Category B Emergency Protective Measures in Public Assistance

Category B, emergency protective measures, is the second kind of emergency work that FEMA's Public Assistance program funds; the first is Category A debris removal. It covers the actions a community takes before, during and after a declared incident to protect lives and property — flood fighting, running an emergency operations center, evacuating and sheltering people, keeping roads passable, and a good deal more. FEMA describes the rules in Chapter 7 of its Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide (PAPPG), the main source for this page; the authority comes from Section 403 of the Stafford Act and FEMA's regulations.

The immediate-threat idea

FEMA's regulations describe emergency protective measures as eligible when they eliminate or lessen an immediate threat to lives, public health or safety, or an immediate threat of significant additional damage to improved public or private property, in a cost-effective way. FEMA's guide defines an immediate threat as the threat of additional damage or destruction from an incident that can reasonably be expected within five years of the declared one. The declared incident has to have caused the threat to exist, but the damage can come from a different kind of event — the guide's example is rainfall after a wildfire causing debris flows.

Emergency work is also expected to be done promptly. FEMA's regulations set a completion period that runs from the declaration date and can be extended, and the guide notes that it considers how urgently an applicant actually proceeded when it evaluates eligibility. FEMA may ask officials to certify that a threat exists and to describe the work needed to meet it.

Measures that protect lives and public health

FEMA's guide gives a non-exhaustive list of life-safety measures it treats as eligible: moving and pre-positioning equipment and supplies for the response; flood fighting such as sandbagging and dewatering; running an emergency operations center; providing emergency access; distributing food, water, ice, cots, tarps and generators; medical care and transport; evacuation and sheltering; building safety inspections; search and rescue; firefighting and security; temporary generators for facilities that provide essential community services; public health and safety warnings; and the recovery and interment of human remains. A second group — increased operating costs, mosquito abatement, temporary relocation of essential services, and snow-related work where the declaration authorizes it — is eligible only in the limited circumstances the guide spells out.

Measures that protect property

The guide's property-protection list includes emergency berms and temporary levees, emergency repairs that prevent further damage such as covering a damaged roof, shoring a structure to prevent collapse, emergency slope stabilization, mold remediation to stop further damage, moving and storing the contents of an eligible facility, and extracting water or clearing mud from an eligible facility — provided the work is done promptly to address an immediate threat. The guide draws a line here: work needed only to restore a facility is permanent work, not emergency work. Our page on categories A through G describes where each kind of work falls.

Emergency operations centers, evacuation and sheltering

Activities run from an emergency operations center are eligible when they relate to eligible work, and so are the center's operating costs, such as increased utility bills, a facility lease, supplies and, under conditions the guide describes, meals for the people doing the work. Sheltering, evacuation and EOC activities are also the guide's exceptions to the usual rule that work takes place inside the designated area: they may happen outside it, so long as they support what results from the designated area.

Evacuation costs the guide treats as eligible include transporting survivors, their pets and service animals, luggage and medical equipment, and bringing them home; moving patients out of compromised medical and care facilities; paratransit for people with disabilities; and food, water and emergency medical care on the way. Transportation that evacuees arrange themselves, and ambulance services that insurance or a public health program covers, are not.

For sheltering, FEMA funds the state, local, tribal or territorial government that is legally responsible for the work, even when it contracts the operation to others. The guide describes the costs of a congregate shelter — the facility, staff, supplies and services, for the time the shelter is actually in use — and the narrower circumstances in which non-congregate sheltering is eligible. Under Version 5 of the guide, non-congregate sheltering in hotels, motels, dormitories and retreat camps does not need FEMA's pre-approval, while sheltering in any other kind of facility needs approval from FEMA headquarters; in both cases the applicant notifies FEMA headquarters and its regional office, through the recipient, within a short period the guide sets after the sheltering begins.

Emergency access and private property

When damage or debris cuts off an essential service or a community, work to keep the access route passable is eligible, including clearing debris from a private road that emergency responders need; clearing beyond what passability requires is Category A. Emergency repairs to a privately owned road are eligible only in the narrower circumstances the guide describes.

More broadly, emergency protective measures on private property are eligible only in limited circumstances: the threat has to be widespread enough to endanger the general public, the applicant has to have the legal authority to do the work, and the guide expects rights of entry and agreements that hold the federal government harmless, all documented. Typical examples in the guide are demolishing unsafe structures and dealing with septic systems or wells that pose a pollution threat.

For private nonprofit applicants, Category B is generally limited to protecting an eligible facility and its contents. Emergency services to the community are a government responsibility, so when a nonprofit provides them at a government's request, FEMA funds the work through that government, with a few exceptions the guide names, such as evacuating patients from a nonprofit hospital or care facility.

Labor and records

For emergency work, FEMA's guide turns on whether the labor cost was budgeted: overtime for budgeted employees is eligible and their regular (straight-time) pay generally is not, while unbudgeted labor — temporary hires, staff reassigned from externally funded positions, employees called back from furlough, seasonal staff working outside their season — can be eligible for both. The regulation excepts a host state's evacuation and sheltering, and debris removal has its own rule under the Stafford Act's alternative procedures. Increased operating costs are a narrow category: administrative work, staff kept on for extra hours who did no emergency work, and school make-up days are among the things the guide does not fund. As with all Public Assistance work, the guide expects the record to show the threat, the work and the costs; our page on the building blocks of eligibility describes that framework.