Inspection of SBA's Initial Disaster Assistance Response to Hurricane Irma

This report presents the results of our inspection of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) initial disaster assistance response to Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 hurricane that made landfall on September 6, 2017, in the U.S. Virgin Islands and impacted residents in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina between September 10 and September 11, 2017, causing at least $42.5 billion in property damage. Hurricane Irma was the second of three major hurricanes (Harvey, Irma, And Maria) impacting the United States between August 25 and September 20, 2017.

We evaluated SBA’s response to Hurricane Irma and found that SBA established a meaningful presence in the storm’s immediate aftermath. Within 20 days after Hurricane Irma was declared a disaster in Florida, SBA provided 127 staff for 27 recovery centers set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the affected states and the U.S. territories. By the end of December 2017, SBA opened and operated 134 recovery centers to assist Hurricane Irma survivors. Also, in response to the 3 hurricanes, SBA’s ODA increased its staff from 1,660 to 4,703 employees. Although SBA was able to provide staffing to assist Hurricane Irma survivors, SBA management noted that the current Schedule-A hiring process makes it difficult to rapidly hire employees. We also found that SBA management could better assess their personnel needs if they fully utilized available management staffing tools.

By the end of December 2017, SBA had accepted 110,464 Hurricane Irma loan applications. Of those, 105,257, or about 95 percent, were processed, and 5,207, or about 5 percent, were remaining to be processed. As of the end of December 2017, the combined loan applications remaining to be processed were 29,272 for all 3 disasters. We also found there were 5,117 damage loss verifications remaining to be processed, of which 2,283, or 44.6 percent, were for Hurricane Irma.

Lastly, we evaluated SBA’s processing time data for Hurricane Irma disaster loan applications with a loan approval or denial decision as of the end of December 2017. The average processing time was approximately 21 days when computer-generated declines were not included. However, when computer-generated declines were included, the overall average processing time was approximately 15 days. Despite the unprecedented volume of disaster loan applications and hiring challenges, SBA met its 45-day processing goal for the applications processed.