Aboard Air Force One
En Route Fort Myers, Florida
12:16 P.M. EDT
MS. JEAN-PIERRE: The moment you all have been waiting for. Hi, everybody.
Okay. As you all know, we're en route to Fort Myers, Florida, where the President and First Lady will meet with local residents and small-business owners impacted by Hurricane Ian. They will survive [sic] the damage — they will survey, pardon me — they will survey the damage, receive an operational briefing on ongoing recovery efforts, and thank federal, state, and local officials working around the clock to provide lifesaving assistance and supporting recovery.
Most importantly, the President and First Lady will reaffirm their commitment to helping the people of Florida as they recover and rebuild from this devastating storm.
As part of that commitment, President Biden will announce today that he is doubling the amount of time the federal government will cover the full cost of clearing debris, disturbing — distributing food and water, and supporting shelters.
Throughout the day, the President will be joined by state and local officials, including Governor DeSantis, Senator Rick Scott, Senator Marco Rubio, Congressman Byron Daniels [Donalds], Lee County Chairman Cecil Pendergrass, Mayor Ray Murphy, as well as other federal, state, and local officials.
I also want to take the opportunity to remind you all: Though we have briefed on this before about the actions President Biden has taken to date, even before Hurricane Ian made landfall, President Biden approved the state's disaster declaration request and directed his team to mobilize federal resources to help Florida prepare for the storm.
And every day since, President Biden has directed his entire administration to prioritize lifesaving actions and ensure delivery of essential services and support — and support to survivors. Nearly 4,000 federal personnel are on the ground now providing emergency power to hospitals serving millions of meals and evaluating the structural safety of buildings.
We are committed to helping the state of Florida build back stronger and more resilient, and we will be there for them each step of the way.
With that, I will turn it over to FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell to discuss any ongoing recovery.
Go ahead.
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: All right, thank you, Karine.
Good morning — or afternoon, everybody. As you heard, we do have nearly 4,000 federal personnel on the ground today. That includes FEMA personnel, as well as our other federal partners, like the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense, the Department of Interior still on the ground.
We have 17 search and rescue teams still in Lee County that are going door by door to make sure that we have accounted for everybody. Yesterday alone, they were able to assess 24,000 structures. They're going to continue to be in the county until every structure has been looked at and cleared to make sure nobody still needs rescue.
We opened our first Disaster Recovery Center yesterday, and we're going to open three more tomorrow. We're going to continue to open these centers around the state, and the other parts of the state as well that have been impacted, as a place where individuals can go to get assistance.
And today's — or the one that's in Lee County is also co-located with the state's insurance village. So, individuals can go talk to their insurance company, then they can come see what they're eligible for with FEMA. The SBA will also be there; they can find out if they're going to need a — or want a loan, as well as other nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, to help meet some of those initial needs.
We know that the recovery from this is going to be long term, and people are going to need interim places to stay. The governor asked yesterday to turn on our Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, also known as our hotel program, which now means individuals can get a hotel — one of the hotels that are participating in FEMA's program — if they need a place to stay in the interim.
We're going to continue to move in resources and support as we start the rebuilding efforts. And as always, we're going to be really focused on, as we rebuild, that we're doing it in a way that's going to make these communities more resilient.
And so, specific questions?
Q You just touched on what FEMA is doing to help people who were displaced find temporary housing. What is FEMA's role in helping individuals find permanent housing?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, this is going to be a very complicated recovery process for long-term housing and permanent housing for many families. There are communities that have to be completely rebuilt.
So our role is to provide that temporary housing for families as they're working through what we can do to support their permanent rebuilding. We will be working with the state to activate our direct housing program, which means we can do things like bring in our own mobile homes that they can stay in temporarily. It gives us a bunch of other tools that we can use as well.
But we're going to have to bring in the full federal family, right? And so we've already provided a mission assignment, what the — what FEMA does to direct other federal partners to get engaged in the disaster recovery process. So we did a mission assignment to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to begin the planning for what the long-term needs are going to be to help get these people their permanent housing solution.
And everybody is going to have a unique situation, and so we're going to have to do some really extensive case management to get everybody — understand what their needs are and get them on their road to recovery and into their final housing solution.
Q Do you feel like you've accounted for most people? Or is the death toll likely to go up some?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, I would defer to the state. They're the ones that are capturing that information. We're providing search and rescue assets to assist them in that process.
Q Property insurance expenses are about triple the national average in Florida, and about 12 percent of Florida homeowners don't have any property insurance. Do you believe the market is fairly pricing in the risks? Or is there the potential for gouging that are leaving a lot of people unprotected?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: So we know the insurance industry is extremely complicated, and I can't speak to the specifics because I am not an insurance expert.
I do know that people that had insurance policies — Florida also has programs in place to make sure that they can support and indemnify these insurance companies to help them make sure that they're paying their claims.
I think that it's going to take an all-of-government approach to look at if there's any long-term issues as a result of this disaster.
Q Residents on the ground are saying that they're waiting hours-long delay for FEMA assistance. What are you doing to bring down those times?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, so I did just get a report of a place in Charlotte County where there's long lines. That's an insurance village where the state has set up and we have sent personnel to co-locate them. It's not one of our disaster recovery centers yet. We are surging more people in there right now, as it turns out that there's a lot of people that went to this location.
As we hear about those, we're going to continue to surge people into those areas, because we know that there's a lot of people that need help. And as we start to stand these up, we know that people want to talk to somebody, right? They want to do face-to-face.
And so, we'll continue to move people in as we stand up our permanent facilities but also as we're supporting some of these.
Q But even outside that village, just for FEMA assistance in general, like long li- — or long waits on the phone, like, what are you doing to bring those down?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, so the — in the very beginning days of a disaster, it's always congested. So there's a couple of things.
We actually partner with the IRS and they give us backup. So we brought them in so they can help take some of the pressure off of our system. We also surge in some of our own personnel that we have cross-trained, and so we've done that. So thousands more operators, I guess — for lack of a better word — have been brought in to support this.
We also have a callback option. And so, if you have a long wait, you can ask for a callback, and we will call them back.
And we also, you know, just really — if you have Internet connectivity, one of the easiest ways is to go to DisasterAssistance.gov.
Q Deanne, now that the disaster declaration has been extended another 30 days, do you have an estimate of how much this is going to cost the federal government?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, we are still very much in the lifesaving and stabilization mode. They are just beginning the assessments of what the actual extent of damage is to the infrastructure.
It's going to be in the billions. How many billions? I don't know yet. But it will certainly be in the billions and perhaps one of the more costly disasters that we've seen in many years.
Q And to follow up to Francesca's question: As people do start to rebuild and reconsider where they're going to rebuild, does the White House, does the administration have any recommendations as far as rebuilding in these areas that we saw completely wiped off? Now that weather is changing, climate change is taking an impact, should they reconsider possibly building on some of those beaches and coastal areas?
ADMINISTRATOR CRISWELL: Yeah, it's a fair question. And I think the biggest thing that — from FEMA's perspective, we want to make sure people understand what their risk is so they can make informed decisions about where they want to rebuild.
Ultimately, zoning and codes and standards are a state responsibility. But our focus is going to be making sure that we educate people on what their risk is so they can make better decisions on what they're going to do as they — if they choose to rebuild there or if they choose to go somewhere else.
