Alaska has spent a fifth of its open federal disaster money, with six weeks on the clock

Alaska is sitting on $357.7 million in open federal disaster grants and has spent 21.7 percent of it. All eleven grants are currently written to expire Sept. 30, six weeks from Wednesday.

Some of that gap is how the money works. Large projects are reimbursed only after the work is finished and the state certifies it, so a low paid share partly measures construction that hasn't happened yet.

It does not explain the oldest ones. A grant for a September 2012 storm has paid out 15.4 percent of $17.7 million, thirteen and a half years after the declaration. A November 2013 storm grant stands at 9.6 percent. An August 2015 coastal storm produced $1.7 million for the North Slope Borough, of which $6,176 has been paid, four-tenths of one percent, eleven years on. It picked up a new project assignment in June.

The largest grant is the November 2018 Anchorage earthquake, $186.3 million with 26.7 percent paid across 291 subawards. The biggest single project is $16.5 million for Houston Middle School in the Mat-Su.

The Typhoon Merbok grant, covering the 2022 storm that hit the western coast, stands at 15 percent of $90.9 million. Its subawards read down that coastline: Nome, Elim, Teller, Hooper Bay, Stebbins, Shaktoolik, Koyuk, Alakanuk.

Two grants, for 2024 landslides and an October 2024 storm, have no projects assigned and nothing paid. The newest, for the remnants of Typhoon Halong last October, has paid 1.3 percent. Storms in late 2021 are the exception at 88.8 percent.

Federal rules allow far less time than the balances suggest: six months for debris and emergency work, eighteen months for permanent work, extendable by the state to four years total. Past that a FEMA regional administrator decides, and the rule says work not completed gets no federal money.

The Alaska Federation of Natives told FEMA in 2022 that storm damage itself makes it harder for Tribes to meet federal deadlines, and asked for more time.

Nothing in the records says whether the Sept. 30 dates are firm or routine annual extensions.