Over the past few weeks we have witnessed the destruction caused by three major hurricanes, and it is amazing to see the funds that were allocated and spent so quickly to support the relief efforts.
While helping one of our clients, we ran a few contract searches with keywords - "hurricane", "relief effort" and "disaster relief", and found that as September 30, 2017, $1.43B has been obligated, of which FEMA accounts for $1.36B! Food, bottled water, manufactured housing units, house inspections and medical care are amongst the top spend categories.
Below is a quick look at the numbers across civil and independent agencies:
FPDS has added codes for hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria to their National Interest Action Codes (NIA Codes). These codes can be used as an additional filter to search contracts awarded to those contractors for natural disaster relief efforts. Hurricane Maria relief already accounts for $356MM of which $206MM was used to procure meals and bottled water.
Here is the link to the federal contracts awarded for Hurricane Maria relief as of September 30, 2017.
This is just the beginning and I am sure we will see this amount increase substantially as we work to restore a semblance of normalcy to these areas. We will continue to update these numbers on a regular basis.
