Yesterday I was invited to give a talk at the Heritage Foundation on homeland-security prepardness and resilency. In particular, I was asked to talk about homeland-security grants to the states. I had nothing good to say about them.

On the panel with me was David Muhlhaussen of the Heritage Foundation. He presented the results of his evaluation of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security’s fire grants. Do fire grants effectively reduce fire casualties? Good question.

Just so you know, these grants represent a total amount of $5.7 billion since FY2001 and they are administered by FEMA — so I guess that gives you an idea of what the answer to his question is.

He finds that:

Overall, this impact evaluation finds that fire grants, including grants that subsidize the salaries of firefighters, had no impact on fire casualties:
AFG grants used to purchase firefighting equipment, vehicles, and fitness equipment failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries.
FP&S grants, which funded fire prevention and safety projects, failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries.
SAFER grants, which subsidized firefighter salaries, failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries.
Without receiving fire grants, comparison fire departments were just as successful at preventing fire casualties as grant-funded fire departments.

Way to spend $5.7 billion!

The whole thing here.