When the pinnacle of the Federal Emergency Administration Company’s city search and rescue workforce resigned after the lethal July 4, 2025, Texas floods, he informed colleagues he was pissed off with bureaucratic hurdles that had delayed the workforce’s response to the catastrophe, acccording to media studies. The transfer highlighted an ongoing problem at FEMA.
Ever for the reason that company misplaced its unbiased standing and have become a part of the Division of Homeland Safety within the early 2000s, it has confronted complaints about delays attributable to layers of paperwork and purple tape, leaders on the high with little expertise in emergency response, and whiplash coverage modifications.
Now, the Trump administration is reducing jobs at FEMA and speaking about dismantling the company, which might push extra accountability for catastrophe response to the states.
But, federal emergency administration is essential in America.
I run the Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute on the College of South Carolina and for years have labored with states and communities dealing with hazards and disasters. To raised perceive FEMA’s worth, let’s have a look again at how the nation responded to disasters earlier than the company existed, and what historical past reveals about when FEMA was only.
Catastrophe response with out the US authorities
Earlier than 1950, catastrophe reduction and response weren’t thought of a federal accountability. When a hurricane, flood or twister hit, neighborhood members and humanitarian teams, such because the American Pink Cross or Salvation Military, introduced in meals, shelter and medical support and solicited charitable donations to assist folks rebuild.
State and native governments had main accountability for catastrophe response. However principally folks relied on household, neighbors and charity.
The water stretched for miles in the course of the Nice Mississippi River Flood. This freeway, between the cities of Mounds and Cairo, Ailing., was flooded on March 25, 1927.
Archival Pictures by Steve Nicklas, NOS, NGS.
Federal support was authorised on a case-by-case foundation. Struggle Division tips in 1917 said that support could be allowed provided that a senior navy officer licensed that responding to the catastrophe would exceed native and state sources.
Then the Nice Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the Thirties Mud Bowl gave new that means to the idea of catastrophe in America.
In 1927, the Mississippi River broke by means of its levees, submerging greater than 1 million acres of land throughout seven states. An estimated 700,000 folks have been displaced from their properties and workplaces.
1000’s of individuals displaced by the 1927 Mississippi River flood stayed in tents arrange by the federal authorities, like at this refugee camp on excessive floor in Vicksburg, Miss.
Historic NWS Assortment/NOAA by way of Wikimedia Commons
Herbert Hoover, then U.S. commerce secretary, was given full authority to create, coordinate and perform the federal reduction effort. The Pink Cross arrange camps utilizing tents supplied by the Struggle Division. Coast Guard and Navy boats rescued folks stranded by flooding. However the response drew criticism for the shortage of direct federal cash to assist flood survivors and the remedy of Black sharecroppers and laborers.
A number of years later, the droughts of the Mud Bowl period started destroying crops within the Nice Plains, inflicting widespread injury.
Federal catastrophe support begins to take form
After the flood, the federal authorities started to formalize its position in catastrophe administration.
Flood management tasks turned a federal accountability with the passage of the Flood Management Act of 1928. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal supplied emergency reduction to farmers within the Nice Plains and arrange the Soil Conservation Service to assist them cut back the results of future droughts. These have been among the many first catastrophe mitigation insurance policies on the federal degree.
A farmer in Pratt, Kan., tends to timber planted as a part of a Soil Conservation Service effort to assist stop soil from blowing in the course of the Mud Bowl.
AP Photograph
There was little coordination amongst companies, nevertheless. Numerous facets of catastrophe reduction and restoration have been dealt with by the departments of Protection, Agriculture, and Housing and City Improvement and the Small Enterprise Administration. Every had its personal guidelines and necessities.
In 1950, Congress handed the Federal Catastrophe Reduction Act, establishing the primary everlasting authority for federal catastrophe reduction.
The act gave the president the accountability to find out how support could be distributed and which companies could be concerned. The laws additionally broadened the federal mission to incorporate catastrophe preparedness and mitigation and formalized the method for issuing presidential catastrophe declarations.
The creation of FEMA
By the Seventies, large-scale disasters similar to hurricanes Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969), and the fragmented catastrophe response, led the Nationwide Governors Affiliation to name for a single complete emergency administration company. Its report supplied the blueprint for President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 govt order that established the Federal Emergency Administration Company, or FEMA.
The brand new company turned the house for emergency administration inside the govt department. It was deliberately designed as an unbiased federal administrative company that might work throughout federal companies to assist state and native governments in occasions of disaster.
FEMA Director James Lee Witt, second from left, and different federal officers meet with New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Marge Roukema to debate catastrophe restoration support following Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Andrea Booher/FEMA Information Photograph
FEMA wasn’t created to guide the catastrophe response. As a substitute it helps state and native officers by mobilizing federal sources, similar to search and rescue, particles elimination and funding when a catastrophe overwhelms the state’s capability. FEMA may do that rapidly due to established federal contracts and its means to maneuver tools and responders into the area earlier than a catastrophe hits.
When issues started to disintegrate
Nevertheless, FEMA’s means to behave quick modified after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults. The company was restructured as a unit within the newly fashioned Division of Homeland Safety. However the Division of Homeland Safety’s focus was on terrorism and regulation enforcement, not pure disasters.
The lack of autonomy and direct reporting to Congress, unfunded mandates outdoors the scope of the 1988 Stafford Catastrophe Reduction and Emergency Help Act, and main will increase within the variety of giant and sophisticated disasters stretched FEMA’s capabilities.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, FEMA’s response drew widespread criticism. It was sluggish to deploy folks and provides and lacked sufficient skilled responders who knew what to do. Resolution-makers weren’t aware of new nationwide response plans. Additional breakdowns in communications and an absence of coordination amongst companies led Congress to declare the Hurricane Katrina response a failure of initiative and agility.
A Pink Cross volunteer talks with a girl whose residence flooded throughout Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Superdome was become an evacuation middle and drew widespread complaints about cleanliness and security.
AP Photograph/Andrea Booher
FEMA’s status improved after the federal government introduced in additional skilled management and dedicated to preparedness planning and higher response capabilities.
Nevertheless, the primary Trump administration, from 2017 to 2021, reversed these positive aspects. Three completely different heads of FEMA in 4 years led to understaffing and conflicting instructions.
FEMA needed to battle misinformation throughout Hurricane Helene in 2024, together with some amplified by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
As Trump took workplace for the second time in 2025, he and his administration talked about dismantling FEMA and pushing extra catastrophe administration to states. Job cuts and resignations at FEMA lowered the variety of staff with coaching and expertise very important in disasters. Political appointees to senior roles within the company and within the Division of Homeland Safety lacked emergency administration coaching and expertise.
A brand new coverage that every one purchases over US$100,000 be personally authorised by Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem led to extra resignations. For catastrophe response, a delay in ready for a signature to work its manner up the chain can value lives.
What now?
Dismantling FEMA and leaving little or no federal coordination of catastrophe response places states in a troublesome place.
States should steadiness their budgets yearly, and more and more “rainy day” funds are inadequate to cowl sudden giant disasters. Because the federal authorities shifts different monetary tasks to states, funds will diminish additional.
A single catastrophe may cause a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in injury and require widespread catastrophe response after which reduction efforts. Since 1980, the cumulative value of weather-related disasters has exceeded $2.9 trillion. With a warming environment producing extra intense storms, growing human and financial hurt are possible.
Members of Congress have proposed making FEMA an unbiased, Cupboard-level company once more. I see some distinct benefits in doing so:
Fewer administration layers would allow quicker deployment of federal provides and personnel to help catastrophe response.
A streamlined, extra nimble company may lower purple tape for catastrophe survivors needing help, that means delivering reduction funding quicker and extra equitably.
If an unbiased FEMA had accountability for restoration past its present 180-day reimbursement limits, that might enhance long-term restoration efforts, particularly if Congress supplied everlasting funding streams and constant guidelines and laws.
The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle FEMA are shortsighted in my opinion. As a substitute, I imagine the perfect transfer is to revive FEMA as an unbiased govt company because it was initially envisioned.
