The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s recent push for states and localities to adopt more disaster-resilient building codes took center stage at a hearing held last week by federal lawmakers.
FEMA funds building code adoption and enforcement through its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, and accounts for the strength of a community’s building codes when deciding on grant awards. Through its Public Assistance program, the agency also encourages communities to adopt and enforce hazard-resistant building codes in the wake of major disasters.
Efforts to support local disaster-resistant building codes “will better prepare our nation for disasters, mitigate the impact of those disasters when they inevitably occur and ultimately help save lives and minimize property loss,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell wrote in the agency’s 2022 Building Codes Strategy.
Some federal lawmakers are concerned about FEMA’s approach.
“Has FEMA’s enforcement of building codes made communities safer or has it diverted limited disaster dollars away from higher-impact projects?” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee, which held the hearing. Perry also wanted to know from emergency managers and the construction industry whether FEMA is being overly prescriptive as to which codes communities should adopt.
Russell Strickland, president of the National Emergency Management Association, hailed the value of strong building codes in his testimony during the hearing.
“The research is clear that building code adoption and enforcement are among the most cost-effective measures that governments can enact,” said Strickland, who is also secretary of the Maryland Department of Emergency Management. He cited homes in Pennsylvania that, after a FEMA grant allowed them to be retrofitted to new code and elevated, avoided flood damage during 2021’s Tropical Storm Ida.
According to FEMA projections, the nation would avoid more than $600 billion in losses from floods, hurricanes and earthquakes by 2060 if all future buildings met the current edition of the International Code Council’s I-Codes, explained retired building safety official Cindy Davis, speaking on behalf of the council at the hearing. The I-Codes, updated every three years, are the world’s most widely used model codes, according to the ICC.
However, it can be challenging for state and local governments to stay current with model codes, since the review and approval process for each update may take years to complete, Strickland said. He pushed back on what he called a “misconception” that localities don’t adopt building codes because they disagree with them.
“Many communities understand the importance and benefits of building code adoption and enforcement, but do not have the financial capabilities or capacity to adopt and enforce a building code or run a local building code program,” he said. “Even when local communities are able to adopt updated building codes, the frequency with which new codes are released makes it unrealistic for many local communities to keep up.”
Buddy Hughes, the first vice chairman of the National Association of Home Builders’ board, argued in the hearing that most communities already have modern enough building codes and shouldn’t be pressured by the federal government to adopt the latest ones that come out every three years.
“The short window for reviewing newly published codes, coupled with the continuous cycle of code updates, leaves builders, contractors, architects, engineers, manufacturers, and building officials with little time to fully understand and implement the changes effectively,” he said. Plus, the latest editions of building codes don’t necessarily mean significant resilience gains compared with codes from several years back, Hughes argued.
Most building codes focus on new construction or major renovations, but Hughes thinks more attention should be paid to improving resilience in the nation’s aging existing housing stock. “This requires more funding and guidance on cost-effective retrofit strategies to bring these homes up to current standards,” Hughes said.
Federal lawmakers also heard concerns about FEMA’s exclusion of some major construction codes in the agency’s policies and guidance. Local leaders choose which construction codes they want to use based on community needs and preferences, and FEMA’s recent preference of certain standards development organizations interferes with that decisionmaking, said Jordan Krahenbuhl, executive director of the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors of Nevada.
Krahenbuhl, who is also a member of IAPMO, an organization that develops model codes and standards, said that in communities across the country “the conversation around code adoption has devolved from which code provisions will help our communities to be most resilient in an affordable way to a confused discussion of which specific national model code will qualify buildings for reimbursement following a disaster.”
“To clarify, these are jurisdictions who are trying to do the right thing – update their construction codes,” Krahenbuhl said. “But, they are being delayed because of the confusion created by FEMA’s own materials and the stakeholders promoting them.”
