11/8/25 – The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has not just battled nature’s extremes this year. It has also battled political superstorms that have left both employees and citizens exposed and uncertain.

Disasters So Far in 2025

Despite a quieter than normal hurricane season so far this year, the U.S. has suffered:

• Wildfires in Southern California that burned 57,529 acres and more than 18,000 structures. They cause 200,000 people to evacuate and killed up to 440 people.
• A outbreak of 118 tornados across the Mississippi Valley from Illinois to Louisiana between March 13 and March 16, killing 43 people and causing an estimated $11 billion in damage.
• Floods in the South and Midwest from April 2 to April 6.
• A massive EF3 tornado swept through St. Louis on May 16 causing an estimated $1.6 billion in damage.
• Floods that struck the Texas Hill County on July 4 killing at least 135 people, with some still missing.

Political Crosswinds Create Uncertainty

It’s not that FEMA was unresponsive in these events. It’s just that the agency has been hampered by political crosswinds and uncertainty. Early in the year, the Trump administration announced that it wanted to eliminate FEMA. But more recently, as disasters piled up, the administration has said it wants to restructure FEMA.

Still, during a government shutdown, attention to the FEMA Reform Act has been diverted, putting the agency and its people under strain. FEMA began the 2025 hurricane season with only about 12% of its incident-management workforce available for deployment, according to the Government Accountability Office.

According to Government Executive, the shortage is partly due to attrition, burnout from concurrent major disasters, and a backlog of missions. With the workforce so thin, FEMA’s ability to surge in response to large disasters is seriously compromised.

At the same time, FEMA has eliminated the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. The exact value of such grants is unknown. However estimates range from almost $900 million to $3.6 billion.

FEMA’s own budget could be cut, too. Though not yet fully enacted, the administration’s FY2026 budget proposal included a cut of about $646 million for FEMA from prior levels.

FEMA has also reportedly blocked or delayed nearly $10 billion in disaster-aid over concerns about undocumented migrant eligibility. 

And the administration has stopped automatically approving Hazard Mitigation Grant Funds for disasters that it declares.

Why Response at Federal Level Makes More Sense for Rare Disasters

The Administration has said it wants state and local governments to take on the cost for disaster recovery. State and local governments already provide much of the funding for minor disasters. But can they provide the funding needed for the type of major disasters mentioned above?

Shortly before the government shutdown started, the Wall Street Journal ran an illuminating article about the changing focus at FEMA.

“The city [St. Louis] doesn’t have the finances, institutional knowledge or equipment to rapidly respond to catastrophic disasters like the tornado that struck in May, which the city estimates caused $1.6 billion in damage,” it said.

Other observers responding to the WSJ article pointed out that “This is the exact reason why a robust FEMA is SO critical to our nation.”  

“Any one individual municipality, county or even state can go years to decades without a major disaster that they have to respond to,” continued the article in the Balanced Weather Blog.

“The idea that these levels of government are going to maintain the large, complex infrastructure needed to effectively and adequately respond to rare catastrophic events is not only nonsensical, it would be an incredibly poor use of taxpayer money,” it continued.

“Having a robust FEMA enables the ongoing maintenance of the needed disaster response infrastructure at a federal level which can then be deployed when and where it is needed.”

Economies of Scale

That makes sense to me. Would you ask each state to provide its own Army, Navy and Air Force? Of course not.

Certain tasks require economies of scale to match threats. That’s what FEMA provides. The ability to shift people and resources where they’re needed when they’re needed makes more economic sense than forcing each of 50 states to duplicate those resources for a disaster that may never strike in a lifetime.

That said, I believe it’s also incumbent on cities, counties and states to shoulder as much of the burden as they can.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/8/2025

2993 Days since Hurricane Harvey