FEMA Disaster Plan

I listen to the radio quite a bit as a trucker and heard this on a truckers radio show: According to the bid notice, the firms need to have professionals, including engineers, architects and other real estate-related experts. According to a source familiar with the current bid, the program is a major expansion of a smaller program FEMA has had for temporary housing in case of disasters. The Standby Technical Assistance program bid offering sets out a broad mandate for the firms being contracted, stating that "The Contractor shall be required to provide support capability for all types of disasters with emphasis on riverine and coastal flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Offered by NightBird.

The Emergency Housing Cities
Newsmax, July, 2002

On June 19, FEMA posted a special bid notice for one of the agency’s largest contract awards ever – offering contracting firms $300 million for a five-year contract to simply prepare plans to create temporary housing on a scale never before imagined, and then stand by. This is reportedly one of the largest contracts ever awarded by FEMA for a disaster preparedness program. The name of the program is entitled "Standby Technical Assistance for Disaster Related Operations." The bid notice states ... that three real estate/engineering firms will be selected for the program. The firms will be required to provide "technical support, consultant and project management resources" with the specific duty to "provide project management resources and expertise to support the Disaster Housing Program." According to the bid notice, the firms need to have professionals, including engineers, architects and other real estate-related experts.

According to a source familiar with the current bid, the program is a major expansion of a smaller program FEMA has had for temporary housing in case of disasters. The Standby Technical Assistance program bid ... sets out a broad mandate for the firms being contracted, stating that "The Contractor shall be required to provide support capability for all types of disasters with emphasis on riverine and coastal flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis." The bid states: "... the firm must have at least one permanent and adequately staffed and equipped office located in the Washington Metropolitan area, and two (2) additional offices in other geographic locations within the United States with the capability supporting deployment operations in the event that one area is incapacitated." ... NewsMax reported the contracted firms need to be prepared for creating such cities by January of next year. Mr. Kolton said the firms only need be hired by January of 2003.

NewsMax reported that FEMA told contractors it had ordered tents and trailers for temporary housing. Mr Kolton said the tents and trailers have not been purchased yet. (That may be the case, but FEMA does currently possess tents and trailers for disaster housing.) ... Mr. Kolton ... stressed that the Standby Program is being implemented to prepare for "all types of disasters” including terrorist ones. ... the program’s main focus, he said, is on natural disasters. What natural disaster had caused such a need for the largest program of its kind ever in the history of FEMA? In decades of emergency response, why, all of sudden, is FEMA set to spend $300 million just for architects and engineers over the next five years simply to be on "standby"? This $300 million doesn’t include the probable billions that would be needed for infrastructure and labor to implement the emergency cities. What natural disaster would require FEMA to create emergency cities in different geographic areas of the U.S. at the same time? Kolton responded that FEMA could foresee two Category 4 hurricanes slamming into two distinct parts of the East Coast at about the same time. ...