By The Herald Editorial Board
Up until July 4’s tragic and devastating flash floods in the Texas Hill Country, which have left more than 120 dead with more than 170 unaccounted for, the consensus in the Trump administration had been that it was time — if not to completely shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency — then to significantly scale it back with major reforms that seemed to seek a reduced federal role in disaster preparedness and response.
As late as Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called for the elimination of the agency — which provides billions of dollars each year to communities hit by disaster — arguing that “emergency management should be state and locally led.” For months, President Trump agreed, saying in January that “the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment” with plans to phase out the agency after this year’s hurricane season.
Following last week’s disaster, however, there appears less appetite to do away with FEMA, with administration officials saying that abolishing the agency is not on the agenda.
“Without any official action,” a White House official told The Washington Post, “you’re already seeing the theory” of the administration’s new approach “taking place in Texas.”
As the agency has since its creation by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, it has delivered in Texas a desperately needed infusion of federal funding and support services, allowing state and local authorities to direct response and recovery efforts.
Yet, the administration’s turnabout may have some ways to go, providing an opportunity for Congress to reform and revitalize the agency as the threat of disasters intensifies as do the costs of preparation, response and recovery.
Where FEMA fails: While FEMA remains on the job, there is need to address the agency’s politicization, its red tape, an ineffective coordination with state and local authorities, a reassessment of the disasters it covers, a recent loss of experienced staff to haphazard cuts and a reevaluation of the most cost-effective strategies for planning and response to disasters.
Cases in point:
While Texas is getting its due, Trump has taken no action to date on California’s request of $40 billion to help pay for recovery costs from January’s wildfires in the Los Angeles area. And last month, the administration for a second time denied Washington state’s request for up to $34 billion to address infrastructure and other damage from last fall’s bomb cyclone in six counties, including Snohomish. That echoes the silence the state heard near the end of the first Trump administration when Washington sought FEMA’s aid after ruinous wildfires in the state’s southeast.
Although similar requests have been denied for at least two Republican-led states, some have pointed to political considerations in denial of aid to blue states.
Nor does the Trump administration appear to have thought better of its April cancellation of $3.6 billion in grants — approved by Congress — meant to help communities across the nation prepare before disasters hit. It zeroed out the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program as a “wasteful, politicized” process.
In Washington state, the funding included $195 million in hazard mitigation, tsunami evacuation plans, adaptations for sea-level rise, relocation of 45 residents of mobile homes in a flood-prone valley near Tacoma and a landslide hazard mitigation plan in Darrington. Elsewhere it has helped pay for bridge upgrades, floodplain restoration, emergency evacuation shelters and flash flood warning systems.
Extreme heat events, such as the 2021 Northwest Heat Dome, where temperatures in the Pacific Northwest hit 100 degrees and hotter and contributed directly and indirectly to some 440 deaths in Washington state, are not considered disasters under current FEMA rules, leaving states to fend for themselves for events that are increasing in frequency and scale.
Movement in Congress: If there remains doubt in the Trump administration about the role and importance of FEMA in disaster response, there’s next to none in Congress, said 2nd Congressional District Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., this week.
Of the 435 House members, Larsen said, two have proposed legislation to eliminate FEMA, following earlier suggestions by the Trump administration.
“There’s not been one hearing held on FEMA that has concluded that we don’t need FEMA,” he said. “I feel pretty certain about where the U.S. House of Representatives is, and frankly, where the Senate is on keeping FEMA.”
Yet, he and others also are certain about the need for reforms for the agency.
Larsen, the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., in May introduced the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act, with the goal of streamlining the federal government’s disaster response and restoring FEMA as a Cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the president, following its relegation in 2003 to the Department of Homeland Security.
Larsen expects the legislation to begin its “markup” in the House committee this September.
The intent of the reforms, Larsen said, is to better provide for preventive measures that build a resilient community before disasters happen, streamline the response and aid when they do and better coordinate recovery with state and local governments. That includes, he said, a restoration of the BRIC grants, a program that Larsen noted was created during the first Trump administration.
Where FEMA is needed: There’s bipartisan recognition, he said, that the federal government, more than local and state governments, have a greater ability to assure disaster preparation and response funding.
“Only the federal government can can do that. But that doesn’t mean FEMA needs to necessarily control that dollar,” he said.
Importantly, the legislation would prohibit any political discrimination in providing disaster recovery assistance and would direct the federal Office of Management and Budget to establish a public website that tracks disaster assistance funding across federal agencies
Beyond acting as a source of funding to provide what individual states can’t, FEMA and the federal government also have a role in acting as a storehouse of support and expertise, said 1st District Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash. The federal government can “use our collective expertise and resources to help communities across the country” to provide those resources; that’s more effective than 50 states providing for themselves 50 times, she said Friday.
That was the idea behind the program to map landslide hazards that DelBene helped win passage for following the 2014 Oso landslide, which killed 43 residents of the Steelhead Haven neighborhood on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River.
Using lidar — light detection and ranging — technology, the program has been using the tool nationwide to peer past vegetation to understand the lay of the land and find areas where landslides have occurred and may occur again, allowing local governments to avoid potential disasters.
That program, under the U.S. Geological Survey, is up for reauthorization and went through its committee markup recently.
Preventing tragedy: “That’s an ongoing important role that we need to play to look at what we can do to be better prepared and to prevent these tragedies,” DelBene said. “We’re seeing more natural disasters across the country, and we need to do everything we can to be as prepared as possible and to mitigate the impacts.”
Even at the dear cost of 43 lives, the Oso disaster helped galvanize a response that is now making communities safer from landslides.
If the tragic Texas Hill Country floods can result in long-needed reforms to FEMA, the lives lost there won’t have been in vain.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
