SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program that Pennsylvania relies on to prevent floods or other natural disasters has been eliminated by the Trump administration.
Over 140 pending applicants worth more than $700,000,000, now scrapped. That includes a pending application in Scranton for the September 2023 flood.
Scranton had two applications to help them purchase condemned homes and other properties destroyed by the September 2023 flood.
Now the city is trying to find new ways to help these families move on.
On Friday, FEMA announced ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, cancelling all applications from 2020 to 2023.
The Trump administration is calling it "wasteful and ineffective."
The city of Scranton and residents of the September 9, 2023, flood are directly impacted by this cut.
"It goes out to be like $2,500,000 that we lose essentially from this," Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti stated.
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Cognetti says as of last summer, two of Scranton's BRIC applications advanced past the initial federal review.
That $2,500,000, in addition to more than $800,000 in city capital funds, would have helped the city acquire and demolish 18 flood-prone residential properties and three vacant lots in neighborhoods with recurring stormwater damage.
In response to the cuts, the city says they are committed to making sure those property owners get the financial recovery that they need to move on with their lives.
"We at the city are going to continue to work out, A, what our federal delegation can do, can they get this reversed, and, B, what is a plan B? We always thought that we would need a backup plan; we have that, we're working through having that in place," Cognetti explained.
Cognetti says it's not just the financial compensation for residents the city is pushing towards. It's also to make sure these properties on North Merrifield Avenue are demolished and families are no longer living there in the wake of another flood, that would put firefighters and other first responders at risk.
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FEMA says approved grant money that has not been distributed yet will go back to the disaster relief fund or to the US Treasury.
The cuts come as the future of FEMA itself is in question.
President Trump has questioned whether to disband it entirely and give money directly to states to handle disasters.
There is an ongoing study to determine what to do there.
28/22 News has reached out to Senator McCormick's and Senator Fetterman's offices and has not heard back.
Representative Rob Bresnahan sent the following letter to Cameron Hamilton, the Acting Administrator of FEMA, urging FEMA to reinstate the BRIC program:
bresnahan-letter-to-fema-on-bric-program_april-9-2025Download
