chapter 23 in the statutes
There are oftentimes I would say in calendar year 2025 the state of c responded to
upwards of 130
Incidents around the State not all of those became state disasters
We had we have roughly on average
One disaster a month. I think the governor spoke to that in his state at the estate address last week
So, roughly one state declared disaster a month, but so if we say 12 or 13 and calendar year 2025 through the first couple of weeks of 2026, there were 120 other incidents that happen around the state that we get involved in.
the local jurisdictions with a different state agency or an NGO for technical assistance.
We do a lot of work directly with the Department of Environmental Conservation with
the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Local Health Corporations around the state.
We typically see a lot of incidents throughout the year, particularly in winter when it comes
to local utility disruptions, either maintenance issues or severe cold or some other severe
event that requires circuit riders or other remote maintenance workers to provide an additional
level of assistance.
So I think from my perspective, the good news story about that is we handle a lot of things
where it doesn't require us having the governor declare a state disaster emergency, where
it does not require to come to the legislature for additional funding.
I don't think if you've seen the initial overviews of the Governor's proposed budget where the
governor is asking for $40 million in the supplemental for the disaster relief fund,
which funds all of our activities.
and the repaired restoration to state declared disasters and another 24 million in UGF for the next fiscal year.
You know, so there was 120 incidents last year that my folks were able to work directly
with local communities to respond to without that need for additional state funding.
So I'm very proud you all should be proud of your communities and your districts.
They are hardy folk.
They're used to dealing with all of the challenges we have with weather and time space geography.
Um, all of those, uh, those things that make Alaska such a great state to be in.
Um.
So when you share a couple examples of, um, other things
that are not emergency declarations, that that you help out with, just as an example.
Sure.
Yes, sure.
Um Yes.
Specifically, like I had mentioned, we deal with a lot of utilities disruptions
and fuel shortages, things like that in the winter months and into the spring.
A lot of times, the utility operators, whether they're a private company or they are a municipal
or tribally owned utility, just need some additional assistance.
They might need jatters to come out and help thaw lines.
They need technical assistance from the drinking water programs, remote maintenance workers,
to give them a little bit of additional resistance in trying to thaws things and provide technical
the way they should. Another big partner of ours is the Alaska Energy Authority.
They have their own emergency fund, but they routinely provide technical support.
And a lot of it they can do now remotely to electrical utility operators to maximize the efficiency of electrical plants and to do troubleshooting and help the local power plant operators restore services when they have hiccups with their generators or with
their engines that run the power plants out there.
That happens kind of on a weekly basis where we're consistently dealing with those types of things.
In southeast I think you're all well aware I would say over the last decade we have seen an increased frequency of landslides that happen.
There are many landslids that happened all the time in southeast and most of them are handled locally.
The local public works folks and the local roads folks are able to go out and clear that, clear those.
or in impacting homes or built infrastructure outside of roads.
A lot of those are taken care of immediately.
You know, sometimes the local DOT region will help assist.
Their south coast will provide some assistance
to local public work folks.
And that is kind of routine disasters or incidents
that happen as well that don't rise to that level
of the governor needing to declare a disaster.
So do you help with like heavy equipment logistics
for any kind
of clearing?
Yes, Tara, we do. Any of that coordination. That's really, you know, I would say the
state Emergency Operations Center is the state's role of X for help. We always tell community
local government representatives that if you don't know who to call, call us because we
Whether it's a state agency or a federal agency
Or a nonprofit or or one of the other the various consortia nonprofits that are out there
That really is a lot of what we do is just connect them with additional resources that can address
Whatever the situation may be like a utility disruption or small small landslide or something like that without it having to go to a full-blown
Declared disaster. Thank you. Chair Diber has a question as well
Yeah, good morning. Thank you so far through your presentation
When it comes to smaller communities in rural Alaska
Do you help do you work with tribes on because disasters can happen quickly? Do ever do like pre?
Go out and do some
prevention with the community like who to call and things happen quickly
Just your interactions with tribes in that way. Thank you.
Thank You chair diver and I'm glad you brought that up. It was one of the examples. I was going to use so
When we have what we call blue sky days, which are fairly infrequent, where nothing is happening, there isn't a bad event that we're responding to or recovering from around the state.
My division, the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management spends a lot of time building resiliency and conducting preparedness activities with
local, municipal and tribal governments.
I think a shining example of that is over the last three years we have partnered directly
with the Association of Village Council Presidents to conduct what we call rural resilience workshops.
As you know, their constituency is pretty huge.
I guess it's 56 separate communities.
So it has taken us three year to bring in every community that falls under the AVCP region
to have a preparedness workshop and talk through all those things.
If you hear a storm is coming, you know, pull your snow machines and boats up, open the school,
get ready to take care of your community knowing that we can't get there immediately in the in
the midst of a Storm. So we in last two years had conducted two of those workshops. The third one
was planned for this month or next month. We've delayed that because of the Halang disaster,
But I have seen a greater response from the tribal governments in southwest Alaska and
AVCP itself because of that work that we do on the preparedness side.
Make sure they understand what to do.
We bring in the folks from local government and write response plans that are very, they're
simplified, if you will, and they end up being flip charts.
And we try to keep those updated every year because local officials change and tribal officials
change pretty regularly. So I think in large part to the preparedness and resilience efforts
that we did in Southwest Alaska over the last couple of years with AVCP, the response to long
when it did come was a lot better than it could have been. The communities were prepared.
It's a big one. I'll talk much more about that towards the end of the presentation.
It's pretty catastrophic, particularly for a couple of the communities out there.
But without that preparedness effort that we do year-round when we're not responding and recovering from disasters,
I think the response would be lesser. So we definitely focus on that.
We understand the capacity,
particularly in rural Alaska, is pretty small.
So the more we can do on the front end, the better the recovery will be and the
response will if a bad event does happen.
Thank you, Representative Schonke.
Thank you through the chair. Thank You Director Fisher for the detailed response.
My question pertains to the 50 percent of the state that's not organized and a lot of my district
district 36 has tremendous amount of ground that is not organised into any form of municipality
and while we do have some tribal governments spread throughout they don't always have the
of tribal boundaries.
So I'm sort of curious, how does your organization interact
in those areas, do you offer initial guidance
and maybe funding to say co-op utilities
that are not municipal owned or not village coops?
Well, I consider the communities, you know, in accordance with the Constitution in the
unorganized borough, um, on really that local unit of emergency management for them.
Um, and we do understand it's very complex when I talk to my peers in lower 48.
They have no concept of how Alaska government works and how we're organized up here.
But knowing that there is no interim level, county level equivalency, if you will, or
borough government between a community and the state.
We do spend a lot of time working directly with if there's a tribal government, we'll work with them.
If it's an unincorporated area in the unorganized borough, sometimes we're just talking to community councils.
And we are bringing that technical support in to respond to whatever the incident is.
I rely pretty regularly and have nothing but great things to say about the Department of Natural
Resources and the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection. When they are not fighting fire,
there are experts in incident command and emergency response are available to me to deploy to areas
that don't have that local level governance. So I frequently rely on fire team, fire management
My agency is fairly small it's 64 employees is what's on the books where I think we're about at 55 right now
We have some vacancies that we are working on hiring
So I really do rely on other state agencies and other partners around the state to help me kind of force multiply
If you will particularly in rural Alaska in the unorganized borough where there isn't that borough level
Government there. Thank you representative Hymshu
Thank You coach here mirrors. Did you have a follow-up?
Thanks, I just wanted to
So you're triggering an empathy gene here like I'm just I find myself tearful listening to you
I am just so grateful for what you do
And and in my district this year twice so
That I know of probably sounds like other times too. So my question though, and I don't want this to be
Considered any kind of a judgment or anything, but do you?
Track data on communities that have repeated requests to you for things like thawing lines or helping with you like communities
that are somehow in more need than others where it would help us to be aware or you know
If you're getting a call every year three times from the same community on the
Same issue it may be helpful for us. To know about that
I'm not sure that there's anything the state would do or could do but are you tracking that kind of data yeah through the chair
We do, we do why we have what I'll call frequent fires that, you know, it routinely have similar issues on a year to year basis and most of those are associated with utility disruptions or fuel shortages.
Some are just capacity challenges at that local level or the utility level.
So we have frequent conversations with other state agencies,
including the Division of Community and Regional Affairs,
with environmental conservation,
with the Energy Authority, with a Municipal League,
with with The Alaska Federation of Natives
to talk about
Kind of the root cause of those problems and a lot of it happens to be with training and workforce development and financial management of utilities. I don't do that.
I'm not a utility manager.
I am just a responder when it breaks and people are without water or power.
But we have frequent conversations kind of with all of this state agencies and the statewide agencies that are part of that on.
It's really a capacity issue that's out there.
We work a lot with all of the school districts around the state.
Sometimes they're the real heroes.
Oftentimes they are the Real Heroes.
They usually loan fuel when they need to.
They obviously open their facilities when needed as a shelter.
And we do try to forecast and ask those communities through our partner agencies just to let us know early.
You know, if you're feeling stress early, that's an indicator that something...
worse could happen and it doesn't take much you know if you're already stressed
because your utility is having maintenance challenges and then the storm
comes it's just going to be that much worse so we do try to look at our
frequent flyers and and the status of systems statewide with the folks that
that oversee those so, we can kind of forecast if there's going
to, be a bad problem that's out there. Thank you. I just wanted to comment a
follow up and collaboration with the departments that would have responsibility and be able to help those communities
with preparedness and to not need your services so frequently that that communication is happening.
Okay. Yeah, through the chair, co-chair him should definitely.
Yeah. And I think we do a really good job at that. You know, in a perfect world,
I would work myself out of a job. That's never going to happen because of the weather.
but some of these incidents that occur that end up causing harm to infrastructure or people,
residents in the communities, are preventable with good maintenance practices, with
good planning and preparedness practices. So when I do these rural resilience workshops
specifically, that's something that my agency runs, we bring in those partner agencies as well.
And we have a lot of conversations about those things, your infrastructure school and your tribal
And their preparedness and ability to be more resilient is a big part of that and I'll just say from the media coverage
It seems like the teachers were some of the last folks to leave Kipnuck
They were there helping find the pets and that kind of thing and it just made me really proud of
That my colleagues in the teaching profession. Okay. Thank you. Representative Prox
Yes, thank you
through the chair in I
Guess the preparedest part. Of this that you started out saying that
All disasters start locally and just in my, well really my neighborhood and the borough outside the city, et cetera.
When we first got up here, we neighbors helped each other.
We pulled each out of the ditch.
We responded to this problem or that problem.
And now it seems more of a trend at the local level at
their emergency response center is to tell people to get out of there so
somebody else can come in and do the job, be it the fire department or the forestry or
you guys, whatever, but there is more, or there's less local involvement.
And a big one that I'm worried about, frankly, is wildfire preparedness in
And there's quite a bit that could be done by the individual,
by service area, by neighborhood.
But everybody's just waiting around for us to come in there
and do it.
Are you following up and trying to emphasize and figure out
ways where we could push that, the preparedness part,
back down to the local government or even the
individual?
Yeah, through the chair represented Prox. Absolutely. I when I say from my perspective from a from the state government agency level
Starts and ends locally with local government
It really is it starts with the individual and the family and then the neighborhood and than the community and them, you know
to the government agencies
I know the Department of Natural Resources and Division of Forestry and Fire Protection have their their
Their firewise program where they're trying to encourage folks to make defensible space around their homes
to protect their homes just because of the wildfire threat.
We have similar programs for community emergency response
teams, where we try to partner with the local governments
to build these community, these neighborhood-based teams
to go out and do very minimal things.
We teach them how to use a fire extinguisher.
We'd teach him how the tri-eyes of buildings
and how house the house in your neighborhood
to check on your neighbors, those kind of things,
doing this job back in the in
the mid 90s. There was a lot
of federal funding available
for those activities and
funding is all gone. That is
not available anymore from the
federal government. So we do
rely on, you know, the
programs, what little money we
do get for preparedness
activities at the state level.
And then what is.
prioritize and appropriate at the local level to continue to conduct some of
those really individual or family preparedness activities.
But that's a real big point for us. If you can take care of yourself, then that is one less person
that the city or the tribe or state agencies have to take
care and they will always be folks that are going to need that
additional level of help. But most residents of the state can
take of themselves. They just need some extra tools and we try to work on that pretty regularly.
Um, I've got a quick one before we go to representative story. Uh, what's the timeline when that federal funding went away? Has it been slow over time or is there a cut off? I remember, you know, an Anchorage getting federal funds for, um, clearing up, it'll kill spruce.
Um.
Yeah, to the chair. It has been a slow erosion, if you will.
There was a specific discrete program by the federal government called the Citizen Corps Program.
And it was just that it, was teaching the citizens to be more resilient and help their neighbors and all of that.
And that program, that became unfunded at the Federal level around 2010,
that kind of time frame, the particular one.
And I think that specifically gets to Representative Proxis Point.
That was the program targeted.
federal funding through the state to the local jurisdictions to target that
individual and family and neighborhood level. And it was a great program. I think
we did a lot of good in the State with it when that funding was there and it
slowly went away to other priorities of the federal government. Thank you
Representative Story.
Thank You co-chair mares and welcome director Fisher thank you so much for
everything you've done for our region. We've needed it and I really appreciate
You know how well you've worked with our local tribal governments and municipalities and nonprofit agencies and our volunteers
It's just been amazing to know all of you, you know what we're talking about
Very grateful
You've been talking a lot about school facilities and how they are a hub when
disaster strikes especially in our rural areas and like
co-tier hymn shoots
question
If there's any facilities that are used a lot in certain areas that you see, not in good shape, water sewer.
I mean, we hear about some buildings who really it's a tough environment for our children to be in.
And I would really appreciate hearing if it has been compromising some of your.
operation, so to speak, because the school facilities are not what they need to be.
I don't know if you can think of any right now, but I'd really appreciate knowing that
if ever you find that.
Through the chair representative story, I appreciate that in almost every case I can
Were some of the few pieces of infrastructure particularly in a rural community that survived whatever the incident was the storm or the avalanche or
Or the flood or of fire
You know most of schools around the state were built with resilience in mind, you know
I think it specifically to keep knuck and quick ill and cook
Were and I was out there back in November after the storms
They were the lifeboats. They weren't built to a higher elevation. So they were able to survive the plug waters that came in
And they were able to maintain power and heat and serve as that lifeboat until we got into that very large probably the largest in domestic history, I think, for the state evacuation that we did out of the communities.
So, you know, i don't i'm not in on the the maintenance side of facilities out there but by and large when we need access to a school or a community does to serve is a temporary evacuation point.
They've been there to be able to provide that service,
but definitely if we see issues with that,
it's something that would be on our mind
because if a school is not available,
we usually don't have any other choice
then to evacuate folks from the community.
It's kind of the last resort that we would like to do
is take people away from their homes.
Sometimes that's...
that we just have to do that.
I hate to it, but it's,
and then the case to the West Coast storm in October,
I've had to that, and it is tragic and unfortunate,
and that's going to be for a long time.
It had nothing to with the school,
but that was just the homes that got destroyed.
Yeah.
Thank you.
One more clarifying question, then.
We've got just time check.
We have got a little more than an hour left,
and I think that really do want to.
Learn more about that
Western Alaska response from this fall
Rep. Senator Schwonke. Thank you through the chair. I want to build on representative stories question. Just quickly when schools do open their doors for disaster
opportunities
Oftentimes it requires staff to be there on time outside of their their normal jobs
You mentioned the fact that sometimes schools loan fuel and those types of things
Is there a direct route for school districts to recoup some of those costs?
Yeah through the chair representative schwankie
Yeah, absolutely
So when the governor declares a state disaster emergency and if the president does and FEMA comes into play
The funding for things like overtime for maintenance workers
or principals or teachers even that are supporting using the schools
as shelter eligible for reimbursement
through the state disaster program.
Any wear and tear and excessive usage of consumables
that oftentimes we'll use the school ourselves
as our kind of base of operations
because it's the only structure that's available
and then we will pay usage fees essentially.
We'll redo the gymnasium floor if we.
damage it just from our operations will will pump the septic if it's if
it is a school attached to a septic will pay those costs from the state
disaster and then of any damage that occurs to the school from
the event itself is all reimbursable by the State or FEMA if FEMA comes to play.
There are some some percentages up there it gets very convoluted.
I'll say generally
when the governor declares a state disaster emergency and thanks to all of you and your
support from the legislature with funding the disaster relief fund. When the Governor declares
a State disaster, 100% of the eligible costs are funded by the State. So we understand the fiscal
constraints and capacity of our local governments and tribal governments around the state.
So it ends up in essence for things that are eligible being free to them.
for the repair and restoration of public infrastructure
and tribal infrastructure as well as any damage to homes,
up to our statutory limits on the state side.
If we in turn say it succeeded the states capacity
and asked the federal government for assistance,
typically it's a 25% state and 75% federal cost share.
Like it shows on this slide there.
Which is really great for us, it's important when we do get decorations from the federal government to receive that 75% reimbursement for eligible expenses for repairing infrastructure.
I have some some further slides that go a little bit deeper into that but in general when FEMA shows up
We're getting 75% of those costs reimbursed to us. So it's not you know
I'm up fronting the cash usually, but I get reimbursed for the disaster relief fund
by federal funds
With the Alaska does get an unusually large amount of
declared disasters by the federal government, they use a per capita calculation on the amount
of damage that's estimated to determine whether supplemental federal assistance is necessary.
And because we're a small population state, we tend to get lots of and our costs are so large
in the state with the costs of supply chain and all.
And we tend to get more federal disasters in most states.
But I think it's a good thing.
I'm not sure if that will always remain that way.
There's lots of talk in DC and with
the federal agencies about changing that model.
But for now, the way the Federal Law,
the Stafford Act is the law that governs disasters nationally.
In the regulations that implement that we get a lot of disasters
Which means a lotta additional federal funding come in to support the restoration and rebuilding of our communities
Which is a good thing I think for us
Thank you and a representative care kind of follow up on that. So sorry chair mirrors
I just had the quickest follow-up to representative schwanke's question
You were answering when there is it disaster declaration, and so I'm also just curious going back to you had mentioned a
lot, of the smaller local
Disaster situations like a fuel shortage won't have a disaster declaration.
So is there a process for school reimbursement or reimbursement when that's the case, when there's not a
disaster, declaration?
Through the chair, Representative Carrick, not from the state.
The governor does have to declare a state disaster emergency to access the disaster relief fund.
Oftentimes if there is a local unit of government or whether it's a municipality or a borough or tribal government
They do have reserves and some contingency funds
If they declare a Local disaster sometimes that opens up access to those contingency accounts that may be appropriated by the tribal councils or the assemblies
Or city councils
And we expect to see that we see it that pretty regularly a recent example of the Northwest Arctic borough. There's
There's an issue with some frozen pipes in one of the
communities in Northwest Arctic borough that I just heard of
yesterday. I can't think of
the name of
the community off the top of my head and the borough is said
with their contingency funds they're going to respond to that
and and use their the burrow appropriated funding to send
some folks out to help with that utility disruption.
It could be similar for school use where that funding is maybe
available at the local level.
A lot of times communities do come to the state and ask for assistance because they don't
have that financial resource to be able to do that or cash flow able
to respond to even small disasters that you would think would not be a
declared disaster in the lower 48 say it's just different for us without roads
and having to fly fuel and all of those kind of things.
Moving to that next slide here I'll just try to get through these I have some
some examples towards the end here of the recent disasters, including how long we have two programs
that are implemented when the governor declares a state disaster emergency. He has to authorize
these in his declaration. One is the public assistance program. It's confusing, but for the
disaster world public, assistance is not people. it's not like the Division of Public Assistance
at the Department of Health. Public assistance to us is infrastructure. So whether it is tribally
municipally owned infrastructure, state owned
infrastructure. That's what that program does is repair and
restore infrastructure that does include certain private
nonprofits that provide an essential government service
essentially. So we do have nonprofits, we have electric and
telephone co-ops that provides communications and power
services. They're eligible under this program. What is not
um entity out there the state and FEMA does not reimburse private sector uh private for profit
companies for any damage we expect in the law prohibits us from providing state disaster and
federal disaster funds to a private-for-profit we expected them to have insurance and take care
We don't do that.
Our individual assistance program, I'm proud to say we are one of the only states in the
entire nation that has a program that is funded and is used regularly.
I think we might be the one that does what we do.
The disaster act in 2623, there is a financial limitation for grants to repair and replace
private property homes that were damaged or destroyed in subsistence equipment.
Um, the financial cap is half of what the federal amount is.
So this year, uh, FEMA can provide, um, $44,800 per homeowner.
If their home was damaged and an additional $ 44,000, 800, Um for
essential personal property and subsistence equipment that was lost.
When the governor declares, I can do half of that.
So this year, it's 22,400 for home repair and 22 400 for essential personal property
loss. There is no state in the nation that does that every other state expects every
homeowner have insurance. So it either homeowners insurance or FEMA.
There's nothing in between so I think we recognize the need of our our residents in the state and the legislature has always been an incredible partner in making sure that we could provide that service to our homeowners when they have damage from a declared disaster.
It's not intended to make folks whole.
It is not a replacement for insurance, but we know many of our communities are uninsurable
anyway because they don't have fire departments.
But it's something, and it is much more than any other state provides.
So I typically talk to the congressional delegation and testify to
the federal administration that if you want to have, show how states could have
skin in the game for responding to needs of their citizens and not solely
relying on FEMA, look to Alaska.
We provide an incredible amount of support to our homeowners that most don't.
The one program that's not listed here is we also have a temporary housing program.
So when people are displaced, when their homes are destroyed or not safe, secure or habitable,
when the governor invokes that program, we can provide renters three months of rental
assistance to find a temporarily place to relocate to.
And for homeowners, if they lose their primary residence,
we could provide funding up to 18 months.
for folks to stay in a rental unit, an apartment, that type of thing, until their home can be
repaired or replaced.
So that's a pretty substantial amount of assistance as well.
That's available.
Thank you.
Representative Holland.
Thank You, Chair Mears.
The director covered my question in his follow-up comments.
Thank.
Hold on.
Representative Hemsley.
Thank-you.
Through the chair, I just want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly on the housing
If my home in Sitka burns to the ground, this is not triggered.
This has to be associated with a larger disaster.
Is it contingent on whether or not I have homeowners insurance
or it goes to everybody regardless?
So through the chair to tear him, shoot,
the program is only invoked when the governor declares
a state disaster emergency and he authorizes the Program.
It's available to everybody if a homeowner has insurance.
Insurance pays first.
We don't come in and pay on top of insurance,
but what we will authorize, and we
will pay homeowners for is they're deductible
to encourage people to have insurance
so if the governor declares a disaster
and includes this program, we're
happy to cover the insurance deductible
if somebody does have an insured home.
And it's the same for infrastructure as well, if,
if a municipality or a tribe, their infrastructure is insured.
We can help pay the deductible and then anything above the policy limits.
So we definitely rely on insurance primarily where it is available.
We just know it isn't available in most places.
follow-up representative really quick follow up so in the 2018 earthquake where
homes were damaged but I don't I'm unaware that any homes
were destroyed so if it's just damage this is not necessarily triggered
that's correct yeah it really is through the chair
representative imp chute. It does depend on the severity. In the in the case of the 2018
cook-and-let earthquake, this program was invoked. FEMA was also brought in and the president
declared a disaster for individual assistance. The federal programs generally mirror ours,
the state programs. They just provide more assistance we had 17, 18 homes that were destroyed.
in that earthquake, much smaller than what happened in Halong.
But so, and FEMA is the same way.
They'll be able to provide funding for deductibles
for those that are insured.
You know, in the case it was South Central Alaska,
I'd call it more well-insured than most places in this state.
So that takes time.
It takes the time for adjusters to get here
and do the insurance piece of that.
So, we're really there to fill in the gaps for insured folks.
But it really has to be widespread and severe enough.
That's the definition in AS26-23900 on what a disaster is.
It's got to wide spread and severe and caused by a thing like a weather event.
And then when this is invoked, were either filling in gaps or were providing the only
source of support to homeowners that don't have home insurance because they can't get
it or they cannot afford it, that kind of thing.
Thank you representative story. Thank You through the chair director Fisher
My understanding, and when we saw this and we were grateful for help with rental assistance
for three months when the glacier flooding and people had to leave their homes or their
rental place, but I think it's important to note that it is not what the rental market
bears or the housing market bears, it said, I can't remember what amount is capped at
per month, so you might have to make up the difference.
It's still very helpful, then also the market is so tight, hard to find a place to move
be in another home, you know, to rent another
home. But having said that, I can't remember
what the cap is through the chair representative
story. So the calculation that I use as well
as what FEMA uses if if there's a presidential
declaration is HUD's fair market rate value
on a studio one, two, three or four bedroom
home? We know that that's that the HUD rates
are tend to be lagging.
They don't tend to be reflective of what the real market is for rental properties
Because there is a shortage of you know housing stock statewide if you will
And just for example, we we have we can go above that rate if we need to based on the market conditions
For the response to typhoon along in the west coast storm
I have asked and received
approval already by FEMA to go 125% above HUD's fair market rate for those units because we know
that unfortunately in that disaster most folks are staying in the Anchorage area because they
just can't go back to their communities, the communities are not safe yet. So we're authorized
up to 125 percent of that market right just based on the housing conditions and the reality of the
So, we do have the ability to do that.
This gets real nitty gritty.
I will just say when the governor authorizes the disaster,
typically what we'll do is we will limit the funding made available
from the state disaster relief fund to a million dollars to start.
The statute gives the governor the authority to do that without further approval from the legislature.
Anything over a million dollars requires approval by you, the Legislature, for that expenditure from The Disaster Relief Fund.
So just because the money is appropriated and that fund, we still can't spend it in over $1 million until you approve it.
But I need that money right away, you know, it's a cash flow thing so for me to send the
National Guard somewhere or the State Defense Force or to deploy the Division of Forestry
and Fire Protection, I needed that funding up front.
So typically we'll ask for, we will recommend that the Governor limit the initial expenditures
to a million dollars to get us started.
When we're looking at damage to facilities and eligible cost associated, I could just say we do our diligence
we are I feel like my agency is a great steward of the public's money and
We use what's called the FEMA Public Assistance Policy Program Guide that defines
federal eligibility
I think that's an important factor because I want to do the same thing that FEMA does,
so I'm not confusing people.
So we utilize their regulations and their determinations of what's eligible and what
not.
This is the pyramid out of that guide on what is eligible in terms of cost, work, facilities,
and applicants.
It gets very, very complex and complicated, and I
think many of you hear from your constituents that sometimes it could appear that we're
in getting the reimbursements out, and that's because we are doing our diligence.
We need lots of documentation from the applicant and the facility to make sure that that eligibility
piece is met before we're reimbursing those funds.
That's an important key that I think everybody needs to be aware of.
We expect every entity to upfront the cost for their work.
We're not forward funding in most cases.
the money going out the door to repair and restore infrastructure.
In some cases, we have provisions to allow us to do some expedited and some advances,
if you will, to communities that have cash flow problems to make repairs.
But by and large,
we don't do that.
It's a reimbursable program.
And there is a heavy, heavy documentation burden.
It is both from legislative budget and audit and the FEMA office
to do that due diligence with all of this,
what sometimes appears to be onerous documentation
requirements, but I can't waive those.
We have, whenever we have tried to
be more flexible with those and in the last
three years of me doing this we've got findings,
either from LBNA or the FEMA Inspector General
where we had to make sure to go back
and continue to have this documentation requirement.
At the end of the day, it's a good thing
because we are being good stewards of
the public's money,
but it just means that
it takes a little bit longer for our money to get on the street to to
get out there and get folks reimbursed for all the work that they're doing to
take care of their communities.
I talked about this already. Our regulations are in 94
694 AAC for the individual assistance program.
I spoke quite a bit to this
already on what we're able to do there.
Again, unlike any other state in the nation, we really provide a benefit to our residents
of the state, like any others.
It does have to specifically be activated though.
I would say 90% of state disaster emergencies that our governors declare are only for public
assistance.
It's only to fix roads and bridges and schools and power plants, that kind of thing.
We don't invoke this program regularly.
But we absolutely do when it's needed, when there are a lot of homes impacted.
It's not for a single family unit burning to the ground, but when its widespread and
severe impact to housing, that's when this program is invoked.
So just have some pictures here towards the end and please feel free to jump in as when
you have questions.
that we deal with from our agency and then the Stadia Sea.
One is breakup in the spring, the threat of ice jam induced
flooding and flash flooding impacts, ballistic impacts of
ice in our major river systems is such a threat that
we run a program called River Watch. I would say most of the
folks in Southwest Alaska don't even know what my agency name
is. They think we're River watch. When my folks are out there,
it's a joint partnership between the Division of Homeland
and Noah's National Weather Service.
So I rent a small aircraft and we fly low and slow
over the Yukon, the Khyakuk,
the Kuskakwim and other major rivers
with our weather service hydrologist
and one of my emergency management specialists
to monitor the progress of breakup
from the Canadian border on the UConn
all the way to Imanik and Oaxanuk
and then the same from
the headwaters of the kuskokwem all way down.
to the lower Cuscoquim Delta.
The folks in communities, when breakup happens,
it's an exciting time.
They want to get out on the river
and start collecting firewood
and go start conducting their subsistence activities.
But by and large, they can only see
what's in front of the community.
I can't see that there's a 40 mile run of ice
coming down from above.
And there are natural choke points in all of our major rivers
where we see a substantial
ice jam induced flooding all the time. These are a couple of pictures crooked creek.
You could see the size of the icy upper right-hand side that gentleman's about six feet tall,
so that's the rise of ice that sometimes gets uplifted out of
the main river channels and impacts homes directly. Some of
the most catastrophic flooding events that I've responded to have been just this in the spring
and a number of other communities on the Yukon River
were catastrophically impacted.
They became federal disasters in 2013.
Galena, 90% of the buildings in the community of Galenia
were impacted by ice and flood waters.
And then we see on, on The Offiers,
plenty of otherwise.
In 2011, Crooked Creek was catastropically impact.
didn't end up being a federal disaster. But we see this pretty regularly. So we run this program
to provide that early warning and reconnaissance. We'll typically land in a community and bring up
an elder or a tribal member or or an municipal member to fly with us because they know the river
better than we do. Um we rely on that heavily to to bring out folks particularly in our um
Non English primarily non-English speaking communities to bring up translators
And they just get on the VHF on in the airplane with us and talk to the community members in their language to let them know
What the status of the river looks like
Outside of spring breakup
threat that we have with ice jam induced flooding the other significant window of time
We call it the fall sea storm season
And I can say when I started this job back in the 90s, the fall was the
fall. That threat window was roughly between the end of September and until
the ice came down,
the Arctic Sea ice, came
down. So anywhere from, you know,
the End of the September through late December, early January,
that's really not the case anymore. These storms are impacting us. I mean,
I had one that impacted us in 2008. The storm came in at the
and now the time the fall sea storm threat window really lasts until we have
shorefast ice that comes down to along our coastline as far south as it will
go anymore. So once in general once there is shore fast ice in a community in
western Alaska, the relatively safe storms become a wind issue and not a storm
surge flooding issue like we've seen with the remnant of Merbock and Hong.
That is just, that takes longer for that to happen so that this window of time for sea
storms impacting us is extended until the ice comes in.
As I mentioned earlier, we continue to see the newer trending disaster that we've dealt
with and unfortunately there's been quite a bit of tragedy in southeast Alaska with
This is probably not going to go away.
I mean, 20 years ago, nobody knew the term atmospheric river.
I know, you know we're all amateur meteorologists now.
And that was not a term in our lexicon 20
years, but it is now and with the changes
in the Pacific jet stream.
you know, when the conditions are right and that river is impacting either
south, south east or south central, southwest Alaska, it's bringing in all
of that energy and more moisture and wind and all of
that and I don't see that changing. So unfortunately, the impacts of
atmospheric rivers and typhoon remnants and and
all that. Energy and moisture that comes in with the
jet stream is not going to go away. Sometimes we're fortunate and it
British Columbia or the west coast states and it's not impacting us as severely.
But that certainly is a trend that is not going to go away and when communities in southeast
are already super saturated from the regular rainfall they get and then we have a wind
That happened, you know, just a couple of weeks ago,
we had a serious concern about the avalanche threat here,
just in Juneau, from all of that precipitation and snow
that had come and impacted through December
and just through a a few weeks back ago.
And I think many of you are familiar
with the Glacier Blake-Alpers flood here particularly
on the Mendenhall, that has become an annual event.
It's unusual for us to be able to predict
and I heard a question.
I think in house finance yesterday about our ability to predict disasters. They're not predictable in any way except for this one
This glacier dammed lake outwards flood from the Mendenhall
It's pretty predictable. We expect that to happen every August now
I met with the city in burrow of Juneau just last week when I was down to prepare for that. I I thank
What you see the City and borough of juneau do and to prevent
Further damage from this this known event that's going to happened
the Hesco baskets, all of that stuff. It worked this year.
We also know that every time that basin lets loose the capacity that
basin grows. So I know the city in Barogino is working with the US Army Corps of
Engineers and others to strengthen that wall, that flood protection wall
to heighten it in some places and to extend it further down the river.
But again, I would say that's a condition, you know, with all
tied to those atmospheric rivers. That's not going to go away either. Those things are going
to continue to happen. So we need to be prepared for that. I think it was just a success. You know,
in 2024 and 2025, we had some really bad flooding in the Mendenhall Valley. This year, not so much.
The same thing happened, but that flood wall was able to protect most of the homes and infrastructure
That's going to continue to be a challenge that we respond to pretty regularly.
I think particularly for members of the Tribal Affairs Committee,
the success story for this area and this particular incident
is the incredible partnership between the city and borough of Juneau and the Central Council.
Click it and hi to Indian tribes of Alaska.
Clink it in Haida and CBJ are tied at the hip now.
I don't know that that's always the case for everything,
but for disasters, they are absolutely tied to the HIP.
They integrate all of their operations to help enrolled members
of the tribe as well as residents of The Burrow,
whether it's working on the public work stuff,
and the roads, and drains,
and all that,
they really are
Join that the hip and combined to respond. They are the model that I use and I frequently bring folks from
clicking high to around the state with me to show other tribal entities how you can have a good partnership for disaster preparedness and response and recovery.
Um, with your neighbor, if there's a municipal and a travel government, there is nobody
that does it better than the city of Burrage, you know, and click and hide us.
So I think it's important to recognize that I'm pretty proud of, of what they're able
to do together to take care of everybody that it lives and, in record rates here in the
area.
We have a couple of questions, Representative Carrot.
Thank you through the chair.
I just wanted to thank you for the River Watch discussion and the elders that.
come out with you. I'm just absolutely fascinated.
I love hearing that.
I am curious.
I know the annual River Watch program has been around a long time
because breakup is probably the most perennial, historical,
predictable disaster that the interior faces
in other areas of the state.
But when we talk about some of these disasters that have
especially happened within the last five to ten years,
it seems like the magnitude of
the impact is much greater and I'm just wondering if you can opine a little bit is that because we
have larger populations in some of these areas like the Mendenhall Valley then maybe we would have
had historically or are the incidents themselves becoming more severe and if
you could just kind of talk about some those factors and then also I'll just add the second
We have the annual River Watch program.
Are there programs that we should have as part of your operations for other types of disasters
that maybe we historically haven't needed?
Thanks, through the chair, Representative Carrick.
So to your first question, I think it's a combination of of many, many factors.
I thank nationwide trending.
We've seen there are more weather events happening.
And when they happen, they seem to be more severe.
That's kind of a nationwide trend.
We're seeing that up here.
I would relate a lot of that to our coastal and riverine flooding
based on the atmospheric rivers again.
You know, there's been a pretty significant change in the way those rivers
of moisture in
the upper atmosphere are impacting the state.
To some degree it is about the built infrastructure, there are more people living closer to more dangerous areas, more condensed population, and we have a significant challenge with aging infrastructure in the state, so our infrastructure ends up being more vulnerable.
Even if the storm or the flood is not as severe or fire is
not a severe, our infrastructure is getting old and aging.
So we see greater impacts just based on the age of our
infrastructure around the state.
So it's a multitude of factors.
And, you know, I know Director Sanders has said this
number of times disasters aren't.
very predictable. That's part of the nature of being a disaster is they're fairly not predictable
we do work very very closely with the with NOAA the National Ocean economic and atmospheric
administration and the national weather service to do additional monitoring and surveillance and
and try and forecasting I will say the weather surface every day gets better and better at
Um they have been pretty spot on with the potential impacts of these coastal storms and and typhoon
remnants. Um typhoot and murbok the remnant of that that hit the west coast in 2022 they were they
were spot-on with where it was going to impact how high the storm surge was gonna be how
high. The winds were going be. They were pretty. Spot on for the remnants of hollong in October
this year until it kind of hooked right. We thought it. Was going. To follow the same path
And then weather being what the weather will be in the Bering Sea caused the primary focus
of that energy to kind of hooked right and hit Southwest Alaska, the lower Cascaquim Delta
communities primarily so it didn't follow the same track.
We continue to rely on the folks, scientists at the Weather Service to continue work on
model those models for us we are looking at typhoons when they're impacting
Japan the weather service certainly is but even my agency and we're not meteorologists
however good news is the Weather Service has committed to put a full-time
meteorologist in the state of C they are going to rotate meteorologist and
Anchorage from the Anchorage forecast office so we'll have a
full time weather person in state EOC
I think there's a second state in the nation that's getting a full-time
NWS employee that is going to be embedded with us to provide that service.
So looking at all the remote sensing and the GOES satellites, all of the weather data
and climate prediction center that the Weather Service has,
all those folks is just going give us a better indication of how bad a season may be.
But at the end of day, it is about weather and weather is not predictable.
Where the waves go or where the wind ends up impacting, so it's still an incredible challenge to try to predict some of these things.
We can definitely say our infrastructure is not getting any newer.
It's continuing to age so that potential for compromise when an event does happen.
whether it's a geologic hazard like a landslide or an earthquake and tsunami or
whether its a weather event like fire or flood or a storm. We know there will
continue to be impacts to our communities. So that's about as predictable as we can
get. It's just the nature of what we do. Thanks we've got a few more questions.
Chair Dibert. Yes thank you.
Thank you for your presentation. I'm going to go back to the interior slide before on
interior rivers
Representative Carrick was right that
in the Interior
Every spring I recently spoke with an elder said every spring we're always prepared
Because those rivers break up is a pretty big issue and I remember the night
I don't remember but my parents tell me about the flood of
encourage all of us to read that book. It's the book anything on that topic of the flood.
It is pretty amazing. My question is, I'm not sure if you work with communities in long-term.
I have some communities, in the interior, that are looking like 10 years down the road.
They see erosion happening and just because the rivers, they are braiding,
Just curious if you do long-term work like that
Through the chair of the co-chair divert. Thanks for that question
We we do work pretty regularly with the division of community and regional affairs on
the long term community development plans
Um, I have a complimentary plan, if you will, that we support development of for communities called a hazard mitigation plan.
And that does address the hazards in the community, whether it's erosion or wildfire or earthquake, those types of things. So, uh, making sure that the, um,
the hazard mitigation plan I have is in line with the division of forcing fire protections,
community wildfire protection plans, and which do address things like fuel reduction for the
wildfire threat. All of those things, they're all kind of complimentary with it with a community
long term development plan. So we do do that a bit. I will say the
The sad news is we don't have a state hazard mitigation program.
We have traditionally relied on the federal hazard
mitigation Program and federal pre-disaster mitigation
program funding through FEMA.
It's all gone.
This administration canceled those the pre disaster program
in the spring.
It was called building resilient infrastructure in communities.
That program was was essentially terminated last spring
A federal district court has said it's
Un-interminated, so we don't know what that means yet.
But during the governor requested
the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program
for Typhoon Halong, and it was denied.
The president denied that request.
The President has denied
that requests for every state since he came into office.
So, at least for calendar year 25 and so far into calendar
year 2026, there is no federal mitigation funding being made available anymore.
It's concerning to all of us.
I think many studies have shown a return on investment.
If you mitigate the threat from a hazard, you're saving $6 to $10 for every $1 invested
in mitigation on the front end.
So that's going to be a challenge for us, I.
don't know what the future is. I'm told that there's going to be a new mitigation program in the
future. From the federal government, I just don t know when and what that will look like.
They've been pretty tight-lipped about that. FEMA is going through some pretty intense scrutiny.
I think most of you know the president created a review counsel. He just extended that counsel
their deadline to provide a report into March of this year. So we just
Which is concerning but for those long-term issues for communities we try to
Synchronize all of those efforts the hazard mitigation identification the community wildfire plans and then you know long term long range community planning efforts
So we've got three more in the queue at the moment and than another half an hour for getting into typhoon. How long?
Representative Prox. Yeah. Thank you
through the chair, I don't have a compassion gene similar
to representative Hymchu's, unfortunately.
But to follow up somewhat on Rep. Diberts' line of questioning
disasters in the long term, they are predictable.
There's a 100-year flood map, there's 50- year flood
map.
I dunno when within that 100 years or how many times
but it's pretty predictable and we're not paying attention to that.
So, and you mentioned that preparedness at this point, I guess,
is one-sixth the cost of response.
Do you have enough information that we can get out to municipalities
so that people can say and maybe even enforce some common-sense things
don't buy that land by the river and build a house on it because people do that because it's
actually lived by The River and then they cry because the name River came up. Do we have information
so we can really emphasize this preparedness more? Thanks through the Chair Representative
Prox. We have that information for some locations in the state. You specifically mentioned flood
A portion of that is called the base flood elevation,
you know, how high the flood of record is in the community.
Communities in Alaska, and this is all managed by the Division of Community and Regional Affairs,
but communities in
the state that participate in
the National Flood Insurance Program have fairly good data for that.
FEMA also, which is managed over at DCRA,
has a program called Risk Map that does some of
potential storm surge or flood heights, those kind of things.
But we do not have that high fidelity data for everywhere in the state.
I mean, a great example is both for in their response to typhoon
hollong, and you can see some photos here, just absolutely devastating.
Like I said, the worst I've seen.
We did not
have base flood elevation data
for Kipnuk or Kwingilunguk.
It was not available.
It had never been funded.
So, as we're responding to this and trying to figure out how to rebuild these communities
in a more resilient fashion, knowing that additional coastal storm surge disasters are
going to occur, FEMA and the scientists are out there now trying
to determine what that base flood elevation will be.
They weren't NFI, they weren t National Flood Insurance Program communities, so they didn't
And so now, and now there's a new normal after this storm because it really is,
was the flood of record for these two communities.
So there is a, there, is the lack of high resolution data for some of this,
from some that threat analysis statewide.
It's not available everywhere.
So, then that's work that folks like the Division of Geological and Geophysical Survey
at DNR and USGS and DCRA and others are working on.
You know, it takes a while to map the state and get that high fidelity data and then overlay the flood impacts or fire impacts those kind of things.
I'd like to respond to that a little bit. Having done a fair amount of project permitting is that it's required to look at various threats of flooding seismic.
avalanches a number of things that you've got to go through as you evaluate a
permit. I did a design in a community and the schools are really good at that as
well so when there's not information I do a project in Golovin and they'd had
you know a record this is this where the this was where
the high mark was at the storm and then you design above that and I went a little
another project came in after me and said well why did you build that so high and
I was like why'd you built your solo but again new normal things are changing so
hundred year flood maps there's frequencies of things that are that
are coming more frequently than that. So that things
are definitely changing and planning that we did 20 years ago is not appropriate
Yeah, to the chair, and then again, through the Chair back to Representative Prox.
One of the things that we do look at in that the local hazard mitigation plans that
we continue to develop, not every community in the state has one of those yet, but is
all those threats and hazards and strategies to mitigate against.
At the end of day, even if a community has identified the good strategies that protect
themselves from flooding or fire, it's at great expense to relocate infrastructure.
You know, sometimes elevation is a fairly reasonable cost to do some mitigation against flood,
but relocating infrastructure, you know moving an airport or moving a school further inland
or something like that is just a great expense.
So, in many cases, we've identified the hazard and the threat.
We've identify a way to mitigate it, and then it's a matter of the community is trying
to find funding to actually do that work.
It's just, it is expensive to move infrastructure and homes.
Thank you, Representative Nelson.
Yes, thank you Madam Chair.
Quick question, you had mentioned going back
to the response process that you've
responded to over 130 events one a month, roughly,
as a state disaster arises to that level.
So when we go back to local communities,
kind of bouncing off of what Representative Prox was saying,
you said that your expectation is
that they'd have 24 to 96 hours of funding.
you know money doesn't fix its supplies. So my question is out of those hundred plus that you
responded to and I know that this might be anecdotal or you might have data how many of
those communities were actually prepared for whatever the event was whether it was flooding or
Thanks for that through that chair represented Nelson
I think almost every single community in this state does a great job in those initial hours
And I may have misspoken so let me clarify
When we when we do preparedness in response planning with our local jurisdictions
We asked them to be ready to take care of themselves for the first 24 to 96 hours
Just knowing it takes time for this date to mobilize resources and we can't come in in the middle of a storm
not necessarily funding for 96 hours if you will. If an event exceeds the
capacity of the community and the governor does declare disaster, we reimburse for
those initial costs anyway. It's not like you get the first 24 hours and I get
the rest. We don't do that.
We reimburse based on eligible expenses. I think our communities are
I can tell you, 30 years ago, I'd walk into a community.
They didn't know who we were.
They thought we're FEMA.
They did not have a plan in place to respond to a disaster.
The clinics didn t have an emergency plan.
The schools didn' have active shooter plans back then.
All of those kind of things.
Now, by and large, every time I land in a
community in the midst of a
disaster, somebody will walk up to me and say,
I'm Joe.
I am the incident commander.
For the tribe or for the city that terminology the incident command system is our national standard for how we organize ourselves to respond to incidents.
Um, that training and education is out there and the plans are developed for the communities and they're using that now.
It's almost becoming second nature, unfortunately, because we have so many disasters in the state.
So I mean, I think at our local level for municipal and tribal government, they continue to do an incredible job with, you know, within the capacity that they have,
you, know some communities are just very, very small.
Many times the.
The folks that would respond and are the leaders in the community are survivors themselves or victims their own homes are damaged or destroyed and that certainly exacerbates the issue there.
Regionally, they do a great job.
Neighbors help at neighbors, communities help in communities and then sometimes they just
need us to come in and give them a big helping hand because they're also displaced.
For example, the entire Tribal Council for the Native Village of Kipnuk is in Anchorage
right now.
Their homes are destroyed.
The community's not safe to be in, so they are managing their community from 400 miles
away.
anything I've seen in the whole 30 years that I have been doing this.
Sometimes it exceeds their capacity in every way and they need that extra assistance.
By and large, they do a great job.
We have very few fatalities in our disasters in Alaska.
It's another thing that we all should be proud of.
Sometimes, unfortunately, it happens.
There were a few fatalities in Typhoon Halang.
We've seen fatalities,
unfortunately in Southeast from landslides.
But most of the time, we don't have fatalities.
And that's the direct result of
the capability of
the local government and the tribal government to respond.
Make sure people get out of harm's way
and are safe and sheltered, which is impressive.
You can see hurricanes that happen.
Again, they're pretty predictable that they are going to happen in Southeast America and there are always fatalities.
We see very few in this state and I think that's a testament to the local capacity and capability that we have.
Thank you.
We've got two more in the queue at the moment and about 20 minutes left for how long.
Representative him.
Thank You co-chair mirrors through the chair.
I'm going ask a couple of questions and it's going seem disjointed that this question is I've been jotting down.
So you talked about.
We thought we'd be lucky and the storm would track in a certain direction and then it took a right turn and luck is just not a plan so
Prevention like you said, we know in health care prevention helps. We know and corrections prevention. Helps.
We no in schools prevention's helps prevention help so
This is maybe not your role, but is there a place?
Is there a way to help with prevention beyond just making plans?
So for example, the Haskell barriers here in Juneau, I think we're locally funded.
And I don't know,
I thing there was more than just local funding.
But anyway, they figured out how to do it.
I'm thinking about,
I am looking at this picture and seeing a fuel tank surrounded by water.
Should we be moving fuel tanks as a preventative measure, as an idea?
Is any funding stream that does that?
Yeah, thanks through the chair to chair Hymshoot. There are there are
Mirriative programs out there that are funded by other agencies
I think I'd agree with you not always my agency's job because we don't regulate fuel tanks and and
Marine fuel headers and those kind of things
But working with the fuel the the Fuel providers and the Fule Tank storage owners and working
With folks like DEC and The U.S. Coast Guard
and EPA there, are
known, you know, known mechanisms to protect bulk fuel tank
farms, if you will. So they're typically built kind of dual
purpose to protection from damage from disasters as well as to
contain any potential, You know releases that might happen.
So by and large, our fuel our bulk, fuel storage facilities in
our communities.
Particularly, the ones that have been refurbished in the last 15 or 20 years are built with
that resilience in mind and mitigation.
We have aging infrastructure though, there's some old tank farms and old tanks that are
exposed to the threat of flooding or erosion throughout the state.
has done an incredible job of funding a program for them to get out to every
community that has bulk fuel storage to provide that all of those technical
recommendations on what they need to do to improve the resilience and security
of bulk-fuel storage specifically. And we see that across the board when
when folks are building or getting or like chair Mir said when people are
getting permitted to to construction projects or repair
there are opportunities to add this resilience in.
And I think everybody does that now.
Nobody's just rebuilding it where it was.
We are spending a tremendous amount of time
with technical experts from FEMA
and the Corps of Engineers and others
to come up with recommendations for communities impacted
by typhoon, how long remnant,
on how to build back higher and better and safer.
And that's everything.
That's for homes themselves as well as infrastructure.
Portions of the boardwalk and Kipnuck and Quangirlengook survived just fine, even though they were impacted with incredible velocity floodwaters.
And those were mitigated. Those were newer, newer built boardwalks that were anchored on pilings.
The board walk that was destroyed right now, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and our contractors and the communities are repairing those boardwoks now and putting pilums in.
Because it's a proven effective way to mitigate.
So, we definitely do that when we're repairing infrastructure,
but when were developing infrastructure there are opportunities
from a myriad of agencies and programs to build that resilience
and security into those.
Okay. So let's do a little quicker on the answer
so we can get to a bit more in depth on how long?
Getting short on time here. So represented him cute. Okay. I have three questions
I think they're pretty straightforward and quick one is related to Merbock
I had heard and and you may not be able to answer this but I heard that
Fish camps were not eligible for FEMA funding and that's a pretty critical part of life and, you know
She'd apply would where I come from as close to $100 right now.
I can't imagine, people invest over
generations in building and maintaining fish camps.
So are fish camp something that would be eligible?
Yeah, through the chair, Chair Hymshoot,
subsistence camps are eligible
under both the state and FEMA individual assistance programs.
The one piece that FEMA cannot pay for today
is the cabin itself, the the carbon structure,
the real property, if you will,
but they can pay everything else, a boat and a boater
Fishing tackle guns, ammunition, all of those things are now eligible through FEMA.
Every year I give them a list of subsistence equipment that becomes eligible in a cost
estimate of what it costs to buy a net in the community or get a
net transported to a community, if you will. The state program can pay for the real property,
the cabin itself, up to our cap. And like I said, this year it's only 22,400 is the max that I can
So combined our programs for typhoon hollong and merbach
Specifically the state will be able to pick up that that additional cost for the replacement and repair of the cabin itself
FEMA can pick out the cost of of all the equipment if you will so it's a pretty good partnership there
That's why we keep our state program open all The time even when FEMA shows up because there's that one specific piece that
Federal law prevents them from funding
But we can fund it, and it's not a duplication of benefits.
So it is actually an advantage, again, that most states don't have.
Of course, they don�t have a subsistence issue like we do, but.
Okay.
Really great to hear that answer.
Thank you.
Two other quick questions.
We are recognizing in Southeast Alaska now landslide-generated tsunamis, Tracy Arm,
and Tuyabay back in the 60s.
On the state side if a cruise ship is in a bay and a landslide comes down and there's a disaster on the water
You know is there you know three miles out as state and then it's federal and do we respond to something like that?
The Prince and Dam burned down in Sitka in Sica sound back in the 60s or 70s and the community responded no lives were lost
It was an amazing amazing story, but when it happening at sea, But on that scale
Is there any role for the state in that or is that handled differently through the chair to chair him shoot
Not a lawyer, so I don't know the technicalities of that
We would we would respond to a landslide induced tsunami or a distant tsunami
In the same way in general, and this is generally speaking
I don't take this as the gospel, but when vessels are at sea,
they're safer than they are when they were at the pier side
or dockside when a tsunami occurs.
Again, all of our eligibility issues are there.
We would certainly respond to a mass casualty incident.
We provide support for shipboard firefighting training,
those kind of things for our coastal communities.
We would support the evacuation and response to dealing with, you know, mass fatality or mass
casualty and that kind of incident. We wouldn't do anything for the cruise ship, right? It's a
private for-profit enterprise. But we would certainly support
the community in their response, to taking care of,
you Know, potential victims or survivors of a maritime accident.
We do planning throughout coastal Alaska with the Coast Guard on mass rescue operations.
to support that with industry to make sure the tourism industry is in partnership with
us, our local communities and harbor masters, the Coast Guard and us and the troopers and
EMS, everything to do that. So we would definitely respond. But again, it comes back to what's
eligible for funding and, you know, on the industry side itself, we wouldn't be paying
for any of that, but we'd support all the costs of a catastrophe that impacted the community itself.
Okay, and then my final really quick question through the chair, I'm hearing that you're retiring after 30 sounds like pretty incredible years.
What's the succession plan? Is the person coming in behind you? If you know who that is, have they been working on this kind of thing for a while because Alaska is very different from anywhere else?
Like I said, I think at the start,
I'm kind of tired.
It's been 32 years of doing this by then.
And I will say, the good thing is my team
is really the ones who affect all of these response
and recovery and planning and preparedness.
It is not me, it's my other 63 employees, if you will.
My agency is a great place to work.
It has got a really great culture,
so we tend to keep our employees for the long term.
My agency is full of what I'd say is technically competent,
dedicated emergency management professionals.
They're not going anywhere.
I'm just going to move on and do
something else in the future with my family,
but they are going be remaining in place.
As to my successor, no idea I
am a partially exempt employee and I think it will be subject to
the new governor and the
new administration coming forward.
But both at the local level in this state and in my agency,
Are great, and they're not going anywhere. So I think there's plenty of opportunity to replace me
They may not be an agency historian like I am because I've been there so long, but they all are very very good at what they do
Thank you
Representative Holland
Great. Thanks. I have some things.
I'm hoping to come back to after we talk more about
Along but just at the moment to clarifying questions, please
One is I haven't heard you mention and maybe it dates me, um,
but
Are local emergency planning committees and that process of creating capacity still a primary
tool for local of emergency preparedness? Or is there something else that's now taken the place
of the L.A.P.C.s that used to be a Primary Organizing Tool? The other clarifying question is in the
issue of the lack of elevation flood data and the work you're doing now to
prepare, how are you anticipating and incorporating the 75-year forecast on
sea level rise into what might be now?
policies around what should be minimum elevation standards for construction, and I'm aware Hawaii
has done quite a bit of this work that has essentially laid down the law in terms of public policy
on infrastructure. So the local level LEPCs at the kind of the macro level, 75 years out,
what's our policy around ensuring that what we do today is going to last?
decades into the future as opposed to getting washed away because we didn't
anticipate we needed a couple more feet. Yeah, thank you. Through the chair,
Representative Holland, to the second question, that's more appropriate, I
think, for the Division of Community and Regional Affairs. They do that mapping
and long-term looking, you know, in collaboration with USGS and the State
Division the Geological Geophysical Survey. We don't do the mapping stuff in our
the data that we incorporate in the state's hazard mitigation plans comes from those agencies
when it comes to elevation and flood impact and other hazards. So that might be a better
conversation with one of the other agencies. To your first question about local emergency
planning committees, they are still up and operational in many of our communities around the
Right. So, back in the 90s, we changed the nature of local emergency planning committees
to get away from just oil and hazardous substance material planning and the community right
Our committees are still doing great.
The association is still there.
We still meet twice a year with the association
as well as the State Emergency Response Commission.
So even without funding,
they are doing their best to continue
to that planning effort.
We work with them regularly.
That's one of our first contacts
when we're on the planning side
is with a local emergency planning committee.
There are various stages of activity.
either based on funding or based
on just other priorities in the community,
but they are still an entity that's out there.
And it's a group of folks that we typically rely on
when we're doing planning around the state.
Sure, thank you.
So I just want to talk a bit about
the remnant of typhoon along here and I had stated earlier really the west coast
storm disaster that the governor declared in october and the president
declared it in november is known as a d r disaster uh
forty eight ninety three on the federal side was really three different storms
the first storm uh that came before the hollong uh remnant
came in and pretty uh directly impacted the city of cotsabue in the northwest
arctic burrow it was extensive coastal flooding in
that happened about a week and a half before we saw the initial impacts of
typhoon hollong. So I just want to say the Northwest Arctic borough and the city of
Cotsview and others in the in
the northwest Arctic region did a great job of responding to that first storm that
happened. I
just don't want forget them because they are part very much a part of this
disaster and part
of the process that we're responding
to.
I
just have some a number of photos I want
to share here and I know the governor mentioned this in a state of
The truly heroic efforts of members of the Alaska Air and Army National Guard and the
United States Coast Guard to affect rescues in Southwest Alaska following this.
I think many of you have heard the story.
Some homes floated away either upriver or out into the sea, upwards of six to ten miles
I can tell you, when I flew in the Kipnuck in November,
I saw homes and fuel tanks and conics boxes, you know,
I would say 12 square miles around the center
of the community that had been washed inland.
Some of those homes had folks in them still.
They, the majority of residents did go to the school,
the schools in those communities,
but some people chose to stay in their homes,
that always happens.
In every type of disaster somebody's homes floated away with folks in them and and there were 51 saves credited
To the Coast Guard and the National Guard
You know, I never thought I was really gonna see
Hurricane Katrina type rescue photos from Alaska, but you can see here a photo of one of our National guard aircraft hoisted with
Rescue personnel on a hoist there picking folks up from that home
There were three individuals from Quig, Gyllengok that either lost their lives or still reported as missing.
But 51 saves in Western Alaska where the rescue aircraft had to come either from Kodiak or Anchorage or Fairbanks.
Absolutely incredible and heroic and I have nothing but great things to say.
So director I wanted you to get through the the rescue bits, but obviously
Having both of these committees together was a good idea for this and we would love to have you back for further discussion
about deeper into the response but
Taking these last few minutes to talk about the evacuation
I think we've we got time for that and then if we have time representative Helen has a question
Yeah, to the chair. I'm happy to come back and continue the conversation on that
Anytime you guys want I am happy come, back down and continued that conversation
We have a question
Great through the Chair just specifically regarding the evacuation I was contacted by a resident in the region who?
alerted me to a concern that they wanted to understand more about which was that apparently
there's concerns that organizations that were attempting to be able to do evacuation prior to
the storm reaching its peak found that there were not able find resources to
do evacuation before the disaster peak and that it was necessary for the
in order to then go out and
put the resources in to evacuate and pull people off, and they related to me in sharing
this story that if we had a wildfire, we would not wait until people were standing on the
roof to pluck them out. We would have provided the resource to get them
out ahead of the disaster. In this case, it seemed like we have to have the
disaster and then we could respond to providing the evacuation support.
Could you clarify kind of what our policy or resources are in terms of do we
to then provide the amazing resources that came in to do the evacuation or is there a
way to think about being able to have evacuated people sooner with the resources to
do it, to eliminate having to now pluck people out of floating houses and rooftops?
Yeah, through the chair, Representative Holland.
In general, evacuations do tend to get tricky.
I think one of the contributing factors in this particular event was the fact that
Um, the initial track of the impact of this storm and the storm surge was expected to go somewhere else and it did turn very rapidly and, um, you know, by that time, unfortunately, uh, once the weather is impacted there, it's difficult to evacuate folks.
We work directly from our agency and and other state agencies for fire and in other threats.
pretty regularly and it's our policy to support evacuations and
it typically happens in rural Alaska with I'll say medically fragile folks
where we're working with the health corporations and the communities to
to preemptively evacuate the medically
fragile in in case of a storm or a fire or smoke threat something like that
and that's a normal process for us to be able to do that
Wholesale evacuation is not typically a thing that happens where we're
evacuating an entire community. I mean, I really have not seen that
in in my time here. Kalina was the closest Kip Nucking Quigilla,
certainly in typhoon along. So the question about the resources and
availability to evacuate. If we had better fidelity,
I think on that the storm was going to tack right and and have these incredible impacts.
we would have helped support that the evacuation ahead of the storm front like
I said on that last slide you know some people choose to stay anyway we can't
you you're not we don't forcibly evacuate anybody from anywhere in the
state even when evacuation issues are ordered but yeah there is no there
is not requirement and we do not ever suggest that you have to wait for a
disaster to happen before you evacuate we have tough conversations often with
If you want to evacuate, you know, it's on you financially,
sometimes until it becomes a disaster and if it doesn't,
then that's a cost, a risk that you're taking financially
to preemptively evacuate folks.
If the threat doesn' t come to conclusion
and there isn't the disaster, then there's
a costs implication there, but that' never a reason to.
Not evacuate if do you think the threat is going to be there? So thank you. So representative story has a burning question before we close out for today. Thank you
Through the chair, the disasters are becoming more and more common across the state.
Costs are rising, federal government is not contributing as they had in the past.
What are other states doing to afford the costs that they are seeing?
Are there any models for Alaska?
Get through the chair represent story. That is going to be a long term question. Nobody has figured out the successful way to do that. I mean, it's going
to rely on all of us from the local level up to the state level to to come up with a method for us to take care of ourselves in the absence of, you know, what we traditionally relied on from
the federal government. It's gonna be lot of tough conversations with city councils and assemblies and travel councils, and all.
But the reality is, at least for now, it looks like some of that funding,
that paradigm is going to change, and we're just going
to have to long conversations on it.
Follow-up, we do need to wrap up.
Yes, thank you for that, Chair.
Just the part of the question was, are there other states who have models
about how they're paying for their disaster assistance?
And you don't have answer right now.
But I would be curious if other States are doing some, like,
have funds for disaster in the.
Thank you. Good segue. So there have been huddles on the hallway with staff and notes
up here. And apparently we've confirmed you to join us again next Tuesday with the joint
hearing to continue this conversation. We've been having discussions with Chair Dibert
We do want to continue more joint hearings
between our two committees with mutual interest
and a mutual time to talk more about Hong Kong
and some of these larger issues
and how we can better prepare the state.
So thank you all for participating in that discussion.
Thank you so much for being here.
I understand you'll be here on Teams on Tuesday.
So if you need to shake his hand, do that today.
That concludes our business for today,
we will see you again here next Tuesday
to continue our discussion.
Next Thursday, February 5th will be the start
of the Department of Public Safety
and the department of Corrections Finance subcommittees
for community and regional affairs.
With the 8 to 9 hour reserve for public safety and then corrections.
These communities will be chaired by Representative Jimmy and Representative Hannon respectively
and their staff will contact your offices.
With no further business before the committee today, this meeting is adjourned at 9.46 a.m.