This text was produced for ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community in partnership with Capital & Majora 2022-2023 LRN companion. Join Dispatches to get our tales in your inbox each week.
In January, Katie Clark’s one-bedroom rental of greater than 15 years, and almost all the things inside, was incinerated by Los Angeles County’s Eaton hearth, some of the harmful wildfires in California historical past. For her troubles, she obtained a one-time fee of $770 from the Federal Emergency Administration Company, which she used to interchange garments, meals and a crate for her canine. Whereas it was solely a fraction of what she wanted, the cash was at the very least accessible whereas she waited for different funding.
As an organizer with the Altadena Tenants Union who has been serving to renters with their FEMA purposes, Clark is aware of simply how widespread her expertise has been for hearth survivors. She believes federal and native companies severely underestimated the necessity and price of housing for the 150,000 folks displaced by the fires, leaving many nonetheless struggling to get well. A FEMA spokesperson denied the accusation, saying the company’s “ongoing assessments point out that the present Rental Help program is successfully assembly the housing wants of survivors eligible for FEMA help.”
The catastrophe response “has been so shockingly unhealthy,” Clark mentioned, however she acknowledges that with out FEMA’s assist in responding to fires that killed at the very least 30 folks and destroyed greater than 16,000 buildings“it may have been so, so, a lot worse.”
“We’d have seen an entire lot extra folks left to their very own gadgets. And what that may imply is homelessness. It might imply folks simply deserted,” Clark mentioned.
Even earlier than President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom squared off over Trump’s determination to ship Nationwide Guard troops to quell immigration protests, earlier than Newsom likened Trump to a dictator and Trump endorsed the concept of arresting the governor, the query of how a lot California may proceed to depend on FEMA was entrance and heart.
It’s a vital query in a state — with its earthquakes, wildfires, floods, drought and excessive warmth — that regularly suffers among the costliest disasters within the nation.
Since Trump’s inauguration, his administration has floated sweeping proposals that may slash FEMA {dollars} and make disasters tougher to declare. This has left each blue and pink states wrestling with eventualities during which they have to pay for what FEMA won’t. States have lengthy counted on FEMA to cowl at the very least 75% of declared main catastrophe response and restoration prices.
In simply the previous few months, FEMA has denied federal help for devastating floods in West Virginia and a harmful windstorm in Washington. The company authorised such funding for lethal tornadoes in Arkansas after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appealed an preliminary denial and personally begged the president for assist.
Final month, ProPublica reported that FEMA missed a Might deadline to open the appliance course of for a lot of grants, together with funding that states depend on to pay for fundamental emergency administration operations. The delay, which the company has not defined, seems to have little precedent.
In California, Trump has forged doubt on whether or not he’ll approve the $40 billion Newsom has requested to assist pay for restoration prices related to the fires, together with $16.8 billion from FEMA to rebuild property, infrastructure and take away particles. That’s on prime of the just about $140 million the company has already offered to particular person survivors.
The president advised reporters final month that states have to be weaned off FEMA and that the federal authorities will begin distributing much less federal assist after hurricane season ends in November.
The questions now are: How a lot shall be authorised? Will or not it’s sufficient? And, if not, what then?
A FEMA spokesperson didn’t straight reply to questions from Capital & Major about anticipated funding cuts and potential impacts on state and native communities, however mentioned the company “asserts that disasters are finest managed once they’re federally supported, state managed and regionally executed.”
The uncertainty makes it “very exhausting” to plan, mentioned Heather Gonzalez, principal fiscal and coverage analyst for emergency companies at California’s Legislative Analyst’s Workplace. “The little bean-counters within the again are stressing out proper now making an attempt to determine ‘what are we going to need to work with?’”
The latest “dust-ups” between Newsom and Trump, she mentioned, have solely underscored the unpredictability. For his half, Newsom mentioned he prefers the “open hand” of cooperation over the “closed fist” of preventing with regards to catastrophe response.
“Emergency preparedness and emergency planning, restoration and renewal — interval, full cease — that ought to be nonpolitical,” he mentioned on Monday, which marked six months because the fires.
A firefighter battles a blaze in Altadena through the Eaton Fireplace.
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Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Major
The Rising Value of Disasters
Since at the very least the Eighties, California has endured a quickly rising variety of billion-dollar disasters, with 18 occurring between 2015 and 2024 alone.
Because the frequency and severity of California’s disasters enhance, so too does its reliance on federal help to reply. Within the aftermath of January’s Eaton and Palisades fires — the second and third most harmful wildfires in California historical past, respectively — FEMA has already offered $139 million for all the things from house restore prices to medical bills, and the company “has allotted billions of {dollars} for particles removing,” in line with a FEMA spokesperson. Over 5,000 properties have already been cleared of ash and hearth particles.
The ruins of a financial institution that was destroyed within the Palisades Fireplace in Pacific Palisades. The wildfire was the third most harmful in California historical past.
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Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica
Los Angeles County Workplace of Emergency Administration Communications Director Emily Montanez mentioned restoration efforts for the fires doubtless gained’t be full for a few years and are closely depending on FEMA.
“After the Northridge earthquake in 1994, FEMA had subject workplaces right here for 28 years,” Montanez mentioned. “We see this as being no completely different. This was far more devastation, far more influence. So this might be years, undoubtedly a long time.”
Whereas Montanez acknowledged that potential “gaps” in catastrophe response efforts depart some survivors with out adequate assets, she mentioned that the latest operations coordinated between FEMA and native companies in Los Angeles have largely been environment friendly and profitable.
FEMA’s federal help dietary supplements California’s personal catastrophe response and mitigation assets like these allotted to the Governor’s Workplace of Emergency Companieswhich was allotted $4.4 billion within the Might revision of the state’s 2025-26 finances. When the workplace’s funding doesn’t cowl all catastrophe prices, California may also pull from a lot of its reserves, together with the Price range Stabilization Account and Particular Fund for Financial Uncertainties.
Newsom advised Capital & Major on Monday that the state has elevated its discretionary reserves as a direct consequence of Trump’s ongoing threats to FEMA, although he admitted that even that elevated funding wouldn’t make up for the potential loss in federal funding.
California “can’t backfill the elimination of FEMA,” Newsom mentioned. “There’s no state in America (that may), even probably the most endowed state — $4.1 trillion a yr economic system — largest within the nation, fourth largest on the earth.”
And California’s $ 12 Billion Price range Deficit will make backfilling the workplace’s shortfall particularly troublesome the subsequent time a significant catastrophe strikes, in line with Laurie Schoeman, senior adviser on local weather resilience to former President Joe Biden.
That shall be made even tougher if the still-unfinalized proposals outlined in an inside FEMA memo are carried out, in line with Schoeman. One of many reforms floated within the memo caps the proportion of restoration prices coated by the federal authorities on the present baseline of 75%. Below present guidelines, the president can enhance FEMA’s value share as much as 100%, as Biden did for the Los Angeles fires lower than two weeks earlier than he left workplace.
One other proposal quadruples the quantity of injury that must be suffered in a catastrophe earlier than FEMA awards any public help grants for infrastructure restore and particles removing. That will hike California’s harm threshold from roughly $75 million to just about $300 million per catastrophe.
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Had simply that second reform been in place between 2008 and 2024, California would have obtained 26% much less in public help funding from FEMA, a lack of almost $2 billion, in line with a Might evaluation by the City Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based suppose tank.
Such diminished funding throughout future occasions would trigger an “apocalyptic situation” the place California communities would battle to afford the price of operating shelters and paying for emergency responders to rescue catastrophe victims, in line with Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow within the Sustainability, Local weather, and Geopolitics Program on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace.
But already, important harm has been executed, Schoeman mentioned.
In April, the Trump administration canceled the Constructing Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, a FEMA initiative devoted to funding disaster-preparedness tasks. Over $880 million in federal funding was rescinded, together with a $35 million grant in California’s Napa County largely devoted to wildfire prevention work. The administration declined to reply to Capital & Major’s request for remark, referring inquiries to FEMA. An company spokesperson mentioned that its method to catastrophe preparedness mirrors that of catastrophe response: FEMA will play a supporting function.
“All kinds of preparedness begin with households, people and native and state officers forward of any emergency and catastrophe,” an announcement from the company mentioned.
The rescinded federal funding dangers undermining communities’ skills to guard towards future disasters, Schoeman mentioned, and undoes work completed beneath Trump’s first time period.
“They’re simply reducing these tasks despite the fact that they’ve confirmed profit value analyses in place,” Schoeman mentioned. “The BRIC program was began beneath the Trump administration … so it feels just like the administration goes to chop their very own leg off.”
Smoke drifts over Will Rogers State Seaside and the Pacific Ocean through the Palisades Fireplace.
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Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Major
Clark mentioned she is already struggling to get assist. She mentioned her insurance coverage supplier has up to now withheld over $25,000 resulting from disagreements over whether or not her transitional housing qualifies as non permanent, and her purposes for extra FEMA help have been denied resulting from her technically being insured. Some wealthier survivors had “the insulation and resiliency that financial assets provide you with,” whereas others needed to rely on nonprofits or the form of authorities help that’s now in danger to afford transitional housing.
“For those who don’t have these financial assets, your solely choice is to show to both philanthropy or the state,” Clark mentioned. “If neither of these can be found, then powerful luck.”
