Wednesday, May 8, 2019

The Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 intends to increase disaster preparedness

As referenced in our recent CAT-Law post on the Catastrophic Losses of 2018, at the end of 2018 Congress passed the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 (DRRA) in an effort to improve the nation’s overall capacity to respond to large-scale disasters. The DRRA reflects lawmakers’ concern that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) alone was ill-equipped to respond to large-scale disasters, which appear to be occurring with increasing frequency and severity since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Notably, 2017 and 2018 brought Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma in rapid succession, as well as massive wildfires in California and elsewhere.