Transformed FEMA faces a torrent of challenges to its growing relief efforts

The grim faces of police officers blocking a main road into Bat Cave, an iconic Appalachian community, underscore the trauma and tragedy of an epic flood that has left nearly 100 residents of the mountain region still missing.

“We don’t need anybody down there complicating what’s going on any more than it already is,” a police officer says.

Nearly 20 years after FEMA’s flawed response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s efforts in western North Carolina point to successful reforms that lean on local first responders, volunteers, and neighbors while providing key financial support for lifesaving and longer-term efforts.

Even as FEMA has improved, the current recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene also show how the agency has become a perennial piñata for budget hawks and a culture war battleground – complicating America’s already polarized views of what government in action means.

“Communities know how to pull together in times of crisis, and FEMA does the same thing – they don’t come riding in on horses with hats on and say, ‘We’re here!’” says Susan Cutter, a professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and co-director of its Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute. But “what’s happened in western North Carolina is that [people] don’t necessarily want FEMA there – they do and they don’t. They don’t trust the government, and they haven’t trusted the government for a long time.”

By its own admission, the agency is short-staffed, and a fragmented federal approach to disaster recovery compromises its effectiveness. FEMA programs are spread across 30 different agencies, making coordination of recovery efforts almost impossible, according to a 2023 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But FEMA at least is well aware of how important it is for the agency to partner and coordinate with others on the front lines.

“There will never, ever be any single organization, never any one group of humans, that can possibly respond to the totality of a natural disaster,” says Natalie Simpson, an emergency operations management professor at the University at Buffalo.

And despite the increasing frequency and costs of disasters, and persistent criticism by both political parties, FEMA soldiers on.

FEMA staff have faced verbal attacks and the risk of physical harm. An armed North Carolina man was arrested on Oct. 12 after he threatened federal recovery workers, highlighting a dynamic where storm victims are questioning – and threatening – those tasked with helping them rebuild.

That same day, a U.S. Forest Service official sent an alert saying that National Guard troops “had come across … trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.’’ Although this report proved to be incorrect, FEMA operations were briefly paused in North Carolina’s Ashe and Madison counties as a result.

For some, the agency has become a symbol of government inefficiency and mismanagement.

For others, the question is not about intent but capacity: If climate change worsens how weather affects communities, how ready is America to respond?

“Until Katrina, disaster response was framed in terms of what the professional response was, with one decision-maker,’’ says Professor Simpson. “It’s been a 20-year journey to change the vision of large-scale emergency response to focus on a common framework, a common language, and recognizing each other.”

FEMA’s role – and the rising costs of extreme weather

Signed into existence by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, FEMA employs about 20,000 workers and faces more than 100 declared disasters per year on average. As the frequency of major disasters has steadily grown, so have costs: From 1980 to 2007, only one year had more than seven billion-dollar disasters. From 2019 to 2023 the average year had more than 20 such events, according to a Congressional Research Service report. A practice called “immediate needs funding” was implemented – to prioritize lifesaving measures when FEMA funds are scarce – following extreme weather disasters in 2010, 2011, 2017, 2023, and 2024.

In essence, FEMA holds both checkbook and playbook for recovery, even as many costs still land on local communities.

“FEMA operates on the premise that disaster response is federally supported, state managed, and locally executed,” says former FEMA recovery director Greg Eaton, now an emergency management professor at Purdue Global in West Lafayette, Indiana. “All disasters start and end locally.”

Hurricane Katrina, which pummeled Louisiana’s coast in the fall of 2005, became the organization’s nadir. Congress found the effort deeply flawed, partly because of inexperienced political appointees muddling efforts and partly because up to $2 billion of taxpayer dollars disappeared to fraud and waste, according to its investigators. In response, the agency undertook a deep transformation, hiring experienced first responders to administer the agency.

Current FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell began her career as an emergency manager in Aurora, Colorado, finding housing and support for people displaced from Katrina.

Throughout the first days of rescue in Appalachia, an army of volunteers, including Louisiana state troopers, New York City firefighters, and Canadian power line workers joined local citizens in leading the initial response, which experts see as one sign of how the nation’s large-scale disaster response capabilities have strengthened.

Civilian pilot Nathan Smith also saw FEMA staff playing their part, as he flew supply missions into the North Carolina flood zone. “Those folks were doing their job and really working hard,’’ says Mr. Smith. “It was all-hands-on-deck.”

But as western North Carolina begins what will no doubt be a long rebuilding effort, local suspicions about the agency have mounted, amplified by national political figures sharing conspiratorial ideas.

Many citizens see local or nonprofit help as pivotal.

“What’s really driving the response isn’t the government, but the people,’’ says South Carolina resident Tracy Meink, a local cleanup coordinator whose father’s house down the road from Bat Cave flooded during Helene’s rains, when asked about FEMA’s response.

Citing delays in Defense Department troop deployments to the flood-wrecked region, “this wasn’t the response that the people of Western North Carolina deserved,” U.S. Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, wrote in an Oct. 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Distrust of federal authorities

Suspicions about government intent or inaction have negatively impacted past emergency responses. During the 2020 wildfires in Oregon, for example, armed men hampered firefighting, fueled by unproved rumors that antifa had set the fires. After the Houston floods in 2017, false rumors that immigration officials would investigate citizenship status led many people to refuse aid.

“A lot of people don’t trust the authorities,” says Aaron Clark-Ginsberg, a policy analysis professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, in Santa Monica, California. “These people are survivors, and they’re victims as much as everyone else.”

It used to be that government officials who helped citizens during disasters were rewarded at the ballot box. But experts say being responsive is no longer enough.

“Deliverism is not really working anymore,” says Neil Malhotra, a political scientist at Stanford Graduate School of Business, in California, referring to the idea that economic policy can drive people’s political allegiances.

That reality is complicating Washington’s task.

The White House has asked Congress for an extra $4 billion for FEMA to respond to tornadoes and wildfires and rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Oct. 2 that “we are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have” but “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

Amid those worries, recovery efforts here near Bat Cave and nearby Hendersonville have given way to a sense of unity among many who formed impromptu platoons to rescue neighbors.

Indeed, goodwill toward fellow Americans – reflected in interviews with survivors – may hint at the nation’s capacity to rally behind a robust disaster response.

In an atmosphere where many people are uncertain about the government’s motives, Professor Clark-Ginsberg says there is an opportunity to “provide factual, evidence-based responses in a nonconfrontational tone that can help change the narrative.”

Editor’s note: A paragraph with information on the frequency and cost of natural disasters was corrected on Oct. 18, this article’s date of original publication.