FEMA Uncertainty Is Frustrating Officials Navigating Hurricane Recovery

This story is republished from NOTUS as part of our partnership with the D.C.-based outlet.

Uncertainty around the Trump administration’s plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency is affecting North Carolina’s state legislators as they plan how to negotiate the next budget.

Seven months since Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, state lawmakers and other North Carolina officials tell NOTUS they have no idea what will happen with FEMA, or what to say to increasingly frustrated residents still trying to rebuild after the devastating floods.

There’s plenty of finger-pointing happening in the state—just not all in the same direction. State Democrats want their Republican counterparts to push back against the Trump administration’s suggested plans to dismantle FEMA and its move to end major relief grants. Other Democrats told NOTUS they don’t think North Carolina Republicans are behind the dysfunction.

Both Democratic and Republican officials in the state are frustrated with the Trump administration’s management of FEMA, saying its promises to make the agency respond faster to emergencies haven’t resulted in much action. 

“I hear a lot of excuses. I hear a lot of finger-pointing. I hear a lot of apologies,” Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers, a Democrat, told NOTUS. “I’m tired of that, especially when I know the money’s there in the federal government to help speed things up.”

“The obstacle that we’re encountering is the lack of communication,” Avery County Commissioner Dennis Aldridge, a Republican, told Spectrum News after visiting D.C. with more than a dozen other officials from western North Carolina earlier this month. “We submit ideas that have to be approved at five different levels, and someone at some point decides they don’t like the way the form looks and sends it back. We’re in a loop of submission and denial.” 

Hurricane recovery is still in flux in the state. Earlier this month, the administration rejected North Carolina’s request for a higher aid match from FEMA for debris removal. 

The costly decision comes as state lawmakers grapple with how to repair private roads and bridges, critical public infrastructure like highway Interstate-40 and now unusable farmland in the region. Gov. Josh Stein signed a disaster recovery bill that included $524 million in aid to western North Carolina in March, but lawmakers say it’s just a fraction of what is necessary for full recovery. (Helene caused around $60 billion in damages, state officials estimate.)

The state itself has committed over $1 billion in funds. How much more of a financial commitment the state needs to make depends on the federal government’s share, which remains unclear. The funding deal Congress passed in December to avoid a government shutdown included around $110 billion for disaster relief. State lawmakers told NOTUS that the portion of that meant for recovery in western North Carolina hasn’t all reached the ground and has been held up by miscommunication and bureaucratic processes at FEMA. Stein continues to ask the administration for $19 billion in federal funds. 

Democratic state Rep. Eric Ager, who represents the highly affected Buncombe County area, told NOTUS that he has been advocating for deploying more state resources to reach the ground faster, but has been met with pushback from Republicans awaiting federal assistance. 

“The continual line from the Republicans in the North Carolina legislature is ‘Well, we got to wait and see what the feds are going to do,’” Ager said. “We’ve been doing that for six months now, right? And it’s still not completely clear what the feds are gonna pay for and what they’re not.”

FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As NOTUS has reported, it’s also unclear how North Carolina U.S. House Republicans’ suggestions are factoring into the Trump administration’s plans. One major grant program that provided states with money to build disaster-resilient infrastructure was cut by the administration, while North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards recommended that the White House simply update it. 

When the group of western North Carolina officials went to D.C. for meetings with both the congressional North Carolina delegation and senior leaders from the White House and FEMA,  Smathers said that the group walked away realizing that progress on disaster relief was not being stalled by North Carolina officials, but by FEMA officials themselves. 

“I saw a united frustration from our North Carolina senators and the House delegation, both Democrats and Republicans and their staff, and I commend them for that,” Smathers said. “I don’t blame them. What we’re seeing is the bureaucracy and finger-pointing and excuses holding up this money getting to our families and our farmers.”

But some Democrats in western North Carolina say Republicans need to be more outspoken about the discord between their priorities and the administration’s actions. 

“It doesn’t seem to me that there’s many folks on the Republican side of the aisle in the state or at the federal level who are willing to criticize the administration,” Ager said. “Chuck Edwards is the representative in D.C. for a large swath of western North Carolina, and he has to have the courage to speak up for people in his district.”

Ager told NOTUS he was not consulted for the North Carolina-focused task force created by the president to recommend fixes to FEMA, which Edwards and several other state Republicans were appointed to. Others, too, want to see Republicans exert more power over their proposals.

“Republicans have insisted that FEMA was going to do good work and that the Trump administration was going to be here for folks, and then they kind of immediately curtail that as soon as Trump says the opposite,” Buncombe County Democratic Party chair Kristen Robinson told NOTUS. 

Still, Smathers said the bipartisan coalition will keep reminding the federal government about western North Carolinians awaiting relief and the systemic failures of FEMA. 

While the administration pushes forward on its agenda to scale FEMA down, both Democratic and Republican local officials are united in wanting the federal responsibility for emergency response to continue.

“Hurricane Helene was a historic storm in its devastation to western N.C., and if our state is going to recover, we will need a historic response from the federal government,” Republican state Sen. Warren Daniel, who represents Burke, Buncombe and McDowell Counties, told NOTUS. “I hope that Congress and the president will act on [recommendations from Edwards] with urgency.”

Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.