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

This report presents the results of our inspection of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) initial disaster assistance response to Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane that made landfall on September 20, 2017, causing at least at least $90 billion in damages. Hurricane Maria was the third major hurricane (after Harvey and Irma) to impact the United States and its territories in less than four weeks, between August 25 and September 20, 2017.

While still assisting Hurricane Irma disaster survivors, SBA provided staff for two Business Recovery Centers and five Disaster Recovery Centers in the U.S. Virgin Islands within 33 days after Maria made landfall. Regarding Puerto Rico, SBA established three Business Recovery Centers within 13 to 26 days after Maria made landfall and provided staff for two Disaster Recovery Centers established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency 30 days after Maria made landfall. As of March 30, 2018, SBA staffed 15 recovery centers in the U.S. Virgin Islands and 154 in Puerto Rico.

By September 30, 2018, the Office of Disaster Assistance had increased staffing levels to 2,579 to provide assistance for all disasters, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Staffing levels peaked on December 13 at 5,094, and by December 30, 2017, staffing levels were at 4,703.

Although SBA hired staff, it did not fully anticipate the unprecedented need for Spanish interpretation services in Puerto Rico. SBA needed additional Spanish translation services to assist the staff in meeting the needs of disaster survivors. As a result, some survivors experienced estimated wait times of over 45 minutes or dropped calls.

Our review of loan volume and approvals for Hurricane Maria showed that by the end of March 2018, SBA accepted 90,477 applications; of those, 86,598, or about 96 percent, were processed, and 3,879, or about 4 percent, remained to be processed. SBA approved 40,246 of the 86,598 processed loan applications, totaling approximately $1.5 billion. Of the 40,246 approved, 17,491 loans, totaling $338,526,600, or about 22 percent, were disbursed. We also found there were 783 loss verifications remaining to be processed.

Lastly, we computed SBA’s processing times for Hurricane Maria disaster loan applications with a loan approval, denial, or withdrawal as of March 30, 2018. The average processing time was about 30 days when computer-generated declines were not included. However, when computer-generated declines were included, the overall average processing time was about 27 days. SBA met its 45-day processing goal for the applications processed.