EDITORIAL: FEMA's claim on fire settlement is a bait-and-switch

Dec. 22--With the North Bay fires still smoldering in late October 2017, thousands of property owners were given a tight deadline and an unequivocal promise.

The deadline: A little over two weeks to accept a government offer to clear what was left of their homes.

The promise: No out-of-pocket expense.

Victims received the same offer two years earlier after a wildfire destroyed 877 buildings in Amador and Calaveras counties, and again in 2018 when the Camp fire incinerated most of the Butte County town of Paradise.

There was no asterisk, no fine print, no caveat emptor, just repeated assurances that victims who signed over their homeowners coverage for debris removal wouldn't be asked for any more money. Thousands of people, pressed by federal agencies and encouraged local officials, accepted those offers.

Now, the federal government wants to renege on its promise.

When PG&E reached a $13.5 billion settlement with wildfire victims earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed up with its hand out.

FEMA wants $4 billion, nearly a third of the settlement money.

It's an outrageous demand, and FEMA's justification defies credulity.

Robert Fenton, the agency's regional director, told Staff Writer Julie Johnson that federal law prohibits FEMA from providing services that people and local governments can get elsewhere and requires the agency to seek repayment if there is an available source of money.

In other words, no one owed anything when there wasn't any money to be grabbed. Now, with PG&E putting billions of dollars on the table, presto changeo, the debris removal program became an unlawful gift of public funds.

Here's one big problem with FEMA's explanation: Most of the victims did have assets, beginning with their property, when they assigned their homeowners insurance benefits as compensation for having federal contractors clear their lots.

To be clear, we aren't suggesting FEMA should have demanded any of those assets.

We're simply pointing out that FEMA didn't get interested until it saw the potential for a 10-figure payday.

FEMA's claim is now part of PG&E's case in federal bankruptcy court, where wildfire victims, not surprisingly, are objecting. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 11.

We hope it doesn't get that far.

Rep. Jared Huffman, whose North Coast district was hit hard by the 2017 fires, called FEMA's demand "a nonstarter," adding that he "would be very open to pushing back on FEMA."

Good. He should enlist Rep. Mike Thompson, whose district also suffered major fire damage in 2017, their colleagues representing Butte, Amador and Calaveras counties and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

In the six months after the North Bay fires, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated that 2.2 million tons of ash and debris were removed from 4,563 parcels in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.

By allowing contractors to work systematically across burned neighborhoods, the debris removal program served important public objectives, such as expediting the repair and replacement of damaged infrastructure. Because the fires occurred shortly before the rainy season, officials worried that any delay could result in contaminated debris washing into sensitive waterways.

Property owners were urged to participate, to be good citizens and to clear the first big hurdle to rebuilding their homes. Had they known FEMA would try a bait-and-switch, they probably wouldn't have signed up.

You can send a letter to the editor at [email protected].

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