President Trump has signed an executive order directing state and local governments to "play a more active and significant role" in preparing for disasters. For months, Trump has said he's considering getting rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the country's disaster response arm.
"I say you don't need FEMA, you need a good state government," Trump said while visiting the Los Angeles fires in January. "FEMA is a very expensive, in my opinion, mostly failed situation."
But emergency management experts say Trump's order technically wouldn't do much to shift responsibility. Currently, local and state governments are already in charge of disasters. The question is whether the Trump administration will begin withdrawing the federal resources and funding that states rely on.
When a major hurricane, flood or wildfire hits, FEMA starts working on a disaster only when requested by the state government. The agency organizes thousands of federal workers who help in disaster response and process claims for millions of dollars in aid. Even then, states and local governments still remain in charge.
Without FEMA, states would need to find thousands of additional personnel to inspect damage, distribute disaster aid and plan the rebuilding of public infrastructure. Without federal funding, states would face billions of dollars in recovery costs. After Hurricane Irma in 2017, Florida relied on more than $5.5 billion dollars from the federal government.
FEMA also helps states prepare for disasters, which can reduce the damage they cause and the number of lives that are lost. One study from the National Institute of Building Sciences, a non-profit research group, found that federal investment of $27 billion since 1995 to prepare infrastructure for flooding will ultimately save $160 billion. Many state emergency management offices also rely on federal grants to pay their employees.
While many states advocate for simplifying FEMA's process for distributing disaster aid, they say FEMA is still a vital partner. As the climate gets hotter, hurricanes, floods and wildfires are getting more intense. FEMA is now responding to three to four times more disasters now than it did in the 1980s.
"It seems counterintuitive to discuss, in a time when we have more and more severe events, when states need more and more help, that we would provide less and less federal resources to support those states," says Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA under the Obama administration.
How states work with FEMA
As soon as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in 2024, emergency managers knew they had a monumental task ahead.
The storm left a broad swath of destruction in its wake. Heavy rainfall, exceeding 30 inches in some spots, washed out roads and flooded homes and buildings across many towns, some becoming almost impossible to reach.
When disasters are larger than both local and state governments are able to handle, they can call in federal help by requesting a federal disaster declaration. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper made that request the day the storm hit, setting the stage for federal resources to come in, like FEMA. Still, FEMA doesn't take over the disaster responses.
"The locals are in charge of their county and their situation and the state of North Carolina advises FEMA on what we need," says Justin Graney, chief of external affairs for North Carolina Emergency Management.
FEMA is also responsible for marshalling resources from the entire federal government, including from the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"FEMA doesn't have any helicopters," Manning says. "It doesn't have any aircraft, doesn't have any ships. FEMA's role is to coordinate all those resources from the federal government in support of the states. They are just the organizers."
More than 8,000 federal workers arrive
As North Carolina residents began taking in the damage from the storm, the immediate needs were for shelter, hot food and medical help, as well as search and rescue for missing people.
"Pretty much everything we had to throw at the storm, we threw at the storm," Graney says. "And then 39 other states sent us resources and teams. So it was a massive response to what turned out to be a massive, catastrophic storm."
That response included 8,500 federal workers for both Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a storm that hit Florida two weeks later. FEMA brought in its own staff from all over the country, but had to call in personnel from other federal agencies to fill the need.
One of FEMA's primary roles is getting aid to disaster victims, what's known as "individual assistance." That includes funds for finding temporary housing and funding repairs on homes, when it's not covered by the owner's insurance policy. Some assistance is designed to reach disaster victims within days, allowing them to replace food, pay for temporary hotel stays and replace vital items like medications and clothing.
To process those claims, FEMA's call centers for Hurricane Helene got more than half a million calls per week, a volume so high that many went unanswered.
Without FEMA, states would need to find and train a similar staffing effort, able to process disaster aid in a very short time. Many states share resources, sending teams to other states in times of need. But as disasters get more intense and frequent with climate change, states have fewer resources to share.
"Those resources become taxed," says Claire Connolly Knox, a professor of emergency and crisis management at the University of Central Florida. "That's where having a federal entity come in and be able to assist and backfill those resources, whether that's people, goods, services, is important."
FEMA also gives funding to local governments and tribes to rebuild public infrastructure after disasters, including schools, roads, bridges and parks, known as "public assistance." Ahead of disasters, FEMA offers grants so communities can make their infrastructure less likely to be destroyed.
How FEMA could be reformed
Trump has ordered the creation of a new council to do a "full-scale review" of FEMA, including recommendations for how to reform the agency. Their report is due within six months of their first meeting, which has yet to take place.
Trump's latest executive order mandates that a new "National Resilience Strategy" be drafted, with the goal of "reducing taxpayer burdens through efficiency." Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda organized by the Heritage Foundation, says the majority of disaster costs should be shouldered by the states.
"For far too long, state and local governments have neglected investing in resilience, infrastructure, and disaster preparedness because they can count on an unlimited backstop from the federal government — an unsustainable and irresponsible strategy that has resulted in needless destruction and deaths of everyday Americans," White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an emailed statement.
Still, many states don't want to see FEMA go away. The Trump administration's recent firings of more than 200 employees at FEMA are already likely to make the agency less able to handle future disasters.
"Our relationship with our federal partners is critical," North Carolina's Graney says. "That relationship remains important and one we rely on."
If the bulk of disaster response falls to states, some could struggle to keep up. While larger states like Florida and California have well-established emergency management offices, smaller states have few resources and staff, especially to prepare for disasters ahead of time. Infrastructure and landscape-scale projects that help protect communities from wildfires and floods are largely out of reach for local government budgets.
"Not every state had the capacity to do all the phases of emergency management, including preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation," says Knox. "This is especially true in local counties in which there might be one person designated to do emergency management, especially in rural areas."
Emergency management experts say there are areas where FEMA's disaster response efforts could be improved, especially in the complex and sometimes lengthy process for local governments to get funding for rebuilding. FEMA walks a difficult line, balancing distributing aid quickly with taking enough time to ensure there's no fraud or abuse.
"That is probably where we should be focusing most of our efforts is understanding the complexities that have developed in the way the federal government oversees money going to recovery efforts and making that simpler," Manning says.
At a recent congressional hearing about FEMA, the director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, Jeffrey Smitherman, testified that it would be best for FEMA to handle giving out individual assistance. But he suggested that public assistance for local governments be given directly to states as a "block grant," instead of being managed by FEMA. That could give states leeway to spend the money without federal oversight.
Giving states funding directly also could mean that infrastructure is rebuilt with a patchwork of regulations. Under the Biden administration, projects getting federal funding were required to be built to a higher standard, constructed to withstand future flooding. The Trump administration had previously repealed that rule during its first term.
Without federal guidelines to build with climate change in mind, experts say many states have little incentive to build projects better, since the financial responsibility for rebuilding after the next disaster largely falls on the federal government.
"It's malpractice as emergency managers, as government officials, to not plan for what might impact their citizens," Manny says. "That's at the fundamental core of planning for disaster response."
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