It's Official: BRIC Shutting Down

I told ya so?

Dear Readers,

Alt-FEMA has obtained an internal FEMA memorandum detailing the abrupt shift in direction for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. According to the memo, leadership has determined that BRIC has “not fully met the desired objective of building resiliency and may supplant state, local, tribal, and territorial capital investment planning.” Based on this assessment, the memo outlines a series of immediate and significant changes to the program’s status.

The most consequential directive: FEMA will cancel the upcoming fiscal year’s Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the BRIC grant program. Additionally, for BRIC projects funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) or the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), FEMA will:

• Cancel all selected but not yet obligated BRIC projects across all fiscal years.

• Deny any extensions to the period of performance (POP) on BRIC projects without prior approval from senior leadership.

• Review all partially completed projects, requiring detailed reporting on POP end dates, obligations, unliquidated balances, and remaining scope of work. Further obligations for these projects will only support pre-construction activities.

(This summary is based directly on language from the internal memo.)

News of BRIC’s shutdown spread rapidly this morning through FEMA’s internal Region News Clips report, which included a link to an external article titled, “FEMA Moves to End One of Its Biggest Disaster Adaptation Programs.” Many FEMA employees—including those working within the BRIC program—reportedly learned of the program’s termination from this brief mention in the news clip email, not from FEMA leadership, who allegedly withheld the memo for approximately three weeks.

As of this writing, no formal guidance has been issued to employees affected by the decision, nor has leadership addressed the internal implications for staff working under the BRIC program or even notified them officially.

Stay tuned for continued coverage throughout the day, including updates on the Acting Administrator’s visit to FEMA’s Philadelphia office. To follow our ongoing reporting and receive future updates, we encourage you to subscribe to Alt-FEMA. Reachout to us through Signal if you would like to contribute to the newsletter!

In solidarity,
The Alt-FEMA Editorial Team