Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma (the Gulf Coast hurricanes) caused more than $118 billion in estimated property damages across the Gulf Coast region in 2005. The Small Business Administration (SBA) helps individuals and businesses recover from disasters through its Disaster Loan Program. GAO initiated work to determine how well SBA provided victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes with timely assistance. This report, the first of two, focuses primarily on the Disaster Credit Management System (DCMS) and disaster loan process. Here, GAO evaluates (1) what affected SBA's ability to provide timely disaster assistance and (2) actions SBA took after the disasters to improve its response to disaster victims. In conducting this study, GAO analyzed data on loan applications and assessed key aspects of SBA's acquisition and implementation of DCMS.
What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends four actions including reassessing DCMS's maximum user capacity based on such things as lessons learned from the Gulf Coast hurricanes, a review of information available from catastrophe risk modeling firms and disaster simulations, and related cost considerations. In comments on a draft of this report, SBA generally agreed with our recommendations but said more credit should have been given to its improvement efforts.
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