If Disaster Response Shifts to States, How Can Communities Respond?

Just about a year ago, I took my first few FEMA independent study courses. IS-100, 552, and 700 were required for my new job, but intrigued me enough to continue learning. IS-200, 15.b, 554, and 235 soon followed.

After Inauguration Day, though, my studies ground to a halt. It wasn't the presidential inauguration itself that gave me pause. It was around the time that I was taking one of the courses related to public works, that the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) began making its cuts.

These cuts threatened many of the federal agencies named in the Emergency Support Function (ESF) #3, Public Works and Engineering Annex:

• In February, about 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees and 2,000 U.S. Forest Service probationary employees were fired, raising concerns over leaving land susceptible to wildfires.
• Both jobs and research center building leases at the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were on the line in March.
• In April, the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps) had $400 million in grants terminated along with about 85 percent of its federal staff. These cuts particularly affected rural communities.
• By May, reporting on the cuts included the National Nuclear Security Administration, a sub-department of the Department of Energy; the U.S. Forest Service; and the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

All this was happening while my community was still recovering from Hurricane Helene. The little bit I'd gleaned from my studies had me thinking only the federal oversight of the process could have made it work in the way and timing it did.

At the time, I had just barely landed on my feet. I'd applied for a full time job with benefits, but it hadn't yet been officially offered to me. So, when I saw big tree limbs and a small tree down in my yard, it felt like yet another setback: even my comparatively minuscule cleanup stood to cost me more than I felt able to manage, and I knew most of my neighbors were in the same (or worse) bind and couldn't offer me help.

Then came the small miracle of being eligible to receive $750 to replace the food we'd lost after six days without power, and on top of that, the ability to sign up for volunteers to come help me clean up my yard. Those volunteers turned out to be nearby neighbors, one of whom I still turn to for big yard projects.

So the idea that the entire emergency management apparatus might be in jeopardy was more than I felt able to process at that time. Though I knew DOGE's "shock and awe" campaign was designed to cow people like me into submission, I also felt the need to step back, continue to regain my footing, and save my energy.

Learning the machine

I left the independent studies alone for a few months, until June, when I was asked to work at my community's first No Kings rally. Because I was working, I stayed on the periphery of the rally, prepared for a police escort to have to whisk my coworker and me out and away if the crowd turned unruly. (Subscribe to this newsletter for some upcoming thoughts on that.)

Observing the police incident command structure and strategy in action reminded me that emergency or incident response is still primarily local. As American political leaders continued to float the idea of turning emergency management over to states, I resumed my studies.

Not long after that, the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) hosted a 90-minute webinar: "Where Do We Go From Here? Preparing for Potential Changes in Emergency Management." The webinar included panelists representing South Carolina, Alabama, and New York state emergency management agencies, as well as a specialist executive at Deloitte.

The panelists focused on the state level capabilities most likely to require expansion – survivor assistance and rebuilding public infrastructure – and strategies state leaders could use to leverage other state agencies, local governments, and volunteer organizations assisting disasters (VOADs) to fill potential capability gaps in large scale disasters. These gaps included:

• Funding: whether any federal money would be traditional public assistance, individual assistance, or even the introduction of block grants, how funds might be balanced per capita, and thus how much more difficult assistance could be to obtain.
• Relationships: whether the emergency management assistance compact (EMAC) model might become more necessary in the absence of federal support.
• Cascading impacts of the potential policy changes. (Not for nothing: emergency managers train for "cascading" and "compounding" events.) For example, Steven Batson, chief of staff with the South Carolina emergency management division (SCEMD), said some counties' "entire emergency management program would collapse without [the federal Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG)]," which he said has been consistent for more than a decade.

I can't say I came away exactly comforted. The panelists mainly concluded that there are still a lot of unknowns, and they're focusing on educating their elected and appointed stakeholders around what emergency management is and is not – the better to prepare those decision makers in advance of any repercussions from cuts.

I learned that the $750 I and many (if not most) of my neighbors received was part of a new policy change related to FEMA's individual assistance program. South Carolina ended up receiving over $200 million worth of immediate needs assistance. "[T]hat really helped take the pressure off... it got people engaged into the process," said Batson.

"That set a precedent, too, though," he added. "That's a significant cash outlay for individual assistance efforts that this nation's going to have to figure out how to continue with that process or that change is going to impact that as well."

In describing state disaster recovery funds and how they might be utilized for individual assistance, Lisa Castaldo, Alabama's emergency management executive operations officer, and Emily Bentley, SCEMD's chief of recovery and mitigation, both raised the issues of program scalability.

Additionally, Castaldo pointed out that replicating the existing national system at the state level would be very difficult, and the loss of efficiency would only add to the complexity for survivors to navigate. Likewise states, which the panelists all agreed would need to figure out fraud detection and prevention.

Individual assistance isn't the only program under threat. "If you're putting emergency protective measures on the chopping block as something that could go away," Batson asked, "would states be able to continue to reimburse mutual aid [emergency management assistance compact] EMAC missions? And would states potentially be less likely to offer assistance if there was a fear that they might be years or decades away from getting a reimbursement if at all?"

Bentley added: "If there's less federal assistance... how do we work with community groups and VOADs and long-term recovery groups and local governments to better identify where the survivors with needs are?" she pointed out. "We oftentimes hear about unmet needs way after the disaster has occurred and we try to put out the information, but how can we partner with those local community groups and develop a channel of information?"

Castaldo agreed, adding that Alabama is additionally seeking to build out its existing EMAC mutual aid system, including incident management and other response teams.

In New York, that means demonstrating where EMAC resources have been deployed both in and out of state, and how they were funded. Terry O'Leary, executive deputy commission commissioner at the state's division of homeland security and emergency services, said part of the relationship-building with counties involves identifying their top hazards and the resources they have to mitigate them, so that the entire state has a better sense of what response and recovery resources exist in advance of disasters.

Yet, he added: "At a certain point, we realized you can only react to so much of the hypothetical what's coming. You just need to be ready to go when you see it."

So where do we go from here?

O'Leary made a particularly interesting point about the value of diverse perspectives to emergency management, such as economists, who are not traditionally part of the apparatus.

His agency has also integrated expertise from (for one example) social services agencies who could speak to the needs of children, families, and people with disabilities in disaster response and recovery – as well as potentially manage block grants and orchestrate the means to get assistance into survivors' hands that much more efficiently.

Still, communicating these issues is a delicate task. "... we don't have definitive change to talk about [with citizens]," O'Leary observed; "it could easily veer off into what would be viewed as a political discussion."

Instead of communicating directly with citizens, then, the panelists said they're focused on "briefing up" to specific people like state finance directors, governors' offices, and county and municipal commissions on questions like "what does this mean for the project in front of you? What does this mean for the capability that you're trying to build or the training that you're trying to deliver?" said O'Leary.

Here, I have mixed feelings about the apparatus. It was very clearly beneficial when I needed it, not just in terms of providing a way to mitigate my personal losses, but also in terms of vetting and organizing the volunteers who could help me – things I would've struggled to do for myself, as many people would.

And yet, because modern emergency management stands on a command and control foundation – treating disasters, for better or worse, like military operations – it took a few weeks to mobilize those resources. I can't help wondering: what if communities were empowered to prepare for disasters ourselves? If homeowners associations had a list of neighbors who were willing to offer various forms of assistance for free or a low cost? If they shared those lists with nearby HOAs?

O'Leary also cautioned against overwhelming people with the unknown, but I need to refer back to my experience post-Helene: there were unknowns then, too, and I felt pretty damn overwhelmed with the absence of communication. Isolation and helplessness are not great things to feel after a disaster; my neighbors' availability helped me regain my sense of community and agency.

I wonder, then, if state emergency managers aren't missing an opportunity to empower citizens to come to our own rescue, at least until a more organized apparatus can be mobilized to help us out. FEMA's Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training exists, but doesn't seem to be offered on a widespread basis, and can be a difficult time commitment for people with job schedules, childcare needs, or mobility issues.

More to come; subscribe to join this train of thought!