U.S. Leads Way in Aid Pledges, With Tally Likely to Skyrocket

By

Peter Spiegel

Updated Jan. 22, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration has already spent more than $170 million in disaster relief for Haiti, significantly more than the $100 million the White House pledged in the days following the earthquake, and is expected to spend millions more in the coming weeks, according to U.S. officials.

The Office of Management and Budget's tally is likely to rise significantly as the White House receives a bill from the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies for their current deployments and administration officials determine the level of reconstruction aid it will contribute to the devastated country. The United Nations, meanwhile, on Thursday tallied the U.S. contribution at $163.9 million.

In all, foreign governments have pledged about $1 billion in aid, according to a tally compiled by the Associated Press, with the U.S. and Canada by far the leading contributors. European Union countries, led by Britain, France and Sweden, have pledged a combined $575 million. China has pledged $4.4 million and has sent a rescue team. India has pledged $5 million.

The U.N. said it has so far received $195 million, and an additional $112 million in pledges, towards its $562 million appeal.

Despite the higher U.S. spending levels, however, White House and congressional aides said they didn't believe the administration will need to make a quick request to Capitol Hill for emergency spending because the earthquake hit early in the fiscal year and many of the federal government's existing relief accounts remain well funded.

ENLARGE

"The accounts are flush," said a White House official, noting that combined, the federal government's existing relief funds total nearly $600 million. Still, senior Obama administration officials have said Haiti will require "substantial assistance" from the U.S. and international governments for years to come, and others involved in the process said they believe the White House may come to the Hill for more money as soon as Feb. 1, when the administration is expected to unveil its 2011 budget.

Of the total already committed by the U.S., most has come from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has spent $140 million, including $48 million in food aid.

The Pentagon spent $20 million of its disaster-relief budget. "It's going to be significantly more than that," said Diane Halveorsen, director of humanitarian assistance at the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

A month after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Bush administration requested $950 million in relief for the region. Congress eventually approved a $908 million aid package, about a third of which went to the Pentagon and USAID to replenish relief stocks and reimburse military services for their unexpected deployments. The remaining money went to reconstruction projects, primarily in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Around Haiti

Latest photos from the relief effort on land

Quake survivors pleaded to be admitted into the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince Wednesday. Paul Jeffrey/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration's request could outstrip those levels, given Haiti's historical ties to the U.S. and President Obama's public pledge of large-scale assistance.

Just how much Haiti will need to rebuild remains an open question. Last week, the U.N. made a "flash appeal" for $562 million in initial aid. At a conference this week in the Dominican Republic, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez suggested his neighboring country would need $10 billion over the next five years.

World leaders, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are expected to further discuss Haitian aid needs at a conference Monday in Montreal, though officials said new pledges of U.S. aid aren't expected to be announced there.

Angelika Wirtz, an expert on the costs of natural disasters at German insurance giant Munich Re, said accurate estimates of damage are impossible so early after an incident and will likely have to await the arrival of World Bank assessment teams in the coming weeks. Ms. Wirtz said the 2004 tsunami caused $10 billion in losses and a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan caused $4.5 billion.

Les Roberts, an expert on natural and man-made disasters at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, cautioned that the vast majority of damage done by such events are to personal property—cars, homes and other possessions—and that the cost of rebuilding a country's infrastructure is normally significantly less than top-line damage estimates.

"There is a deceptive notion about costs," said Mr. Roberts. "Cost of loss is huge; cost of rebuilding key infrastructure items—primarily water supplies, food services, roads—is actually quite modest, and there's some great efficiencies when you have a clean slate like this."

Because of a rise in the frequency of major natural disasters, federal agencies in recent years have requested increasingly more money to fill their annual contingency funds.

The Pentagon, for instance, has a humanitarian assistance budget this year of $20 million, which it can tap immediately to ramp up relief operations. Vice Adm. Jeffrey Wieringa, head of the agency that oversees Pentagon relief efforts, announced he was spending all $20 million to begin those operations last week. Officials said the department was pulling additional funds from other accounts. USAID has spent an additional $82 million from its Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

But retired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, who headed the Pentagon's international assistance agency during the 2004 tsunami relief efforts, said Pentagon spending on current deployments—such as C-17 cargo plane flights and steaming of naval ships—will be tabulated in the coming weeks so that a request to Congress for reimbursements can be made.

"At some point, that money runs out," said Gen. Kohler, now an executive at Boeing. "When you think of deploying troops and using the airplanes, that money has to come from someplace." The Pentagon on Thursday declined to provide estimates on its spending thus far.

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