Recent fixes to long-standing problems at the Federal Emergency Management Agency are in jeopardy as the Trump administration slashes programs and cuts staff, emergency experts warn.
FEMA has been plagued for decades by accusations that it fails to help the most vulnerable victims of disasters. Poor people, racial minorities and those who live in rural and tribal areas have been chronically ignored or denied crucial help after disasters, with long-term and even deadly consequences for families, NPR investigations have found.
Under the Biden administration, FEMA took some concrete steps to address those problems. For example, the agency simplified forms that disaster victims must fill out to apply for money, loosened requirements to prove residency and made some money for essential items like food and diapers available immediately.
Now, some of those efforts have been canceled, while others face an uncertain future. President Trump has repeatedly said that he believed FEMA should not exist in its current form. He has also moved to eliminate so-called equity programs meant to ensure that the federal government serves Americans from all economic, geographic and ethnic groups.
The agency has cut billions of dollars of programs and lost hundreds of staff. A recent White House budget request for FEMA included a significant increase in disaster relief funding, but a presidentially appointed FEMA review council is working on recommendations to pare down or eliminate the agency.
FEMA did not respond to questions from NPR about how it intends to help all Americans adequately after disasters, or whether reforms made under the Biden administration will be rolled back.
"There was a lot of headway being made," says Chauncia Willis-Johnson, the former emergency manager for Tampa, Fla., and the leader of the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management. "Now, not only have we stopped, but we've actually regressed."
Baby steps for a plagued agency
Under the Biden administration, the goal at FEMA was to make sure every disaster victim got what they needed to recover and be protected against the next disaster, says then-FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell. "No two communities are alike, they all have different needs, and we can't apply a one-size-fits-all application of programs," she explains. "And so that was the focus: equity."
For example, imagine two different people, both struggling after a hurricane: The first is a parent who rented a now-damaged apartment in a city. The second is an elderly person who owns a damaged house in a rural area. One might need immediate cash to get food and diapers and pay for a hotel. The other might need in-person help filling out forms online or transportation to pick up crucial medication.
FEMA also brought in a high-level advocate for rural communities, and another one for tribal communities, to help the agency serve those populations better. And FEMA made it easier for people to prove where they lived, especially if they were living in a family home that had been passed down over many generations and no longer had a mortgage or a clear deed tied to the current occupants.
People who are staying with family members without a lease agreement, or who have inherited property informally, have long struggled to get federal help rebuilding after extreme weather, despite the fact that such families are less likely to have home insurance.
While the long-standing problems at FEMA were far from fixed at the end of the Biden administration, such equity policies were a step in the right direction, according to disaster experts.
"Was FEMA necessarily doing a good job? They weren't perfect," says Willis-Johnson. But "there were a lot of positive movements made within the last five years."
Serving those most in need
One of President Trump's first actions when he took office in January was to sign an executive order banning so-called diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government. That order led to the cancellation of at least one major disaster staffing program, known as FEMA Corps, which trained and deployed young people to help after disasters.
Earlier this spring, FEMA also canceled a major disaster preparedness grant program that had awarded tens of billions of dollars to help underserved rural communities prepare for floods, wildfires and other extreme events that are getting more common as the climate changes.
The program had also helped some small towns and tribal communities by providing technical aid in applying for highly sought after federal funds. "We wanted them to have a fair shot at the funding that was out there," Criswell explains. Now, that assistance is gone.
Some equity efforts put into place at FEMA appear to still be intact. Last year, the agency made it easier for individuals and families to apply for money after disasters, by combining redundant forms and paying disaster survivors up to $750 to cover immediate needs such as food, water, medication and diapers. That assistance was expected to be particularly helpful for survivors who do not have a lot of money saved and who don't have homeowner's or renter's insurance.
Such efforts are a step in the right direction, says Manann Donoghoe, who studies disaster recovery at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan policy research organization in Washington, D.C. "Some individuals are more vulnerable than others, and we need a system that understands and reacts to that," he explains.
The importance of boots on the ground
Between the cancellation of FEMA Corps, firing of probationary employees and a raft of retirements and resignations across the agency, FEMA is grappling with a large number of staff vacancies going into the summer months, when hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather get more common in the U.S.
That may mean fewer federally trained disaster responders on the ground than in past years and potentially less equitable aid distribution.
The profound importance of boots on the ground was made clear in 2020. After wildfires in Oregon destroyed thousands of homes, many of them in low-income rural parts of the state, FEMA denied about 70% of assistance applications, an NPR investigation found.
"I was talking to our team on the ground," remembers Criswell, who took over as FEMA's leader shortly after the wildfires. "They were telling me how there [were] a large number of people that were denied assistance. But they could see there was enormous need."
Criswell says FEMA workers called back everybody whose application had been denied and found that many people were actually eligible for money but had filled out forms incorrectly or incompletely. FEMA workers on the ground in Oregon "were actually able to get a good percentage of them assistance just by taking the time to go over them with it," Criswell says.
It was an example of how important on-the-ground federal workers can be for victims of disasters, especially those who may not be proficient with a computer or able to fill out complex forms without help, says Criswell.
Willis-Johnson says expanding in-person assistance and knocking on doors after disasters was a crucial step in the right direction for an agency that has long failed to serve Black disaster survivors and other marginalized groups. "FEMA was going into the underserved neighborhoods to make people aware of their options, and making them aware of the need to fill out post-disaster recovery assistance forms," Willis-Johnson says.
Now, she is worried that vulnerable people will struggle to get basic help after disasters. "Why would we ever want people to suffer?" she says. "You shouldn't want that. It's not OK."
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