The agency is now losing some of that experience. The New York Times reports that since January, a large number of senior staff members have departed, including those who plan emergency responses. According to Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, an associate professor at Columbia University with experience in disaster planning, it’s difficult to replace those decades of experience. “You can’t just take a few courses in emergency management and be able to handle a complicated emergency.”
Additionally, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein stated at a press conference last week that staff in states that don’t frequently deal with hurricanes or floods “won’t have the muscle memory” of how to react when a storm suddenly intensifies. He claimed that when Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina last year, his state witnessed this firsthand: there were “a lot of new people in emergency-management positions” in that region. “We require the experience that FEMA has to offer.”
Changes at the federal level might not have as much of an impact on wealthier states like California or states with a lot of experience coordinating responses, like Florida. According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his state doesn’t require FEMA; instead, it should receive a sizable sum of money. (Trump stated yesterday that future funding may come directly from the “president’s office” rather than FEMA; his plan to terminate FEMA does not yet explicitly include significant transfers of funds to states to manage their own response and recovery programs.)
Rumbach claims that while he was teaching an emergency-management training workshop in Kentucky, officials there expressed the same wish. “We don’t need FEMA,” was their main contention. “We know what to do with the money, so just give it to us.”
The states most at risk from FEMA’s complete elimination will unavoidably be the poorer and less disaster-prone states. For instance, due in part to its location outside of hurricane paths and the fact that recent wildfires have not burned as fiercely there as they have in other western states, Arizona has received some of the least amount of FEMA funding in recent years. However, as The Arizona Republic recently pointed out, that means the state is not ready for a low-probability but high-devastation event.
Arizona might not have the resources or infrastructure to handle the crisis on its own if and when its luck runs out. “There will be many states that are ill-prepared. And if there is an incident, many people in danger might not be able to fully recover,” Carlos Martín, a vice president at the environmental think tank Resources for the Future, told me.
Additionally, the apparent drawbacks of a free market accompany an every-state-for-itself strategy. Currently, FEMA keeps supplies on hand to disperse in the event of an emergency. According to the Atlantic Council, which discovered that red states are usually on the losing side, wealthier states could easily outcompete poorer states for supplies during multistate emergencies if that stockpile isn’t kept up to date.
All of this suggests that more people might evade disaster aid. For example, when a federal disaster is declared, FEMA typically goes around the area knocking on people’s doors to inform them of the programs they can apply for for help. This season, FEMA has announced that it will stop its door-to-door outreach and instead rely on “more targeted venues.”
Rumbach is concerned that those who live in the most rural areas and those who might not be able to move around—such as the elderly and people with specific disabilities—may never be aware of those programs. “Many of the stories about how badly things went will be revealed later,” he stated.
“A lot of disaster response after that step is paperwork, even in a state with personnel on the ground to capture the full scope of need,” Schlegelmilch said. Currently, states apply for FEMA funding and FEMA directs its resources with the assistance of a whole private-sector ecosystem of organizations. States will require a system to accomplish something similar even if they are independent.
Another increasing pain point of the transition will be managing the bureaucracy of funding distribution and redesigning grant-application procedures. Schlegelmilch declared, “That will shock every state.”
There are plenty of options if Trump decides that changing FEMA would be a wiser move than doing away with it. Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA’s administrator under President Barack Obama, advocated for states to implement a “disaster deductible” based on insurance deductibles. This would hold state officials more responsible for disaster preparedness, which currently has little political value, rather than rewarding them politically for obtaining disaster funding after the fact.
Joe Biden expanded a fund established by the previous Trump administration to assist states in averting the worst effects of disasters before they occur. In order to address long-standing infrastructure issues that would have increased the risk and cost of future disasters, that program transferred billions of dollars under local control. Trump, however, has already canceled it this term.
Rumbach remarked, “It’s difficult to see how they’re not increasing risk.” “We’ll find a way to pay for it.”
Rumbach is placing a wager that “reality will set in” and that the federal government won’t drastically reduce its portion of disaster spending so rapidly because of all these factors. However, significant harm to national readiness has already been done due to the departure of important personnel and the impending dissolution. Additionally, some people will suffer as a result of the hurried budget changes.
He stated that the nation’s emergency management system “doesn’t have to be completely broken to have really bad impacts.” According to Rumbach, “recovery is slower, more chaotic, less efficient” if the country’s capacity to respond to disasters fails at all. “People suffer longer, are more traumatized, and communities don’t recover as quickly when that happens.”
The consequences of a major weather disaster occurring soon after a president hurriedly reorganizes FEMA have already been witnessed in the United States. George W. Bush’s administration removed emergency managers and resources, especially in regional offices, after the agency was taken over by the newly established Department of Homeland Security in 2003. The exhausted agency mishandled the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Schlegelmilch remarked, “We’ve read this story before.” There isn’t much reason to believe that this time it will turn out differently.
