President Joe Biden announced Monday that he’s doubling U.S. emergency spending to help communities prepare for hurricanes and other extreme weather events.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will provide $1 billion for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC program, which helps states, local communities, tribes and territories to develop projects to prepare for and reduce risks from disasters and natural hazards.
Forecasters predict a busy hurricane season along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, but perhaps not as severe as 2020’s record-shattering year.
“We all know that the storms are coming, and we’re going to be prepared,” Biden said during a visit to the FEMA’s Washington headquarters. “We have to be ready.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week that the hurricane season, which runs from June through November, will likely see 13 to 20 named storms, including at least six that will become hurricanes and three to five categorized as major hurricanes with winds of more than 110 mph (177 kilometers per hour).
Biden, during his visit to FEMA, received a briefing on this year’s outlook for the Atlantic hurricane season.
The White House also said it will develop a new NASA mission concept for an Earth System Observatory that will forecast and monitor natural disasters. The Earth System Observatory will deploy advanced technology in space to improve understanding of interactions between Earth’s atmosphere, land, ocean and ice, helping determine how climate change will play out in the near and long term.
