A United States District Court judge on Thursday ruled that the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was wrong to cancel a program
that has funded infrastructure resiliency efforts in communities across the
country.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure Communities (BRIC) program provided more than $200 million worth of
projects to protect North Carolina’s infrastructure, including nearly $7
million to relocate Hillsborough’s pump station out of a flood plain.
FEMA cancelled the program in April, calling the grants “wasteful
and ineffective.”
In July, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson sued
FEMA over its decision to cancel.
“We’re asking the court to treat this as an emergency,”
Jackson told WRAL News in an interview at the time.
Nineteen other attorneys general joined Jackson in the
federal lawsuit.
Thursday’s summary judgment order says “the court declares
that the termination of the BRIC program is void and of no force or effect.” It found that plans to divert BRIC funds to other programs was also unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stevens wrote that canceling the program was “unlawful Executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose.”
While he ordered FEMA to “promptly take all
steps necessary to reverse the termination of the BRIC program,” he did not directly order that funds be released for the infrastructure projects, including the one in Hillsborough.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted this week by a grand jury in Miami for allegedly stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds and laundering them toward her 2021 congressional campaign.
Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Miramar, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, laundered funds from an overpayment from a contract between her family’s health care company and FEMA for COVID-19 vaccination staffing.
According to the indictment, Cherflius-McCormick and other defendants routed the money through several accounts, as well as to friends and relatives, who then donated to her campaign.
“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in the news release. “No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”
The DOJ says the representative could face up to 53 years in prison if convicted.
The case is being investigated by the FBI Miami office and the IRS-Criminal Investigation Florida Field Office.
She also, and her tax preparer, were charged with conspiring to file a false federal tax return.
Among the defendants is the representative’s brother, Edwin Cherfilus.
In a social media post, Cherfilus-McCormick called it “an unjust, baseless, sham indictment — and I am innocent. The timing alone is curious and clearly meant to distract from far more pressing national issues.”
Cherfilus-McCormick stepped down from leadership on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, called the alleged behavior “one of the most egregious abuses of public trust I have ever seen.”
“Stealing $5 million in taxpayer disaster funds from FEMA of all places is beyond indefensible. Millions of Floridians have relied on FEMA after devastating hurricanes, and that money was supposed to help real disaster victims,” Steube wrote on social media.
Six months after an EF-3 tornado tore through St. Louis, some residents say they’re still waiting for repairs and assistance as winter approaches.
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Six months after an EF-3 tornado tore through St. Louis, killing five people and causing an estimated $1.6 billion in damage, parts of the city are still littered with broken windows, blue tarps and homes that haven’t been touched since May.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has previously warned that tornado-damaged communities can’t rebuild without strong federal involvement.
In St. Louis, residents say they’re still waiting for the help they were told would be coming.
A home in St. Louis sits partially collapsed after the EF-3 tornado in May, leaving bricks and debris piled along the street.(FOX NEWS)
Benjamin Anderson has lived in one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods for seven years and owns several rental properties in the area. When the storm hit, he was at work a few miles away.
“I got bombarded by about 37 texts from my dad with photos of our buildings. Just totally… some of them literally totally destroyed,” he said, adding that one of his multi-unit buildings suffered six figures’ worth of damage. “After spending a year and a half putting our hearts and souls into a building… that was not a fun experience to have to come back to.”
He said the recovery process has been slow and confusing, even for someone familiar with contractors and insurance systems.
“I applied for FEMA five times on like 4 or 5 different properties. And we were denied every single time,” Anderson said. “I haven’t heard anybody who’s come to me and they’re like, I got a $10,000 check from FEMA, and it’s really going to help me do these things.”
According to FEMA, millions of dollars in federal aid have been approved for Missouri storm survivors, including temporary housing assistance and low-interest SBA loans. But the agency noted in an October recovery update that many applications require follow-up documentation and some denials are later overturned on appeal.
The tornado ripped open the roof and upper floors of this St. Louis building, leaving exposed beams and debris behind.(FOX NEWS)
On the ground, residents say the need is outpacing the help.
Anderson said some neighbors have already left indefinitely, so contractors can work, while others have no idea where to begin. During a walk through the neighborhood, he met a man who is still camping outside their house because the home was condemned and had no power.
At the same time, some people have tried to take advantage of the situation.
“There were people coming through the neighborhood same day… these sort of like opportunistic roofers and window people,” Anderson said, adding that he turned down one man with Florida plates who offered to put a tarp on his roof for $2,000.
He later saw similar tarps on other houses and worried neighbors paid out of fear.
Not everyone lost their homes entirely, but many are navigating a long and confusing recovery.
Homeowner Misty Williams, considers herself lucky, but is still feeling the strain.
“It’s okay. We had some… damage to our house,” Williams said. “Thank God, you know, it was as minor as it was. My heart does go out to people, you know, that’s going to a total loss.”
Boarded windows and a shredded tarp remain on this St. Louis home six months after the tornado, showing how much work is still unfinished.(FOX NEWS)
Still, she said the money they received doesn’t cover everything. “Sometimes the repair cost far exceed the amount that you’re given,” she said.
Williams said she’s hopeful about a new city program called STL Recovers, which helps tornado survivors figure out what assistance they qualify for and how to begin repairing their homes.
Experts say that emotional impact often hits hardest at the six-month mark.
“Six months following a significant natural disaster is an important psychological time,” said Dr. Joshua Klapow, a clinical psychologist. “Six months is really, if you will, the end often of the adrenaline rush. And so now we’re tapping into much deeper resiliency efforts.”
He said survivors often feel more worn down months later than they did right after the storm. “For individuals, they can often feel like they don’t have the steam to keep going,” he said. “This is the time where those feelings of sadness and loss really can hit home.”
Winter weather can make that even more difficult. “Cold temperatures, less daylight… when you are also trying to navigate getting your life back together, those two things can compound,” Klapow said.
A tent sits in the yard of a storm-damaged St. Louis home, where someone appears to be camping on the property months after the tornado.(FOX NEWS)
In St. Louis, residents like Anderson are simply hoping the next six months look different from the last six.
“There’s still people who are sleeping outside their homes and it’s starting to get cold,” he said. “I hope that their situations are figured out so that maybe they do get some of that help… to move back inside in the winter.”
City leaders recently announced an expanded recovery effort, including a housing and temporary shelter program unveiled by Mayor Cara Spencer that is aimed at helping families who still cannot return home six months after the storm.
Olivianna Calmes joined Fox News in 2024 as a Multimedia Reporter based in St. Louis, Missouri.
If it’s time to sell and your house is in a flood zone, you may be concerned about getting the best price for your home. The good news is that there are plenty of buyers interested in purchasing properties regardless of the flood zoning. In this article, we’ll review everything you need to know if you’re selling your home in a flood zone, from insurance to mitigation to pricing strategies.
The basics of FEMA flood zone classifications and the implications of each designation
FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is responsible for evaluating flood zones in the United States. As you may already know, these designations can have a significant impact on your insurance premiums and the way you’ll need to market your house for sale.
If you’re planning to sell your house, you should obtain a current flood zone certification, understand their specific zone’s implications, and be prepared to provide detailed information about flood risks, insurance requirements, and any mitigation measures implemented to potential buyers. If you don’t already know what the designation is for your property, you can look it up on FEMA’s website.
FEMA designations in alphabetical order and their implications for homeowners
Zone A is a high-risk flood area with a 26% chance of flooding during a 30-year mortgage. Properties in this zone require mandatory flood insurance for properties with federally backed mortgages. Within Zone A, there are several subcategories like AE (with a defined base flood elevation), A1-A30 (specific elevation zones), AO (shallow flooding), and AH (flood depths between one and three feet). Properties in Zone A are also classified as Special Flood Hazard Areas.
Zone B and Zone C were previously used for areas with reduced flood risk. These are now largely replaced by Zone X.
Zone D indicates undetermined flood risks, which can complicate property sales as it suggests insufficient data to definitively assess flood potential.
Zone V is a coastal high-risk area with additional challenges, typically found in coastal regions. Houses with this designation have additional insurance requirements and building restrictions due to potential storm surge and wave action. Insurance premiums in Zone V are the highest of all the flood zones, and houses in this zone have more restrictive construction requirements. Properties in Zone V are also classified as Special Flood Hazard Areas.
Zone X represents moderate to low-risk areas, divided into X (shaded) with a moderate flood risk and X (unshaded) with minimal flood risk; while flood insurance isn’t mandatory in these zones, it’s still recommended.
Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) is a federally designated high-risk zone where the annual chance of flooding is 1% or greater, commonly known as the “100-year flood zone,” which requires mandatory flood insurance for properties with federally backed mortgages. This classification is a broader designation that includes both Zone A and Zone V. If your property is in Zone A or V, your property is automatically also categorized as SFHA. Another way to think of it is that Zone A is a subcategory of SFHA that is located inland and Zone V is a subcategory of SFHA that is coastal.
Understanding base flood elevation (BFE) and elevation certificates (EC)
Base Flood Elevation (BFE) is the calculated height of floodwaters expected during a 100-year flood event. It is the critical benchmark for determining flood risk, insurance requirements and building standards for a specific property.
Properties located below the BFE typically require higher insurance rates. Some of them are also mandated to complete structural modifications like elevated foundations or first-floor living spaces above the designated flood level. The BFE provides potential buyers with a precise understanding of flood risk. When selling a home in a flood zone, the BFE is a crucial factor in determining sale prices. It will greatly influence insurance premiums and the costs for potential future mitigation measures.
The Elevation Certificate (EC) is a document that provides the elevation information for a specific property in relation to the BFE. It certifies the precise elevation of the building’s lowest floor, critical systems, and other key elements related to the BFE.
Think of it this way: BFE is the standard flood level, while the Elevation Certificate documents how a specific property relates to that standard flood level.
Impact of flood zone designation on property values when selling
Different flood zone classifications can significantly reduce property values, with high-risk zones (such as FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Areas) potentially decreasing home values by 10-20% compared to properties in lower-risk zones. The more frequent and severe the flood risk, the more dramatic the negative impact on market value, with potential buyers factoring in increased insurance costs and potential property damage.
What to do before you put your flood zone property on the market
Step 1: Flood assessment and documentation
Cost: $500 – $2,500
Timeline: 2 – 6 weeks
To start with, you’ll need to gather a fair amount of documentation about the flood and insurance history of your property. If you have already prepared this information, now is the time to pull it out and go through everything. You’ll need the following information and official documentation:
Current flood zone classification. You can get this from FEMA’s website or contact FEMA directly through their Flood Map Service Center. Alternatively, you could request a Flood Zone Determination from your local county assessor’s office.
Flood insurance history and claims record. You can get this directly from your insurance company. Request a comprehensive claims history or a Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report. You could also contact the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) at 1-800-427-4661.
Professional flood risk assessment. You have a number of options for how to obtain this information. You could hire a local certified flood risk consultant, professional surveyor, or engineering firm that specializes in flood risk assessment. You could also reach out to your local university’s geography or environmental science departments for recommendations and additional information.
Historical flood data for the property. Try to collect flood event records, watershed and/or drainage area maps, local climate and precipitation data, or topographical maps. Sources and resources for this information include FEMA’s NFIP database, local watershed management districts, historical property records, or the archives of your neighborhood association.
Elevation certificate. The EC provides precise documentation of the property’s base flood elevation, helps determine accurate flood insurance rates, serves as a critical disclosure document for potential buyers, and can potentially demonstrate the property’s flood resilience or guide necessary mitigation efforts that could improve the home’s marketability and value.
Step 2: Consider making recommended property updates to mitigate flood risk (if applicable)
Cost: Varies by flood zone and property condition
Timeline: Varies by scale of updates
If you’re planning to sell a house in a flood zone, one of the best ways to increase your asking price is to start making any recommended flood mitigation updates to your property. FEMA has information for homeowners who are retrofitting a current home, as well as guidelines for residential buildings such as townhomes that can’t be elevated. The extent of these updates will vary depending on your individual house and property. Recommended modifications range from structural updates like raising the elevation of your living spaces to smaller efforts such as upgrading your outdoor drainage system. This will also help to keep flood insurance premiums down.
The documentation you have collected will include recommendations for updates that are appropriate to your location and flood zone. Common targeted improvements include items such as elevating electrical systems, installing flood vents, applying waterproof sealants, creating proper drainage systems, and potentially raising the home’s foundation. Contact your insurance provider or FEMA for specific recommendations based on your home and location.
Step 3: Get to know your insurance policy and gather information about insurance options
Cost: $200 – $500
Timeline: 2- 4 weeks
Start by getting to know the NFIP requirements for your community. You’ll find them in the FEMA Flood Maps Service Center. You’ll need to know what the mandatory insurance requirements are and if there have been any recent changes to the local flood maps. Determine whether there is community participation in NFIP and note any coverage limits or restrictions for your property. Familiarize yourself with the regulations around transferring insurance policies.
Next, contact your current insurance provider and request a complete policy documentation package and a detailed claims history report. You’ll need the following information:
Full copy of current flood insurance policy
Policy number and effective dates
Coverage limits and types of coverage
Premium amounts
Deductible information
Claims history
Is insurance policy transferable to a new owner?
Finally, we recommend you do some research to estimate the insurance costs to a potential buyer. This will help you price the property for sale and may play a role in price negotiations.
Armed with basics such as the EC, BFE, current zone classification, and historic flood risk data, reach out and get insurance quotes from multiple providers. Try to get an insurance cost estimate letter from them if possible. Sellers in high-risk flood zones will need to go through the NFIP to purchase a flood insurance policy, but if your home is in a low-risk area you may want to explore private insurance options as well.
Disclosure and other legal requirements for houses in a flood zone
It is critical that you follow all state and federal disclosure requirements when selling your house. Failure to do so may result in legal action being taken against you. If you’re working with a real estate agent who has experience selling houses in a flood zone, they will know the local disclosure regulations and can help you navigate the process.
Pricing to sell your house in a flood zone
Pricing your house correctly is one of the most important things you can do when selling in a flood zone. Here are some of the things you should be considering when determining the sale price:
SFHA vs non-SFHA Category Designation matters here. If your property is located in a Special Flood Hazard Area or is in Zone A or Zone V, you will likely be looking at a lower sale price. Buyers are understandably more wary about purchasing a home in these areas. A recent study by Stanford University found that houses in a flood zone sold for 2% below their value.
Competitive market analysis Whether you’re working with a real estate agent or selling yourself, it’s important to carefully evaluate comparable sales. Be sure to take flood zone designations, historical flooding incidents, and local mitigation infrastructure into account when determining the appropriate sale price.
Marketing your flood zone property
When it comes to selling, smart marketing will make a huge difference in your bottom line in terms of the offers and final sale price. Here are a few ways to ensure you’re marketing your property effectively:
Work with a real estate agent who has experience selling houses in a flood zone. This is the best way to make sure you are marketing your house effectively. They will ensure you are following all legal disclosure requirements and can help you tailor your marketing to the local housing market. They can also help you locate and connect with investors and other buyers who are specifically interested in buying houses in a flood zone.
Hire a professional real estate photographer. It will make a huge difference in how your home is perceived once it’s on the market.
Highlight the strengths of the property and showcase flood mitigation efforts that have already been completed. When it comes to featuring the best things about your house, location, or property, you know best. Make sure that you are communicating those positive attributes in your listing details. Call out any work you have done to mitigate flood risk. This could be things such as elevating your house or installing better drainage systems. You want your buyers to see the potential of the property and feel confident that they can live there safely.
Be transparent and honest about the flood risk. It’s imperative that you are honest about the flood risk on your property.
Successfully navigating the sale process when selling a house in a flood zone
Once you have a potential buyer, it’s time to start negotiating the sale price. In some markets, you may not need to negotiate. Regardless, you should be prepared to negotiate and offer potential concessions based on the current FEMA designation.
Step 1: Help educate the buyer and provide detailed information about the flood risk
The first step is providing comprehensive, detailed information about the risk will show potential buyers that you are trustworthy and well-informed. Examples of this information include documentation such as:
Elevation Certificate
History of flooding in the area
Current flood insurance and claims history
Flood insurance quotes to help potential buyers understand their future costs
Flood maps
Results of professional flood assessment
Step 2: Negotiation strategies and possible concessions
To strengthen your negotiation position, it’s not uncommon for sellers to provide a home warranty covering major systems and components for one to two years, which alleviates buyer concerns about potential unexpected repairs. As an additional incentive, you might negotiate to offset the buyer’s first-year flood insurance premiums through a direct credit at closing or by adjusting the overall purchase price, thereby mitigating the ongoing financial burden associated with properties in high-risk flood areas. This approach demonstrates your commitment to the transaction and provides tangible financial relief that can make the property more attractive to potential buyers.
Step 3: If applicable, transition your insurance policy appropriately after the sale
When selling a home in a flood zone, transferring an existing National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policy can be a significant advantage for both the seller and potential buyer. The existing policy, particularly if it has been maintained with a good claims history and potentially grandfathered rates, can represent substantial value, as it may offer more favorable premiums than a new policy purchased at current market rates.
Work closely with your insurance agent to understand the specific transferability of the policy, as some NFIP policies can be assumed by the new homeowner, potentially saving the buyer thousands of dollars in insurance costs and providing a unique selling point that can make the property more attractive in a competitive real estate market. Moreover, a transferable policy with a proven history of coverage demonstrates the property’s insurability and the seller’s proactive approach to managing flood risk, which can help alleviate buyer concerns and potentially smooth the path to a successful sale.
Rescuers in western Alaska are working to find missing residents and help the more than 1,000 people displaced after ferocious, hurricane-force wind gusts from what once was Typhoon Halong tore through remote, coastal communities, unleashed record-breaking storm surge and shoved homes completely off their foundations.At least one person, an adult woman, was found dead in the village of Kwigillingok Monday, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a statement. Officials are working to notify the woman’s family before releasing her name.Two people were still unaccounted for in Kwigillingok as of Monday, officials said. At least 51 people and two dogs have been rescued in Kwigillingok and the nearby village of Kipnuk since the weekend, and about 1,400 others were displaced to shelters, a local tribal health agency and state officials said. Authorities said Monday evening there were no missing people in Kipnuk after previously saying they were working to confirm reports of additional missing individuals.The sparsely populated villages are more than 400 miles southwest of Anchorage. “Both communities experienced strong winds and heavy flooding overnight, which caused significant damage, including at least eight homes being pushed from their foundations,” Alaska State Troopers said Sunday, although officials said Monday afternoon that they are not sure how many buildings or homes are impacted overall.Search efforts from Sunday throughout Monday involved help from the Alaska Air National Guard, Alaska Army National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard, according to the state troopers and the state’s Department of Public Safety. The Alaska National Guard response includes about 60 to 80 soldiers on the ground as of Monday, and upwards of 200 soldiers near the end of the week, said Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, who runs the state’s National Guard. It is the “largest I’ve seen in quite some time,” he said.Some search and rescue efforts involved helicopters rescuing people off the roofs of houses as they were surrounded by several feet of flooding, images that are reminiscent to rescues conducted during Hurricane Katrina, said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Christopher Culpepper.“If you imagine the worst case scenario, that’s what we are dealing with,” he said.The storm generated wind gusts 100 mph or more in western Alaska Sunday, akin to the gusts Category 1 or 2 hurricanes are capable of. Wind gusts hit 107 mph in Kusilvak while nearby Toksook Bay recorded a gust of 100 mph, according to the National Weather Service.These winds also drove dangerous storm surge, pushing feet of water onto land, which triggered major flooding in coastal areas. Water levels in Kipnuk soared to 14.5 feet Sunday — more than 2 feet above major flood stage and 1.5 feet above the previous record flood level set in 2000.The storm was once Typhoon Halong, a powerful tropical system that formed in the northern Philippine Sea earlier this month, skirted by Japan without making landfall and then crossed the north Pacific Ocean. It was no longer tropical by the time it entered the Bering Sea this weekend, but that did not eliminate its power.The storm moved through northern Alaska late Sunday and pushed into the Arctic Sea early Monday, leaving communities to pick up the pieces in its wake.“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement Sunday announcing the expansion of a state disaster declaration to include the areas impacted by the weekend storm. He emphasized Monday there will be support for residents in the short term as well as for long-term needs.The initial declaration, issued on Thursday, addressed damage in western Alaska caused by another powerful coastal storm earlier in the week that brought extensive flooding.Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said he has “been in frequent conversations with Acting FEMA Director David Richardson, and also in contact with local, tribal and state officials, including the Governor, and with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.”“FEMA is in direct contact with state and local officials and has an incident management team traveling to Alaska as we speak with a FEMA search-and-rescue group pre-positioned in Washington on standby. According to FEMA, the government shutdown is not impacting the agency’s response to this emergency,” Sullivan said in a statement.
KWIGILLINGOK, Alaska —
Rescuers in western Alaska are working to find missing residents and help the more than 1,000 people displaced after ferocious, hurricane-force wind gusts from what once was Typhoon Halong tore through remote, coastal communities, unleashed record-breaking storm surge and shoved homes completely off their foundations.
At least one person, an adult woman, was found dead in the village of Kwigillingok Monday, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a statement. Officials are working to notify the woman’s family before releasing her name.
Two people were still unaccounted for in Kwigillingok as of Monday, officials said. At least 51 people and two dogs have been rescued in Kwigillingok and the nearby village of Kipnuk since the weekend, and about 1,400 others were displaced to shelters, a local tribal health agency and state officials said. Authorities said Monday evening there were no missing people in Kipnuk after previously saying they were working to confirm reports of additional missing individuals.
The sparsely populated villages are more than 400 miles southwest of Anchorage. “Both communities experienced strong winds and heavy flooding overnight, which caused significant damage, including at least eight homes being pushed from their foundations,” Alaska State Troopers said Sunday, although officials said Monday afternoon that they are not sure how many buildings or homes are impacted overall.
Search efforts from Sunday throughout Monday involved help from the Alaska Air National Guard, Alaska Army National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard, according to the state troopers and the state’s Department of Public Safety. The Alaska National Guard response includes about 60 to 80 soldiers on the ground as of Monday, and upwards of 200 soldiers near the end of the week, said Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, who runs the state’s National Guard. It is the “largest [response] I’ve seen in quite some time,” he said.
Some search and rescue efforts involved helicopters rescuing people off the roofs of houses as they were surrounded by several feet of flooding, images that are reminiscent to rescues conducted during Hurricane Katrina, said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Christopher Culpepper.
“If you imagine the worst case scenario, that’s what we are dealing with,” he said.
The storm generated wind gusts 100 mph or more in western Alaska Sunday, akin to the gusts Category 1 or 2 hurricanes are capable of. Wind gusts hit 107 mph in Kusilvak while nearby Toksook Bay recorded a gust of 100 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
These winds also drove dangerous storm surge, pushing feet of water onto land, which triggered major flooding in coastal areas. Water levels in Kipnuk soared to 14.5 feet Sunday — more than 2 feet above major flood stage and 1.5 feet above the previous record flood level set in 2000.
The storm was once Typhoon Halong, a powerful tropical system that formed in the northern Philippine Sea earlier this month, skirted by Japan without making landfall and then crossed the north Pacific Ocean. It was no longer tropical by the time it entered the Bering Sea this weekend, but that did not eliminate its power.
The storm moved through northern Alaska late Sunday and pushed into the Arctic Sea early Monday, leaving communities to pick up the pieces in its wake.
“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement Sunday announcing the expansion of a state disaster declaration to include the areas impacted by the weekend storm. He emphasized Monday there will be support for residents in the short term as well as for long-term needs.
The initial declaration, issued on Thursday, addressed damage in western Alaska caused by another powerful coastal storm earlier in the week that brought extensive flooding.
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said he has “been in frequent conversations with Acting FEMA Director David Richardson, and also in contact with local, tribal and state officials, including the Governor, and with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.”
“FEMA is in direct contact with state and local officials and has an incident management team traveling to Alaska as we speak with a FEMA search-and-rescue group pre-positioned in Washington on standby. According to FEMA, the government shutdown is not impacting the agency’s response to this emergency,” Sullivan said in a statement.
Two Denver-area companies face federal wire fraud charges in a scheme to sell imported Chinese forklifts to the federal government as American-made equipment, according to an indictment released Tuesday.
Endless Sales and Octane Forklifts, along with current executives Brian Firkins and Jeffrey Blasdel and former executive J.R. Antczak, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on Aug. 21, Department of Justice officials announced this week.
According to the indictment, Octane’s main business was buying forklifts made in China, rebranding them as American-made and selling them through Endless Sales to local, state and federal government clients.
The scheme started in Aug. 2018 and continued until at least July 2024. Investigators say the companies and executives also worked with a Chinese manufacturer to create fake invoices that undervalued the imported forklifts to avoid paying more than $1 million in tariffs and fees.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari said the companies told the forklifts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Defense while claiming to comply with the Buy American Act.
“It is especially reprehensible that this alleged fraud involved a FEMA contract using disaster funds,” Cuffari said.
Both companies and Firkins, Blasdel and Antczak were indicted for conspiring to commit wire fraud and conspiring to enter goods into the United States by means of false or fraudulent statements, federal officials said.
Firkins, Blasdel and Antczak also face charges of wire fraud, and Blasdel is charged with making false statements to the government.
EXCLUSIVE: As the Sept. 30 government funding deadline looms, the Trump administration is warning that millions of Americans could lose flood insurance coverage if Democrats refuse to back a House-passed spending bill that also extends the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
The White House supports the continuing resolution (CR) approved by House Republicans, which would avert a shutdown and reauthorize the NFIP.
Administration officials said they worked to ensure NFIP was part of the current funding package, reflecting what they call the urgency of protecting millions of policyholders during hurricane season.
Democrats have said they will not support the measure, citing broader spending disputes. Trump administration officials argue the standoff puts homeowners, the housing market and disaster recovery funds at risk just as peak storm season arrives.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill as Congress faces a funding deadline and flood insurance risks.(Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“In an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital, a White House official said: ‘The NFIP is a vital program utilized by millions of Americans, and it’s not a hard call to extend it – which is exactly why the administration supports the House-passed CR that would do so. Unfortunately, Democrats are happy to shut down the government and hurt the many thousands of Americans who rely on this program in the process.’”
According to administration figures reviewed by Fox News Digital, a lapse in NFIP authorization could disrupt about 1,300 property sales every day. That’s roughly 40,000 closings in a single month, all in areas where flood insurance is required to secure a mortgage.
More than 400,000 policies are set to expire in October. Officials say about 152,000 of those have been prepaid, but more than 250,000 households could still lose coverage if the program stalls.
White House officials warn of flood insurance lapses if Democrats block a spending bill.(Getty Images)
Administration officials also pointed to October 2024 as a warning sign. That month saw more than 427,000 new or renewed policies. Roughly 41,000 homeowners bought new policies while about 33,000 dropped coverage, leaving a net gain of nearly 9,000. Officials warn that similar growth this year could collapse if NFIP lapses.
Administration officials told Fox News Digital that FEMA currently has $2.6 billion available to pay valid claims, including $1.5 billion in the National Flood Insurance Fund and $1.1 billion in reserves. But they warned the agency would be unable to borrow additional money from the Treasury if a major disaster exceeded those reserves, a scenario they described as “dangerous and avoidable.”
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) echoed those concerns.
“Past disruptions of the NFIP have caused immediate and widespread negative impacts on property sales, home values and consumer confidence,” NAHB said in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.(Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images)
“Home sales would cease in areas where flood insurance is mandatory in order to obtain a mortgage. What the housing market needs now is stability and certainty. NAHB calls upon the House to act quickly to continue to fund the operations of the federal government including the extension of the NFIP.”
The NFIP has a long history of stopgap extensions. Since 2017, Congress has reauthorized the program more than 30 times, often through short-term measures. Lawmakers have typically made coverage retroactive to prevent permanent gaps, but even brief lapses have stalled real estate closings and left homeowners in limbo. The program currently serves about 4.5 million policyholders nationwide.
Unless lawmakers strike a deal, FEMA will be barred from selling or renewing flood insurance policies starting Oct. 1, a lapse that could leave millions of homeowners in limbo as Washington hurtles toward a shutdown. Administration officials argue the risk is especially acute this year as hurricane season continues.
FEMA, Schumer and Jeffries did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Jasmine Baehr is a Breaking News Writer for Fox News Digital, where she covers politics, the military, faith and culture.
Top lieutenants of Gov. Josh Stein’s administration overseeing Hurricane Helene recovery testify in front of state lawmakers on Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
As Gov. Josh Stein’s top lieutenants for Hurricane Helene recovery sat before North Carolina lawmakers on Wednesday, they recited a familiar line: federal aid money was arriving far slower than the state was able to work.
Days before the storm’s one-year anniversary, the officials told the General Assembly that applications submitted for a major grant program had been pending before FEMA for months. And although the state stood up its homebuilding program in record time, federal regulations and processes meant that the first full reconstructed home likely would not be complete until January.
Those projections led lawmakers from both parties toward the same line of questioning: is there any way to make all of this go faster?
“Should we really, in the state, be in the housing business?” asked Rep. Brenden Jones (R-Columbus). Rep. Zack Hawkins (D-Durham) wondered if “maybe the state will be better off being more invested in some of the state-funded solutions.” And Sen. Julie Mayfield (D-Buncombe) asked whether the state could effectively pre-empt reimbursement from the feds on a key grant program: “Is that the way it works? Or do they actually look at every (application)?”
“All we need from FEMA is their checkbook,” Sen. Tim Moffitt (R-Henderson) said.
The slow trickle of aid is familiar for major disaster recovery, a years-long process that takes billions of dollars. But the Trump administration’s operation of FEMA — requiring top-level sign-off on all spending and enforcing new layers of scrutiny on all aid — has slowed the flow of money even more to western North Carolina and frustrated state officials and lawmakers alike. North Carolina has received federal funds to cover 9% of total damages; Stein has requested funding to cover 48%.
Trump, as well as some Republican members of Congress, have on multiple occasions expressed a desire to move the bulk of disaster response operations and funding down to the state level. But for now, that responsibility remains with FEMA.
Money for Helene does continue to flow piecemeal. FEMA greenlit an additional $48 million for North Carolina on Monday, and $64.2 million the week prior. But Matt Calabria, who leads the governor’s western recovery office, said Wednesday that the state’s applications under a specific rebuilding grant program had been waiting for action by FEMA since February.
“That’s a good exemplar for the kinds of dynamics we’re running into right now,” Calabria said.
That chunk of money, called the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, is designed to fund projects to prevent future disasters: relocating developments on floodplains, installing levees and floodwalls and retrofitting older buildings. North Carolina could be eligible to receive up to $1.6 billion under the program, officials said Wednesday. Both local governments and property owners can apply for grants. But “no homes have been approved” for the program as of Wednesday, Calabria said.
FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the status of North Carolina’s hazard mitigation grant applications.
Jonathan Krebs, Stein’s advisor for western North Carolina, told lawmakers the state couldn’t go ahead with projects under the program and hope for reimbursement from FEMA later. The most likely result from that, he said, would be rejection — though he admitted that would be better than the current limbo.
Matt Calabria (left), who leads the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, and Jonathan Krebs, Gov. Josh Stein’s advisor for western North Carolina, testify for state lawmakers on Hurricane Helene recovery efforts on Jan. 29, 2025. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
“We would love for them to say no, because then we could move onto other solutions,” Krebs said. “Right now, they’re saying nothing.”
Meanwhile, the state continues to trudge toward rebuilding homes under Renew NC, the state’s homebuilding operation that will use around $800 million in federal dollars.
State officials have kick-started casework on applicants despite still waiting on that federal money, using $120 million provided by state lawmakers. Renew NC has completed repairs on one home, and four others are now in the “pre-construction” phase, according to a state dashboard.
Work on the first home to need full reconstruction is expected to start “fairly soon,” said Stephanie McGarrah, who leads the Department of Commerce division overseeing the program. She estimated that construction could be complete around January.
Jones, the House majority leader, had heard testimony earlier from Samaritan’s Purse — a Christian aid organization that has been rebuilding homes in western North Carolina separately from government programs. The group is currently building 30 mobile homes and 40 fully furnished homes in the region, vice president Luther Harrison said Wednesday. Jones wondered whether the state was better off leaning on groups like Harrison’s for a larger chunk of work.
North Carolina has received more than 3,000 applications to its Renew NC Single-Family Housing Program to help low- to moderate-income families who experienced significant storm damage.
“Do you think it would be wise for this body to start funding the outside groups … that can move way faster than state government?” Jones asked.
Those organizations fill valuable gaps on construction that “the federal government cannot fund,” Krebs responded. But many of the properties handled by non-government groups are often lower-cost ones; for more expensive projects, its a harder sell, he said.
“When that average value starts getting really high, I think that’s where state and federal solutions start having to step in,” Krebs said, referencing major bridges specifically.
Texas’ six-month hurricane season just hit the halfway point, and elected officials across the state say they’re bracing themselves for delayed responses, reduced funding, and an increased strain on local resources as President Donald Trump threatens to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
U.S. Congressman Al Green, D-Houston, joined the chorus last week of representatives condemning the president’s actions and calling on state officials like Gov. Greg Abbott to do more than approve “Band-Aid bills” while Texas stands to lose $74 million because of Trump’s cuts.
Trump has said he’ll “phase out” FEMA after the 2025 hurricane season ends in November. “We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” the president said in June.
But the cuts have already begun. The U.S. government announced in April it had eliminated FEMA’s $4.6 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program in the middle of a distribution cycle.
Before adjourning a second special session this month, Texas lawmakers approved, in response to the July 4 Kerr County floods, a $368 million one-time appropriation from the state’s Rainy Day Fund for disaster relief, with $50 million to help local governments purchase flood warning sirens and rain gauges and $28 million for flood monitoring grants. Green said last week that’s not enough.
“The state of Texas is not known to spend federal dollars wisely, and I’m not sure the state of Texas is prepared to handle the amount of dollars necessary if FEMA is eliminated in its entirety,” the congressman said on a press call last week. “I regret that Texas is not doing more to insist on FEMA being managed as it has been. It’s not a perfect organization but I’ve been in Congress long enough to see how FEMA has benefited my constituents.”
“Unfortunately, it seems that if Trump can aggressively dismantle an agency, he will,” Green added. “While this is not a good time for the most vulnerable in Texas, it is a great time for us to unite, band together, and fight to protect our communities.”
In August, Houston Controller Chris Hollins spoke at a virtual press briefing with finance chiefs from New Mexico, Vermont, and Minnesota to discuss the long-term repercussions that FEMA cuts could have on the economic health and safety of the country.
Harris County’s population is larger than 26 individual states, so the impact of a disaster is widespread, Hollins said.
“Houstonians deal with and live the consequences of these disasters on a regular basis,” he said. “This is not theoretical for us. There is significant human and economic pain, families who are displaced, small businesses shuttered, city and county budgets that are spread thin, and billions and billions of dollars of damage that we’re still paying for.”
The federal government is turning disaster relief into a political game, the controller added. “These disasters, when they come, don’t check if you’re rich or poor, Black or white, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “The floodwaters do not stop at the city line because the precinct voted blue or red. When Trump Republicans, when MAGA, go after these programs like FEMA, when they kneecap HUD’s disaster recovery work, they don’t punish a city. They punish human beings.”
Half of Houstonians can’t afford an unexpected $400 expense, Hollins added, so the impact of a storm and rising insurance premiums can be devastating, forcing people to go into debt or rebuild alone. The homes of some residents in north Houston have still not been repaired after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, he said.
“They slashed FEMA, hollowed out staffing, they tried to kill proven resilience programs and wrapped it all in red tape that slowed the response down,” Hollins said. “That can be life or death for Houstonians and for Texans. That’s not fiscal discipline. It’s not responsibility. It’s recklessness, it’s partisan sabotage, and it’s a lack of public safety.”
Harris County commissioners and Houston City Council members have also expressed concern that, while FEMA hasn’t traditionally swept in like a white knight and solved everyone’s problems in the wake of a disaster, the agency is relied upon for much-needed funding that state and local governments don’t have.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said last month that Trump and Abbott have attacked Harris County, not just by ignoring its needs but by “actively working to undermine our ability to serve the people who need us most.”
“Donald Trump has slashed, and continues to slash, federal safety net programs, even as more families have fallen into poverty,” Ellis said. “Greg Abbott has imposed state revenue caps that choke local budgets — part of a broader war on local governments and working people.”
At last week’s press briefing, Green was joined by Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert and Houston-based former FEMA Public Affairs Director Rafael Lemaitre to address how federal budget cuts are “sabotaging the safety” of Texans.
Calvert said that 13 people in his San Antonio-area precinct died during flash flooding in June. The legislature had an opportunity to earmark funds to repair drainage and coordinate emergency systems, but didn’t do it, he said.
“They only allocated $50 million out of the Rainy Day Fund for a state that is full of rainy days,” Calvert said. “Texas has more money in its Rainy Day Fund than almost every state in the United States combined. Whether it was Winter Storm Uri, the February freeze that we had in 2021, or a number of emergencies that are truly rainy days for communities, we’ve seen the state benefit the bankers holding onto that money a lot more than Main Street getting that money, and that is shameful.”
Thousands of lives would be saved if state and federal governments would fund “microgrids” so hospitals and assisted living homes would be self-sustaining in a power outage, Calvert said.
“When you start seeing microgrids funded in local communities, that’s when you’re cooking with grease,” he said. “Right now we’re not cooking with grease for a state that has a lot of emergencies.”
“It is an emergency right now that the people in Harris County and the Houston area do not have a congressperson should a hurricane or flooding happen in their area,” Calvert said. “The fact that the governor hasn’t moved that election faster after the death of Congressman Turner is a shame, and it’s going to matter if we have an emergency.”
Rafael Lemaitre worked as a spokesman for FEMA during the Obama administration and said last week that the agency’s importance has increased as climate change has caused natural disasters to become more frequent and more severe.
Following his tenure with FEMA, Lemaitre moved to Houston and worked as a senior adviser to County Judge Lina Hidalgo. His family received individual FEMA assistance as disaster survivors of the 2024 derecho, he said, noting that he’s dealt with the federal agency on multiple levels.
Lemaitre said there’s a dangerous narrative being advanced by Trump that FEMA is not prepared to handle disasters; that it’s the role of state governments.
“That simply isn’t how disaster management operates,” he said. “During Democratic administrations, FEMA has always had a supporting role in helping states and governors in disaster response when their capacity is exceeded, which happens quite often. Even on what we call blue-sky days, FEMA has a vital role in supporting states and local communities.”
The agency used to operate the Center for Domestic Preparedness and the National Fire Academy, where first responders trained for free, learning to respond to mass casualty incidents and biological attacks, among other things.
“This was gutted and closed down at the beginning of the Trump administration, forcing 7,000 first responders from across the country to miss out on the vital training that makes our communities more resilient,” Lemaitre said.
“I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina,” he added. “Folks on this call who saw that disaster unravel in real time on television probably remember that it was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded. It wasn’t a respected agency. And we saw the result of that. We saw a bungled response to a major disaster.”
Green said the matter of disaster response and recovery ought to be a bipartisan issue.
“We have a president who seems to believe that Congress is subordinate to him and that he is a superior personality,” he said. “We’re trying to restore funding, but to do that, you have to have it in a bill that my Republican colleagues need to support. All of these things are very difficult when you don’t have control of the House and don’t have control of the Senate.”
“Democratic members of Congress will work to maintain FEMA, strengthen FEMA, and get more dollars into states when these events arrive,” Green added. “We cannot eliminate the one agency that has the experience and the expertise to manage a disaster.”
The state of Florida has asked the federal government to reimburse it for the costs of its “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp, despite a recent appeals court ruling that receiving federal funds would trigger environmental reviews that the state ignored when it hastily built the camp.
“The State of Florida submitted an application for reimbursement to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson says. “FEMA has roughly $625 million in Shelter and Services Program funds that can be allocated for this effort.”
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit lifted a lower court’s preliminary injunction shutting down the Everglades detention camp, allowing operations there to resume. It was a victory for Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, but it also complicated the state’s plan to be reimbursed by the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses, as DeSantis repeatedly promised would happen.
The appeals court panel ruled, in response to a lawsuit by the environmental advocacy nonprofits Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, that the detention camp is not subject to environmental impact studies required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because it has so far been entirely paid for by the state of Florida.
“Here, no federal dollars have been expended on the construction or use of the Facility,” Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote in the majority opinion. “So, the Florida-funded and Florida-operated detention activities occurring at the Site do not conceive a ‘major federal project’ either.”
“There may come a time when [the Florida Department of Environmental Protection] applies for FEMA funding,” Lagoa continued. “If the Federal Defendants ultimately decide to approve that request and reimburse Florida for its expenditures related to the Facility, they may need to first conduct an [environmental impact statement]. But, having not yet formally ‘committed to funding that project,’ the Federal Defendants have taken no ‘major federal action’ subjecting them to the procedural requirements of NEPA.”
As the Associated Press reported Wednesday, the ruling created an apparent predicament for the state: “The state can either pass up federal reimbursement for hundreds of millions of dollars spent to build and operate the facility, or take the money and face an environmental review, which would risk halting the center’s operations,” the A.P. reported.
But Florida has already applied for such funding, according to DHS’ statement to Reason.
DHS and FEMA did not respond to requests for a copy of Florida’s application. No funds are reported to have been disbursed yet.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment. The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which is the state agency in charge of the detention camp, responded by sending a link to a DeSantis press conference from last month.
Friends of the Everglades argues that, although no money has changed hands, the tacit agreement between the federal government and the state of Florida, and the repeated public statements by Florida and DHS officials, clearly show that the federal government has committed to pay for the project.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Adalberto Jordan agreed, writing that “the notion that Florida decided to build the detention facility without a concrete funding commitment from the federal government is squarely contradicted by the preconstruction statements of [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem and Governor DeSantis that the United States will pay for the facility.”
Friends of the Everglades says Florida’s reimbursement application only adds to the pile of evidence that the federal government has always intended to pay for the project.
“Time will prove the trial judge and Judge Jordan correct—and this evidence will support our case when we return to the trial court,” says Paul Schwiep, the lead counsel for Friends of the Everglades in its lawsuit.
Federal and Florida officials have had a tacit reimbursement agreement for months.
In a June 20 email, disclosed last month in a court filing, the Trump administration’s nominee for DHS general counsel, James Percival, wrote to the Florida Attorney General’s Office regarding Florida’s plan to detain aliens under an agreement with the federal government. “If you go forward, we will work out a method of partial reimbursement,” Percival wrote.
At a June 25 press conference, DeSantis said the federal government would fully reimburse Florida. “This is something that was requested by the federal government, and this is something that the federal government is going to fully fund,” DeSantis said. “From a state taxpayer perspective, we are implementing it…but that will be fully reimbursed by the federal government.”
Noem also said in public statements over the summer that FEMA funds would be used to reimburse Florida.
The FDEM estimated in August that a shutdown of the facility would cost it more than $218 million it had already invested.
FIRST ON FOX: DHS and Secretary Kristi Noem are placing a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employee on administrative leave after a data analyst complained that flags were flying at half-mast in memory of Charlie Kirk, referring to the conservative activist as a “racist homophobe misogynist.”
Sources at DHS confirmed to Fox News Digital that Gavin Sylvia, who has been with FEMA since November 2024, questioned President Donald Trump’s order to have American flags flown at half-mast in memory of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah during an event on Wednesday.
“Half mast for the literal racist homophobe misogynist,” Sylvia questioned on Instagram.
“This employee’s words are revolting and unconscionable,” a spokesperson for FEMA told Fox News Digital. “Celebrating the death of a fellow American is appalling, unacceptable and sickening.”
FEMA’s Gavin Sylvia was put on leave after slamming Trump’s flag order, calling Charlie Kirk a “racist homophobe.”(LinkedIn)
“Such behavior does not reflect the values of public service, and it will not be tolerated among individuals entrusted to work at FEMA,” the spokesperson continued. “We expect all public servants to uphold the highest standard of professionalism, respect and integrity.”
DHS confirmed to Fox News Digital that Sylvia has officially been placed on administrative leave.
Sources at DHS also told Fox that Sylvia’s comments were disgraceful and that the data analyst has no place at the Department of Homeland Security or at any agency in the federal government.
Sylvia’s leave comes as other federal agencies are closely monitoring employee social media activity and responses to Kirk’s murder.
A FEMA worker was put on administrative leave by Kristi Noem’s DHS after posting slander about Charlie Kirk online in the wake of his assassination.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Patrick T. Fallon / AFP, PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Assistant to the Secretary of War Sean Parnell posted to X.”The Department of War has zero tolerance for it.”
The United States Coast Guard posted to X saying that any social media activity that endorses the murder or slander of Charlie Kirk “is contrary to our core values.”
Senior federal employees in the Trump administration told Fox News Digital they are also not happy with the “weak people” who have been bashing Kirk on the internet following his death.
Charlie Kirk’s casket is removed from Air Force Two at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Sept. 11, 2025, in Phoenix, Arizona.(Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
“Imagine being so unbelievably useless in life that your response to the death of a man who has, through sheer force of will and belief in Christ, reshaped the American political landscape is to mock his assassination,” one Senior Federal Official told Fox News Digital. “These are weak people, with weak minds, saying weak things.”
The 31-year-old father of two’s killer remains on the loose as the FBI and local law enforcement request and share information they have about the targeted attack.
Fox News Digital reached out to Gavin Sylvia for comment but did not receive a response.
Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston
Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news.
Federal employees tasked with responding to natural disasters and providing assistance to Americans in dire straits haven’t all been using government resources as intended. As part of an investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staff have been found to be using government resources to engage in sexually explicit behavior.
U.S.Department of Homeland Security investigators identified employees working at a FEMA command center who they say were sending sexually explicit images via text, or sexting, to foreign nationals and uploading the images using government devices.
Agents working in DHS’ Insider Threat Operations Center (ITOC) identified two FEMA employees who allegedly “used their official government equipment to send graphic messages, access adult websites, and in one case, upload an image of male genitalia to an online sex platform,” DHS said.
“This behavior and misuse of government resources is absolutely disgusting,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. Instead of working on behalf of the American people in taxpayer funded jobs with access to highly sensitive systems, the employees “spent their duty hours sexting strangers, including foreign nationals, on encrypted government devices. Such conduct is unacceptable, and these employees have been terminated,” Noem said.
On August 27, DHS ITOC agents discovered that one FEMA employee had accessed Facebook Messenger through the FEMA network to allegedly “engage in multiple sexually explicit conversations with an individual believed to reside in the Philippines.” ITOC agents reviewed messages including graphic sexual content, references to a Filipino dating group, and statements about the FEMA employee’s plan to visit the individual overseas, DHS said.
Between Aug. 30-31, another FEMA employee used his official government workstation to access an adult website to engage in multiple graphic conversations and upload an image of male genitalia to the platform, investigators said. The activity was observed to have occurred during work hours using a FEMA-assig ned device connected to an unclassified FEMA network.
The offenses occurred at FEMA’s Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center/High Point Special Facility located near Frogtown, Virginia, DHS said. The facility is used as a relocation site for senior civilian and military officials, houses FEMA’s National Emergency Coordinating Center, and provides communications to the White House Situation Room.
“The revolting actions of these employees, now the second group to be caught at FEMA engaged in such acts, represents a clear national security risk,” Noem said.
She’s referring to two other FEMA employees who worked at the operations center who were also fired. On July 12, ITOC agents identified a FEMA employee who “typed explicit and sexually charged phrases into a chatbot website” using government devices to have “comments read back to him in an accent,” DHS said.
On Aug. 1, ITOC agents identified a government-contracted employee “accessing Reddit.com 578 times over a 30-day period. It was revealed that he was engaged in extensive interactions with individuals online, viewing explicit sexual content while on his work devices.” He used his government computer several times to chat online with Reddit members presenting explicit content and accessed graphic photographs and videos, DHS said.
“These individuals had access to critical information and intelligence and were entrusted to safeguard Americans from emergencies – and instead they were consuming pornography. In at least one case the pornography consumed was racially charged and involved bestiality,” Noem said.
DHS says it is actively investigating alleged misuse of devices agency-wide to ensure employees aren’t abusing or misusing federal devices or sharing classified or sensitive information. This includes DHS prioritizing investigations into FEMA’s network activity and employee conduct, including actively reviewing internal policies, network monitoring protocols, and security clearances, it says.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are cleaning house at FEMA to make this dysfunctional agency work for the American people the way that it was intended,” Noem said. “For decades some of these bureaucrats engaged in every act imaginable instead of safeguarding the American people from natural disasters. That ends now.”
By DAVID A. LIEB/AP, SOPHIE BATES/AP, M.K. WILDEMAN/ AP, ALEX ROZIER/MISSISSIPPI TODAY and ILLAN IRELAND/MISSISSIPPI FREE PRESS
TYLERTOWN, Miss. (AP) — As an ominous storm approached Buddy Anthony’s new home, he took shelter in his Ford F-250 pickup parked under a nearby carport.
Seconds later, a tornado tore apart the one-story brick house and damaged the truck while lifting it partly in the air. Anthony emerged unhurt. But he had to replace his vehicle with a used truck that became his home while waiting for President Donald Trump to issue a major disaster declaration allowing federal money to flow to individuals reeling from loss. That took weeks.
“You wake up in the truck and look out the windshield and see nothing. That’s hard. That’s hard to swallow,” Anthony said.
Disaster survivors are having to wait longer to get aid from the federal government, according to a new Associated Press analysis of decades of data. On average, it took less than two weeks for a governor’s request for a presidential disaster declaration to be granted in the 1990s and early 2000s. That rose to about three weeks during the past decade under presidents from both major parties. It’s taking more than a month, on average, so far during Trump’s current term, the AP found.
The delays mean individuals must wait to receive federal aid for daily living expenses, temporary lodging and home repairs. Delays in disaster declarations also can hamper recovery efforts by local officials uncertain whether they will receive federal reimbursement for cleaning up debris and rebuilding infrastructure. The AP collaborated with Mississippi Today and Mississippi Free Press on the effects of these delays for this report.
“The message that I get in the delay, particularly for the individual assistance, is that the federal government has turned its back on its own people,” said Bob Griffin, dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany in New York. “It’s a fundamental shift in the position of this country.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump is making sure federal tax dollars “are spent wisely to supplement state actions, not replace them,” during disasters.
“President Trump provides a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him,” Jackson said in a statement to the AP. “Gone are the days of rubber stamping FEMA recommendations — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
This Aug. 14, 2025 photo shows Buddy Anthony’s house after it was destroyed by a tornado in Tylertown, Miss.. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
A collapsed roof and insulation cover what used to be Buddy Anthony’s kitchen on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, in Tylertown, Miss. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
Dana Grimes, who lost her home, garage and car to a March tornado, walks across her property in Jayess, Miss., Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
Dana Grimes and her husband bought a new home after theirs was destroyed by a tornado. But, five months after the storm, much of the wreckage still covers their property. Photograph taken in Jayess, Mississippi on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
The wreckage of Buddy Anthony’s home stands exposed to the elements on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, in Tylertown, Miss. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
Early morning light shines through the shell of Buddy Anthony’s destroyed home on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, in Tylertown, Miss. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
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This Aug. 14, 2025 photo shows Buddy Anthony’s house after it was destroyed by a tornado in Tylertown, Miss.. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
The wait for disaster aid has grown as Trump remakes government
The Federal Emergency Management Agency often consults immediately with communities to coordinate their initial disaster response. But direct payments to individuals, nonprofits and local governments must wait for a major disaster declaration from the president, who first must receive a request from a state, territory or tribe. Major disaster declarations are intended only for the most damaging events that are beyond the resources of states and local governments.
Trump has approved more than two dozen major disaster declarations since taking office in January, with an average wait of almost 34 days after a request. That ranged from a one-day turnaround after July’s deadly flash flooding in Texas to a 67-day wait after a request for aid because of a Michigan ice storm. The average wait is up from a 24-day delay during his first term and is nearly four times as long as the average for former Republican President George H.W. Bush, whose term from 1989-1993 coincided with the implementation of a new federal law setting parameters for disaster determinations.
The delays have grown over time, regardless of the party in power. Former Democratic President Joe Biden, in his last year in office, averaged 26 days to declare major disasters — longer than any year under former Democratic President Barack Obama.
FEMA did not respond to the AP’s questions about what factors are contributing to the trend.
Others familiar with FEMA noted that its process for assessing and documenting natural disasters has become more complex over time. Disasters have also become more frequent and intense because of climate change, which is mostly caused by the burning of fuels such as gas, coal and oil.
The wait for disaster declarations has spiked as Trump’s administration undertakes an ambitious makeover of the federal government that has shed thousands of workers and reexamined the role of FEMA. A recently published letter from current and former FEMA employees warned the cuts could become debilitating if faced with a large-enough disaster. The letter also lamented that the Trump administration has stopped maintaining or removed long-term planning tools focused on extreme weather and disasters.
Shortly after taking office, Trump floated the idea of “getting rid” of FEMA, asserting: “It’s very bureaucratic, and it’s very slow.”
FEMA’s acting chief suggested more recently that states should shoulder more responsibility for disaster recovery, though FEMA thus far has continued to cover three-fourths of the costs of public assistance to local governments, as required under federal law. FEMA pays the full cost of its individual assistance.
Former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, who served during Trump’s first term, said the extra scrutiny on requests for disaster declarations is “probably the right thing to do, because I think the declaration process has become the `easy button’ for states.”
In Mississippi, frustration festered during the wait for aid
The tornado that struck Anthony’s home in rural Tylertown on March 15 packed winds up to 140 mph (225 km/hr). It was part of a powerful storm system that wrecked homes, businesses and lives across multiple states.
Mississippi’s governor requested a federal disaster declaration on April 1. Trump granted that request 50 days later, on May 21, while approving aid for both individuals and public entities.
On that same day, Trump also approved eight other major disaster declarations for storms, floods or fires in seven other states. In most cases, more than a month had passed since the requests and about two months since the date of those disasters.
On July 22, Trump issued another big batch of major disaster declarations covering seven states. Those included requests related to March storms in Michigan and Oregon that took about two months for governors to submit and an additional two months to approve.
If a presidential declaration and federal money had come sooner, Anthony said he wouldn’t have needed to spend weeks sleeping in a truck before he could afford to rent the trailer where he is now living. His house was uninsured, Anthony said, and FEMA eventually gave him $30,000.
In nearby Jayess, Dana Grimes had insurance but not enough to cover the full value of her damaged home. After the eventual federal declaration, Grimes said FEMA provided about $750 for emergency expenses, but she is now waiting for the agency to determine whether she can receive more.
“We couldn’t figure out why the president took so long to help people in this country,” Grimes said. “I just want to tie up strings and move on. But FEMA — I’m still fooling with FEMA.”
Jonathan Young said he gave up on applying for FEMA aid after the Tylertown tornado killed his 7-year-old son and destroyed their home. The process seemed too difficult, and federal officials wanted paperwork he didn’t have, Young said. He made ends meet by working for those cleaning up from the storm.
“It’s a therapy for me,” Young said, “to pick up the debris that took my son away from me.”
Quick aid for individuals has long been a FEMA goal
Historically, presidential disaster declarations containing individual assistance have been approved more quickly than those providing assistance only to public entities, according to the AP’s analysis. That remains the case under Trump, though declarations for both types are taking longer.
About half the major disaster declarations approved by Trump this year have included individual assistance.
Some people whose homes are damaged turn to shelters hosted by churches or local nonprofit organizations in the initial chaotic days after a disaster. Others stay with friends or family or go to a hotel, if they can afford it.
But some insist on staying in damaged homes, even if they are unsafe, said Chris Smith, who administered FEMA’s individual assistance division under three presidents from 2015-2022. If homes aren’t repaired properly, mold can grow, compounding the recovery challenges.
That’s why it’s critical for FEMA’s individual assistance to get approved quickly — ideally, within two weeks of a disaster, said Smith, who’s now a disaster consultant for governments and companies.
“You want to keep the people where they are living. You want to ensure those communities are going to continue to be viable and recover,” Smith said. “And the earlier that individual assistance can be delivered … the earlier recovery can start.”
After the Tylertown tornado, faith-based groups served food and laid tarps on homes while local residents helped each other with power saws to clear downed trees.
“That’s the only thing that got us through this storm, neighbors helping neighbors,” said Les Lampton, a volunteer firefighter and insurance agent in Walthall County, where Tylertown is located. “If we waited on the government, we were going to be in bad shape.”
Delays in federal aid can hamper local recovery efforts
Unlike individual assistance programs that provide cash upfront, FEMA’s public assistance programs reimburse governmental entities only after their bills are paid — and only if they followed guidelines for hiring and documenting the work.
Because that process can take months or years, a delay in a presidential disaster declaration may have little effect on when a local government ultimately gets reimbursed.
But delayed approvals still can carry consequences. Long waits can stoke uncertainty and lead cost-conscious local officials to pause or scale-back their recovery efforts.
In Walthall County, officials initially spent about $700,000 cleaning up debris, then suspended the cleanup for more than a month because they couldn’t afford to spend more without assurance they would receive federal reimbursement, said Royce McKee, the county emergency manager. Meanwhile, rubble from splintered trees and shattered homes remained piled along the roadside, creating unsafe obstacles for motorists and habitat for snakes and rodents.
When it received the federal declaration, Walthall County took out a multi-million-dollar loan to pay contractors to resume the cleanup.
“We’re going to pay interest and pay that money back until FEMA pays us,” said Byran Martin, an elected county supervisor. “We’re hopeful that we’ll get some money by the first of the year, but people are telling us that it could be (longer).”
The night before the Tylertown tornado, a twister also tore through Rolla, Missouri, a college town of about 20,000 people. It knocked out electricity for 80% of the municipal utility’s customers and damaged 120 power poles.
Crews worked to restore power within a couple weeks, racking up hefty bills paid from the utility’s reserve funds. As the wait for a presidential disaster declaration kept growing, “we were getting a little nervous,” said Rodney Bourne, general manager of Rolla Municipal Utilities.
The utility now is seeking FEMA reimbursement for about $1 million, intentionally holding its claim just under the agency’s large-project threshold in hopes of expediting the process, he said.
Delays in federal declarations also can force local officials to choose between needed repairs — perhaps fixing some roads and culverts washed out by floods while delaying other projects, said David Fogerson, a public safety consultant who retired last year as Nevada’s emergency management chief.
“For a lot of the smaller states and smaller jurisdictions, when you get that, `Yep, this is a disaster declaration, we’ve got federal money coming,’ it helps you feel better, more confident about spending that money,” he said.
Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Wildeman from Hartford, Connecticut.
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Exposing years-old concerns about California’s resilience to wildfires, a government whistleblower and other witnesses in a recent state trial alleged that cleanup operations after some of the largest fires in state history were plagued by mismanagement and overspending — and that toxic contamination was at times left behind in local communities.
Steven Larson, a former state debris operations manager in the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, failed to convince a jury that he was wrongly fired by the agency for flagging those and other issues to his supervisors. After a three-week trial in Sacramento, the jury found Larson was retaliated against, but also that the agency had other, legitimate reasons for dismissing him from his post, according to court records.
Still, the little-discussed trial provided a rare window into a billion-dollar public-private industry that is rapidly expanding — and becoming increasingly expensive for taxpayers and lucrative for contractors — given the increased threat of fires from climate change.
It raised serious questions about the state’s fire response and management capabilities at a time when the Trump administration says it is aggressively searching for “waste, fraud and abuse” in government spending, proposing cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and clashing with state leaders over the best way to respond to future wildfires in California.
The allegations raised in the trial also come as FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are overseeing similar debris removal work — by some of the same contractors — following the wildfires that destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and parts of Altadena in January, and as fresh complaints arise around that work, as The Times recently reported.
Steve Larson poses for a portrait at Elk Grove Park on Sept. 1. Larson, who was a former state debris operations manager in the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, is a whistleblower alleging widespread problems in California fire cleanups.
(Andri Tambunan / For The Times)
During the trial, Larson and other witnesses with direct knowledge of state fire contracts raised allegations of poor oversight and sloppy hiring and purchasing practices by CalRecycle, the state agency that oversaw multiple major cleanup contracts for CalOES; overcharging and poor record-keeping by contractors; toxic contamination being left behind on properties meant to have been cleared; and insufficient responses to those problems from both CalOES and FEMA officials.
The claims were buttressed at trial by the introduction into evidence of a previously unpublished audit of cleanup operations for several large fires in 2018. They were mostly rejected by attorneys for the state, who acknowledged some problems — which they said are common in fast-paced emergency responses operations. They broadly denied Larson’s allegations as baseless, saying he was an inexperienced and disgruntled former employee who was fired for poor performance.
The allegations were also dismissed by CalOES and by Burlingame-based Environmental Chemical Corp., which was the state’s lead contractor on the 2018 fires and is now the Army Corps of Engineer’s lead contractor on cleanup work for the Palisades and Eaton fires, which is nearing completion.
Anita Gore, a spokeswoman for CalOES, defended the agency’s work in a statement to The Times. While acknowledging some problems in the past, she said the agency is “committed to protecting the health and safety of all Californians, including in the aftermath of disasters, and is unwavering in its desire to maintain a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone can feel respected and thrive.”
In its own statement to The Times, ECC said it followed the directives and oversight of state and federal agencies at all times, and “is proud of its work helping communities recover from devastating disasters.”
“We approach each project with professionalism, transparency, and a commitment to delivering results under extraordinarily challenging conditions,” the company said.
Maria Bourn, one of Larson’s attorneys, told The Times that while her client lost at trial — which they are appealing — his case marked a “win for government accountability and the public at-large” by revealing “massive irregularities by wildfire debris removal contractors” who continue to work in the state.
“The state’s continued partnership with these companies when such widespread irregularities were identified by one of its own should alarm every taxpayer,” Bourn said.
A Malibu home lies in ruins after the Woolsey fire. Many questions were raised about the response.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Camp, Woolsey and Hill fires
The allegations centered in large part around the state-run cleanup efforts following the Camp fire in Northern California, which killed 85 people and all but erased the town of Paradise in November 2018, and the contemporaneous Woolsey and Hill fires in Southern California, which ripped through Malibu and other parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
FEMA has reimbursed the state more than $1 billion for costs associated with those cleanup efforts.
In a July 28, 2019, email entered as evidence in the trial, Larson wrote to CalOES chief of internal audits Ralph Zavala that he wanted to talk to him about “potential fraud” by Camp fire contractors, including ECC.
“I cannot say for sure, but something sure smells fishy,” Larson wrote in the email. “Either their contract was not in fact the lowest bid or they are creating fraud in the way they collect debris.”
Larson wrote in the same email that ECC was “supposedly the lowest bidder” but was “costing more” than the lower bids, which he wrote “doesn’t make sense.” At trial, Larson and his attorneys repeatedly claimed that instead of properly investigating his claims, his supervisors turned against him.
Other current and former state officials testified that they had raised similar concerns.
Todd Thalhamer, a former Camp fire area commander and operations chief who still works for CalRecycle, testified during the trial that he’d told Larson he believed ECC had low-balled its bid to win the work, then overcharged the state by millions of dollars. He said he had “dug very deep into the tonnage cost that they were charging, how they were charging, how they were cleaning it up,” and believed that ECC had been able to “game the system” by reporting that it was hauling out more of the debris types for which it could charge the most.
ECC denied manipulating bids or overcharging the state, and said that “all debris types and volumes are 100% inspected by and determined by CalRecycle and its monitoring representatives and systems, not by ECC or its subcontractors.”
Thalhamer testified that he’d sent an “email blast” out to top CalOES and CalRecycle officials telling them of his findings. He said that led to internal discussions and some but not all issues being resolved.
Further concerns were raised in records obtained by Larson’s attorneys from the prominent accounting firm EY, formerly known as Ernst & Young, which the state paid nearly $4 million to audit the Camp, Woolsey and Hill fire cleanup work.
According to those records, which were cited at trial, EY found that CalRecycle was “unable to produce documentation that fully supports how the proposed costs were determined to be reasonable when evaluating contractor proposals,” and didn’t appear to have “appropriate controls or oversight over the contractor’s performance.”
EY flagged $457 million charged by the contractors through 89 separate “change orders” — or additional charges not contemplated in their initial bids. It said the state lacked an adequate approval process for determining whether to accept such orders, couldn’t substantiate them and risked FEMA rescinding its funding if it didn’t take “immediate corrective action.”
EY specifically flagged $181 million in change orders for the construction of two “base camps” near the burn areas, from which the contractors would operate. It said the state only had invoices for $91 million of that spending, and that even those invoices were not itemized. EY executive Jill Powell testified that the firm believed such large contract changes were likely to be flagged as questionable by FEMA.
ECC — one of two contractors EY noted as having made the base camp change orders — defended its work.
The company said change orders are a necessary part of any cleanup operation, where the final cost “depends on the final quantities of debris that the Government directs the Contractors to remove and how far the material has to be transported for recycling or disposal.”
Such quantities can change over the course of a contract, which leads to changes in cost, it said.
As for the base camps, ECC said the state had explicitly stated in its initial request for proposals that it would “develop the requirements” and negotiate their cost through change orders, because details about their likely location and size were still being worked out when the bids were being accepted.
“Bidders could not know at the time of bid, which area of Paradise they would be assigned, how many properties would be assigned to the bidder, and therefore the exact size of the workforce that the Government would want housed in a Base Camp,” ECC said.
ECC said it “submitted invoices with supporting documentation in the format requested” by CalRecycle for all expenditures, and was “not aware of any missing invoices.”
“We cannot speak to what EY was provided from the State’s files or how the State provided those materials for EY’s review,” the company said. “Any gap in what EY reviewed should not be interpreted as meaning ECC failed to submit documentation.”
ECC said state officials only ever complimented the company for its work on the 2018 fires. And it said it continues to work in Southern California “with the same professionalism and care we bring to every project.”
SPSG, the second contractor EY flagged as being involved in the base camp change orders, did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorney James F. Curran, who represented the state at trial, said in his closing arguments that the work was not “running perfect” but was coming in on schedule and under budget. He said state officials were not ignoring problems, just cataloging non-pressing issues in order to address them when the dust cleared, as is common in emergency operations.
Curran said many of Larson’s complaints were based on his unfamiliarity with such work and his refusal to trust more experienced colleagues. He said Larson was fired not for flagging concerns, but because of “misconduct, arrogance, communication style problems, and performance problems.”
Gore, the CalOES spokeswoman, said CalRecycle awarded the contracts “through an open, competitive procurement process with oversight from CalOES and FEMA,” and that CalOES worked to address problems with contractors before Larson ever voiced any concerns.
Gore said CalOES hired EY to identify any potential improvements in the contracting and reimbursement process, and changed its policy to pay contractors per parcel of land cleared rather than by volume of debris removed in part to address concerns about potential load manipulation.
She said the agency could not answer other, detailed questions from The Times about the debris removal process and concerns about mismanagement and alleged overcharging because the Larson case “remains pending and subject to appeal,” and because CalOES faces “other, active litigation” as well.
The EY audit also flagged issues with several other contractors, including Tetra Tech and Arcadis, according to draft records obtained from EY by Larson’s attorneys and submitted as evidence at trial.
The EY records said Tetra Tech filed time sheets for unapproved costs, without sufficient supporting information, with questionable or excessive hours, with digital alterations that increased hourly rates, and without proper supervisor approvals. It said it also charged for work without providing any supporting time sheets.
The EY records said the company also used inconsistent procedures for sampling soil and testing for asbestos, used billing rates that were inconsistent between its contract and its invoices, charged for “after hours” work without supporting documentation, filed questionable, per-hour lodging costs, appeared to have digitally edited change orders after they were signed and dated, and relied inappropriately on questionable digital signatures for approving change orders.
Tetra Tech did not respond to a request for comment.
The EY records said Arcadis filed change orders for costs that appeared to be part of the “normal course of business,” filed invoices for work that began before the company’s state contract was signed, and relied inappropriately on digital signatures.
Arcadis referred all questions to CalRecycle. CalRecycle provided a copy of its own “targeted” audit of Arcadis’ work, which found the company had complied with the requirements of its nearly $29-million contract with the state. CalRecycle otherwise referred The Times back to CalOES.
A recovery team searches for human remains after the Camp fire.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
North Bay fires
Concerns about cleanup work following major fires in Sonoma, Santa Rosa and other North Bay counties in 2017 — under both CalOES and the Army Corps of Engineers — also arose at the trial.
Sean Smith, a former 20-year veteran of CalOES and a prominent figure in California debris removal operations to this day, alleged in an email submitted at trial that ECC and other contractors hired to clear contaminated debris and soil from those fires over-excavated sites in order “to boost loads to get more tonnage and money.”
ECC denied Smith’s claims, saying it “does not perform excessive soil removal” and that it followed “the detailed debris removal operations plan requirements” of the Army Corps of Engineers, which had its own quality assurance representatives monitoring the work.
In a deposition, Smith also testified that, in the midst of spending more than $50 million to repair that over-excavation, state officials identified lingering contamination at “what would be considered hazardous waste levels.”
“They hadn’t finished the cleanup in all spots, and we found it, and we recorded it,” he said.
Smith testified that those findings were presented to high-ranking CalOES and FEMA officials during a meeting in San Francisco in October 2018. At that meeting, CalOES regional manager Eric Lamoureux laid out all the state’s contamination findings in detail, “but nobody wanted to hear it,” Smith said.
During his deposition, Smith alleged that the “exact words” of one FEMA attorney in attendance were, “We have to find out how to debunk the state’s testing” — which he said he found surprising, given the testing was based on federal environmental standards.
“I don’t know how you’d debunk such a thing,” Smith said.
FEMA officials did not respond to requests for comment. CalOES also did not answer questions about the alleged meeting.
ECC said that Smith, who managed and signed its contracts with CalOES, gave ECC “a very positive performance review” when it completed the Sonoma and Santa Rosa work — describing its work as “exceptional.”
Smith said he quit his post working on those fires after the San Francisco meeting, though he continued working for the agency in other roles for a couple more years. Smith more recently formed his own debris removal consulting firm — which has been involved in soil testing for the state after other recent fires.
CalOES did not respond to questions about Smith’s claims or separation from the agency.
FEMA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” the agency told The Guardian, which reported on the retaliation against the employees who signed the letter. “Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo, who have forgotten that their duty is to the American people not entrenched bureaucracy.”
The targeting of letter signers at FEMA echoes an earlier move at the Environmental Protection Agency in July, when that agency suspended about 140 employees who signed onto a similar public letter.
A FEMA employee who signed this week’s letter expressed concern to WIRED that the agency may try to seek out those who did not include their names on the letter—especially given how DHS reportedly administered polygraphs in April attempting to identify employees who leaked to the press. “I’m concerned they may use similar tactics to identify anonymous signers,” they say. This employee spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
On Tuesday morning, a day after the employees’ letter was published, former FEMA acting administrator Cameron Hamilton posted a criticism of the agency publicly on LinkedIn.
“Stating that @fema is operating more efficiently, and cutting red tape is either: uninformed about managing disasters; misled by public officials; or lying to the American the public [sic] to prop up talking points,” he wrote. “President Trump and the American people deserve better than this …FEMA is saving money which is good due to the astronomical U.S. Debt from Congress. Despite this, FEMA staff are responding to entirely new forms of bureaucracy now that is lengthening wait times for claim recipients, and delaying the deployment of time sensitive resources.”
Hamilton, who was fired from his position a day after testifying in defense of the agency to Congress in May, did not respond to WIRED’s questions about whether his post was related to the employees’ open letter.
Both Hamilton’s post and the open letter call out a new rule, instituted in June, mandating that any spending over $100,000 needs to be personally vetted by Noem. That cap, FEMA employees allege in Monday’s letter, “reduces FEMA’s authorities and capabilities to swiftly deliver our mission.” The policy came under fire in July after variousoutlets reported that it had caused a delay in the agency’s response following the flooding in Texas that killed at least 135 people. The agency’s chief of urban search and rescue operations resigned in late July, in part due to frustrations with how the DHS spending-approval process delayed aid during the disaster, CNN reported.
Screenshots of contract data seen by WIRED show that as of August 7, the agency still had more than $700 million left to allocate in non-disaster spending before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, with more than 1,000 open contract actions. The agency seems to be feeling the pressure to speed up contract proposals. In early August, several FEMA staff were asked to volunteer to work over a weekend to help review contracts to prepare them for Noem’s sign-off, according to emails reviewed by WIRED. (“Lots of work over the weekend,” read the notes from one meeting.)
“Disaster money is just sitting,” one FEMA employee tells WIRED. “Every single day applicants are asking their FEMA contact ‘where’s my money?’ And we are ordered to just say nothing and redirect.”
As the employees’ open letter states, roughly a third of FEMA’s full-time staff had already departed by May, “leading to the loss of irreplaceable institutional knowledge and long-built relationships.” These staff departures may further hamper efforts from the agency to implement financial efficiency measures like the contract reviews. A former FEMA employee tells WIRED that while the agency began the year with nine lawyers on the procurement team that helps review financial contracts during a disaster, almost the entire team has either left or been reassigned, leaving a dearth of experience just as hurricane season ramps up.
“I have no idea what happens,” the former employee tells WIRED, when a hurricane hits “and we need a contract attorney on shift 24/7.”
It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast, killing nearly 1,400 people and displacing up to 1.2 million more. The storm’s impact overwhelmed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, revealing fatal flaws in its disaster response.
The agency’s failure prompted Congress to overhaul FEMA largely through the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA). This set higher expectations for its leaders and enhanced its autonomy within the Department of Homeland Security. Now, the Trump administration is reversing this progress, and FEMA staffers with something to say about it are being shown the door.
Setting the stage for another ‘Katrina’ debacle
In an open letter to Congress on Monday, nearly 200 current and former FEMA employees argued that the Trump administration has eroded the capacity of the agency and its partners. Since January, the administration has moved to cancel billions of dollars in disaster preparedness grants and tossed around the idea of eliminating FEMA altogether. Additionally, about 2,000 FEMA employees—a third of its workforce—have left their posts through firings, buyouts, or early retirements since the start of the year, Reuters reports.
These decisions are setting the U.S. up for another Katrina-level catastrophe, the signatories warn. “The agency’s current trajectory reflects a clear departure from the intent of PKEMRA,” the letter reads. “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration.”
In addition to denouncing the administration’s handling of FEMA, the letter urges Congress to restore the agency’s cabinet-level status, shield it from DHS interference, and protect its funding and authority. It also calls for safeguards against politically motivated firings as well as greater transparency around internal employment policies and future staff cuts.
“We hope [these changes] come in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people such an event would represent,” the letter reads.
Supercharged threats
Now, more than a dozen employees who signed the letter have been placed on administrative leave, the Washington Post reports. This is roughly a third of the staffers who signed with their names on Monday, with the other 141 signing anonymously for fear of retribution, according to the Associated Press.
FEMA did not answer Gizmodo’s questions about exactly how many employees were suspended or when they would be reinstated. “It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” an agency spokesperson said via email. “Change is always hard.”
This news broke as the Atlantic hurricane season approaches its September peak. Earlier this month, the eastern U.S. narrowly avoided disastrous impacts from Hurricane Erin as it slid up the coast. Decades of research show that climate change is supercharging hurricanes and other extreme weather events. We’re already seeing this play out this season as experts warn that above-average sea surface temperatures will lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes.
The Trump administration clearly isn’t worried about all that, seeing as it already told FEMA to scrub information about climate change from both public-facing and internal documents. Ignoring the effects of rising global temperatures won’t stop the storms from coming, and gutting U.S. disaster response certainly won’t offset the losses when they do.
Across the United States, more than 121,000 dams quietly shape daily life by supplying water, generating hydropower and providing flood control. But according to the National Performance of Dams Program, on average about 10 dams fail each year.Sometimes these failures have devastating, even deadly consequences. Many are aging, high-hazard structures in need of costly repairs, and the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit found money is scarce and owners are often left footing the bill.Behind a locked gate and up a winding road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the nearly 100-year-old McClure Dam. It supplies up to half of Santa Fe’s drinking water and is owned by the city. “This is a high hazard dam,” John Del Mar said as he looked out at the dam. Del Mar is an Engineering Section Supervisor with the City of Santa Fe Water Division. “The current rated condition from the state engineer’s office is poor for this dam,” Del Mar said. “That stemmed from some analysis that was done back in 2018.”Because this dam was built 100 years ago, there’s uncertainty in how it was built, so the dam was given the rating of “poor condition.” It’s also high hazard, meaning lives and property would be at risk if it failed. “We have to manage them as a public asset, part of our utility system, and once we know of problems, we’re obligated to fix them. So that’s what sets us on the course of this kind of a repair,” Del Mar said.Del Mar said the dam could cost $20-$30 million to repair. The city of Santa Fe is already in the midst of repairing the Nichols Dam downstream as well. That project costs roughly $20 million. To fund the projects, Santa Fe is dipping into funds they have, proposing raising utility rates and tapping into state funding—options many owners don’t have.Private dam owners struggle to get repair funds Just north of Santa Fe lies Las Vegas, New Mexico. There, Storrie Lake is known to locals as a place to camp, boat and fish. But for cattle rancher Michael Quintana, the lake is more important to him.”We’re in the business of capturing as much water in our lake as we can so we can use it for agriculture purposes,” Quintana said.Quintana is one of the owners of the Storrie Lake Dam, a crucial part of the state highway.”If we were to lose our dam, it would be a huge inconvenience for people to try to get to the Northern part of the state,” Quintana said.But he recently received unfortunate news from state dam officials.”They downrated our dam. Right now, it’s in poor condition,” Quintana said.Roughly 62% of U.S. dams are privately owned, leaving many owners like Quintana responsible for repairs.”There’s a lot of fear in having that ownership for the fact that we lack a lot of ability to fund the maintenance on a dam,” Quintana said. Estimated repairs are about $75 million—far beyond what the owners can afford. Looking for outside sources, the owners are reaching out for help securing funding through sources like local lawmakers.They have sought state help and applied to FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program as well. National funding gap remains largeUsing FEMA’s online money allocation data, the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit has discovered that since 2019, New Mexico has received about $3.7 million from FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program.”Money is always limited and there is often not enough to go around,” said Sushil Chaudhary, chief of the Dam Safety Program in New Mexico.Nationwide, FEMA has allocated roughly $304 million over six years across all 50 states. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimated in their 2025 report that it will take $165 billion to fix the nation’s non-federal dams.Chaudhary expressed another problem he feels his department and many around the country deal with: small staff sizes. In New Mexico, 10 staff members, seven of whom are inspectors, oversee about 300 non-federal dams. They have the third-best ratio of dams to staff of any state.Nationwide, roughly 530 state dam officials monitor more than 117,000 non-federally owned dams. Inspection responsibilities fall upon the federal government for the other 3% of dams that are federally owned.Working with the Hearst Television Data Team, the National Investigative Unit found that 25% of high hazard dams have not been inspected in the past five years or do not have record of a last inspection date. A high hazard dam would cause loss of life if it were to fail.Right now, there are roughly 2,600 high hazard dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition across the country. Dams in poor condition have a safety deficiency, and dams in unsatisfactory condition require immediate or emergency repair.But that could be an undercount. The most up-to-date records gathered by the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit and Hearst Television Data Team indicate that 67% of dams don’t have a condition rating. Of those, 4,000 are high hazard dams.Chaudhary said they get behind on inspections at times because they have other responsibilities.”We also need to perform the analysis that we need for regulatory purposes,” Chaudhary said. “We cannot rely on dam owners to do the analysis all the time. So we have to do our own.”Chaudhary circled back on the statistic that about 10 dams fail every year.”If you look at that data, the failure is not slowing down. So failure will keep happening. The dams are getting older. With that, various components of the dams deteriorate. While we cannot prevent failure of the dams, we can manage risk. We can save lives. We can do things that allow us to save lives and property,” Chaudhary said.Dams near youCurious if any of these dams with late inspections are near you? The Hearst Television data team has built a tool that allows you to see all of the dams in your area and learn whether any are in unsatisfactory or poor condition. Simply search your address or town name in the box below, and the map will populate with any dams near you, their latest condition rating and when they were last inspected.This story was shot and edited by Hearst National Investigative Photojournalist Reid Bolton.PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=
SANTA FE, N.M. —
Across the United States, more than 121,000 dams quietly shape daily life by supplying water, generating hydropower and providing flood control. But according to the National Performance of Dams Program, on average about 10 dams fail each year.
Sometimes these failures have devastating, even deadly consequences. Many are aging, high-hazard structures in need of costly repairs, and the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit found money is scarce and owners are often left footing the bill.
Behind a locked gate and up a winding road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the nearly 100-year-old McClure Dam. It supplies up to half of Santa Fe’s drinking water and is owned by the city.
“This is a high hazard dam,” John Del Mar said as he looked out at the dam.
Del Mar is an Engineering Section Supervisor with the City of Santa Fe Water Division.
“The current rated condition from the state engineer’s office is poor for this dam,” Del Mar said. “That stemmed from some analysis that was done back in 2018.”
Because this dam was built 100 years ago, there’s uncertainty in how it was built, so the dam was given the rating of “poor condition.” It’s also high hazard, meaning lives and property would be at risk if it failed.
“We have to manage them as a public asset, part of our utility system, and once we know of problems, we’re obligated to fix them. So that’s what sets us on the course of this kind of a repair,” Del Mar said.
Del Mar said the dam could cost $20-$30 million to repair.
The city of Santa Fe is already in the midst of repairing the Nichols Dam downstream as well. That project costs roughly $20 million. To fund the projects, Santa Fe is dipping into funds they have, proposing raising utility rates and tapping into state funding—options many owners don’t have.
Private dam owners struggle to get repair funds
Just north of Santa Fe lies Las Vegas, New Mexico. There, Storrie Lake is known to locals as a place to camp, boat and fish. But for cattle rancher Michael Quintana, the lake is more important to him.
“We’re in the business of capturing as much water in our lake as we can so we can use it for agriculture purposes,” Quintana said.
Quintana is one of the owners of the Storrie Lake Dam, a crucial part of the state highway.
“If we were to lose our dam, it would be a huge inconvenience for people to try to get to the Northern part of the state,” Quintana said.
But he recently received unfortunate news from state dam officials.
“They downrated our dam. Right now, it’s in poor condition,” Quintana said.
Roughly 62% of U.S. dams are privately owned, leaving many owners like Quintana responsible for repairs.
“There’s a lot of fear in having that ownership for the fact that we lack a lot of ability to fund the maintenance on a dam,” Quintana said. Estimated repairs are about $75 million—far beyond what the owners can afford. Looking for outside sources, the owners are reaching out for help securing funding through sources like local lawmakers.
They have sought state help and applied to FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program as well.
National funding gap remains large
Using FEMA’s online money allocation data, the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit has discovered that since 2019, New Mexico has received about $3.7 million from FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program.
“Money is always limited and there is often not enough to go around,” said Sushil Chaudhary, chief of the Dam Safety Program in New Mexico.
Nationwide, FEMA has allocated roughly $304 million over six years across all 50 states. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimated in their 2025 report that it will take $165 billion to fix the nation’s non-federal dams.
Chaudhary expressed another problem he feels his department and many around the country deal with: small staff sizes. In New Mexico,10 staff members, seven of whom are inspectors, oversee about 300 non-federal dams. They have the third-best ratio of dams to staff of any state.
Nationwide, roughly 530 state dam officials monitor more than 117,000 non-federally owned dams. Inspection responsibilities fall upon the federal government for the other 3% of dams that are federally owned.
Working with the Hearst Television Data Team, the National Investigative Unit found that 25% of high hazard dams have not been inspected in the past five years or do not have record of a last inspection date. A high hazard dam would cause loss of life if it were to fail.
Right now, there are roughly2,600 high hazard dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition across the country. Dams in poor condition have a safety deficiency, and dams in unsatisfactory condition require immediate or emergency repair.
But that could be an undercount. The most up-to-date records gathered by the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit and Hearst Television Data Team indicate that 67% of dams don’t have a condition rating. Of those, 4,000 are high hazard dams.
Chaudhary said they get behind on inspections at times because they have other responsibilities.
“We also need to perform the analysis that we need for regulatory purposes,” Chaudhary said. “We cannot rely on dam owners to do the analysis all the time. So we have to do our own.”
Chaudhary circled back on the statistic that about 10 dams fail every year.
“If you look at that data, the failure is not slowing down. So failure will keep happening. The dams are getting older. With that, various components of the dams deteriorate. While we cannot prevent failure of the dams, we can manage risk. We can save lives. We can do things that allow us to save lives and property,” Chaudhary said.
Dams near you
Curious if any of these dams with late inspections are near you? The Hearst Television data team has built a tool that allows you to see all of the dams in your area and learn whether any are in unsatisfactory or poor condition.
Simply search your address or town name in the box below, and the map will populate with any dams near you, their latest condition rating and when they were last inspected.
This story was shot and edited by Hearst National Investigative Photojournalist Reid Bolton.
FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reviewing federal security grants for Muslim groups with “alleged terrorist ties” after a new report linked past funding to “extremist” organizations.
According to a DHS document obtained by Fox News Digital, 49 projects “with alleged affiliations to terrorist activities” have already been canceled, a move the department estimates will save $8 million.
The review primarily targets funding distributed through FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which provides aid to churches, mosques, synagogues, and other faith-based institutions facing threats of hate-driven violence.
The probe follows a report by the Middle East Forum, a pro-Israel conservative think tank, which claimed that more than $25 million in DHS and FEMA grants went to “terror-linked groups” between 2013 and 2023.
The Department of Homeland Security, led by Secretary Kristi Noem, is reviewing federal security grants for Muslim groups with “alleged terrorist ties” after a new report linked past funding to “extremist” organizations.(Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images )
A DHS official said the department is conducting its own independent review of funding but added, “We take the results of the MEF report very seriously and are thankful for the work of conservative watchdog groups.”
The report flagged a $100,000 grant in 2019 to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, which Customs and Border Protection once described as a “mosque operating as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.,” according to records obtained by the Investigative Project through the Freedom of Information Act.
In response to the MEF’s findings, DHS is reviewing all current and future contracts to ensure funds are not awarded to such organizations. Officials said the department is also examining ways to recover unspent funds.
Funding for fiscal year 2024 has already been allocated. That includes $94 million for 500 Jewish organizations and another $110 million shared among 600 Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish institutions.
The report flagged a $100,000 grant in 2019 to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia.(REUTERS/Amr Alfiky)
For fiscal year 2025, DHS said applicants will face tougher requirements to ensure a “robust” vetting process.
“We don’t want to be empowering groups that could be causing a threat to our community here in the United States,” a DHS official said.
The Middle East Forum’s report also highlighted specific cases of funding that it claims went to groups with extremist ties. It said $10.3 million had gone to the Islamic Circle of North America, which the forum alleges is tied to the South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami.
The report further cited $250,000 awarded to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which DHS has accused of having “Hamas ties.” Another $750,000, according to the report, went to mosques in Michigan and Texas that DHS described as “outposts for Iran’s revolutionary brand of Shi’a Islamism,” including the Islamic Center of America and the Islamic House of Wisdom near Detroit, as well as the Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association in Austin.
Nearly $100 million in FEMA security funding went to 500 synagogues this year amid an increase in anti-Semitic attacks. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press via AP)
“While our civil rights organization has no active federal grants that the Department could eliminate or cut, and while the government cannot ban American organizations from receiving federal grants based on their religious affiliation or their criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” a CAIR spokesperson said, “it’s important to note that Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is embarrassing President Trump by making decisions based on the ravings of the Middle East Forum, an Israel First hate website.”
FEMA has previously worked with CAIR, holding seminars to encourage participation in the NSGP program.
But last week, CAIR urged organizations to withdraw from applying for DHS and FEMA grants — including the NSGP — unless DHS drops two new vetting rules. Those provisions require recipients to cooperate with immigration officials and prohibit them from running programs tied to diversity, equity, inclusion, or aid to undocumented immigrants, as well as from engaging in certain “discriminatory prohibited boycotts.”
It’s been almost a month since Hurricane Milton battered Florida, and some homeowners in Brevard County are still in the middle of cleanup and repairs.”Sometimes people come, and they don’t have all the equipment they need, and they’re not prepared,” said a Cocoa Beach homeowner. “If it hadn’t been for the tornado, I don’t think this area at least wouldn’t have the damage that it had.”The county’s public information officer Rachel Horst said the damage assessment report shows at least 723 properties were impacted by the storm. Thirty-two of them received major damage, with most being in the Cocoa Beach area. Homeowners said that while they are trying to stay patient, getting repair help is taking longer than expected. “Obviously dealing with insurance and getting builders and contractors in,” said Gary Sorohan, a homeowner in Cocoa Beach. “Although we’ve got quite a lot of damage there are people worse off than us, so I don’t think some of our neighbors will be back to normal before four or six months at least. I’m hoping we get done by Christmas.”The county said, so far, FEMA has set aside $2 million to help 650 households. It may cover temporary housing, hotel stays and some repairs. “We just got to stay as patient as we can even though it’s frustrating and hope that things move on relatively quickly,” Sorohan said.Owners of properties that suffered damage from Milton are encouraged to register for FEMA assistance.
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. —
It’s been almost a month since Hurricane Milton battered Florida, and some homeowners in Brevard County are still in the middle of cleanup and repairs.
“Sometimes people come, and they don’t have all the equipment they need, and they’re not prepared,” said a Cocoa Beach homeowner. “If it hadn’t been for the tornado, I don’t think this area at least wouldn’t have the damage that it had.”
The county’s public information officer Rachel Horst said the damage assessment report shows at least 723 properties were impacted by the storm. Thirty-two of them received major damage, with most being in the Cocoa Beach area.
Homeowners said that while they are trying to stay patient, getting repair help is taking longer than expected.
“Obviously dealing with insurance and getting builders and contractors in,” said Gary Sorohan, a homeowner in Cocoa Beach. “Although we’ve got quite a lot of damage there are people worse off than us, so I don’t think some of our neighbors will be back to normal before four or six months at least. I’m hoping we get done by Christmas.”
The county said, so far, FEMA has set aside $2 million to help 650 households. It may cover temporary housing, hotel stays and some repairs.
“We just got to stay as patient as we can even though it’s frustrating and hope that things move on relatively quickly,” Sorohan said.
Owners of properties that suffered damage from Milton are encouraged to register for FEMA assistance.
At a Harley-Davidson dealership in Appalachia, one expects to encounter the occasional roar of some serious horsepower.
Less expected is the sight that has accompanied that sound in Swannanoa, North Carolina, for the past three weeks: Helicopters, many of them privately owned and operated, launching and landing from a makeshift helipad in the backyard of the local hog shop. According to the men who organized this private relief effort in the wake of devastating floods unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, more than a million pounds of goods—food, heavy equipment to clear roads, medical gear, blankets, heaters, tents, you name it—have been flown from here to dots all over the map of western North Carolina.
“We’re not the government, and we’re here to help,” says one of the two men standing by the makeshift gate—a pair of orange traffic drums—that controls access to and from the Harley-Davidson dealership’s parking lot and the piles of donated items neatly organized within it. “We can do it quicker, we can do it efficiently, and we genuinely just want to help our neighbors.” He identifies himself only by his first name and later asks that I don’t use even that. It’s an understandable request, as what he’s doing is probably not, strictly speaking, totally legal.
There are a lot of those blurry lines in western North Carolina right now, and thankfully the police are either too busy or too grateful for the help to care much about it. An ethos of do-it-yourself-ism, plenty of cooperation, and a healthy amount of “ask forgiveness rather than permission” is on display everywhere in Asheville and its surroundings.
Every bit of it is needed. The flooding caused by Helene is catastrophic, as I witnessed firsthand during a two-day trip to the area last week. Pictures and videos on social media and in the news do not fully capture the scope of this disaster—and the digging out, picking up, and rebuilding is a process far too large and too important to be left to the government.
The Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa, North Carolina, has become an official relief center in the weeks since Hurricane Helene hit. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Piles of bottled water, clothes, gasoline, propane, and more donated goods in Swannanoa, where an ad hoc helicopter landing pad has been set up. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“It’s been miraculous.”
The man largely responsible for organizing the Harley-Davidson airlift is a burly, bearded former Green Beret who goes by Adam Smith—yes, really.
Smith was on a work trip to Texas on September 27, when the remnants of Helene stormed into the southern Appalachians and dumped over 20 inches of rain onto the mountains. After losing contact with his ex-wife and 3-year-old daughter, Smith drove through the night to get back to the Asheville area. What greeted him was a nightmare: Roads to the mountain hamlet where the two lived were completely impassable thanks to downed trees and power lines, mudslides, and collapsed bridges. After two days of trying to get to them, and still no contact, Smith feared the worst.
“They’re about eight miles that way,” he gestures toward the mountain ridge that runs south of Swannanoa, an area where some of the worst flooding in the area occurred. “I just assumed they were dead at that point.”
Former Green Berets don’t give up easily. Through a series of connections, Smith got in touch with someone who owned a small recreational helicopter. On the morning of September 29, he hitched a ride on his last hope.
He found them, alive and well. Tears well up in his eyes when I ask him about that moment. “We landed the helicopter and I was getting out of the door and I saw them walk from the tree line,” he says. “And they were perfect.”
They weren’t the only ones who needed help. Smith’s day job these days is running Savage Freedoms Defense, a training and consulting firm, where he draws on his military experience to help prepare people to take care of themselves and their loved ones under difficult circumstances. Through that business and via connections with other retired special operations veterans in the area, Smith launched what’s been called a redneck air force to get supplies to flooded mountain towns. Smith owns motorcycles and knows people who work at the Harley-Davidson dealership. He also knew it would be a perfect spot for the group’s ad hoc operations: a big parking lot with a single entrance, and a large field out back where the helicopters have been landing.
By the end of the first week, they had three civilian helicopters running missions, and it has only grown from there. In addition to food and supplies, the group has carried Starlink devices into places where internet and cell connections were down.
Bringing together veterans and others with experience in emergency response meant that the group had people who knew “the different systems and procedures and process, and understand the red tape and also understanding the people on the ground,” says Austin Holmes, who is handling communications for Savage Freedoms.
The bootstrapped operation has gained notoriety in the region—and a visit from former President Donald Trump on Monday of this week—as well as the respect of the National Guard, which has started piggybacking on some of Savage Freedom’s supply runs. When I visited on Friday, a truckload of National Guardsmen were picking up a free lunch—smoked turkey, with peas and carrots—being distributed by volunteers in the parking lot.
Even the bureaucrats at the Federal Aviation Administration have had to get out of the way: The field behind the Harley-Davidson dealership was granted an emergency designation as a legitimate landing zone.
Smith says this is meant to be a “collaborative” operation, rather than a fully private one. But there are no uniformed cops controlling access, just Travis and his buddy, who declines to speak with me. The National Guardsmen who are here seem to be waiting for orders rather than giving them. What’s happening here resembles a militia operation, in the best and truest sense of the term.
“Now that we’re three weeks into it, we’ve had no less than 60 people here. At the height, we had 130 people here every day,” Smith says. “It just, it’s been miraculous.”
(Photo by Eric Boehm)
Who will build the roads…and the hot showers?
Any doubts about the necessity of those helicopters disappear as I wind my way into the mountains southeast of Asheville. It’s been three weeks, but U.S. Route 74—the only main road in this area—is passable only in the strictest sense of the word. Trees have been cut and the mudslides partially cleared, but power lines are down everywhere. In some places, it looks like every third tree was felled by the storm. In others, whole mountainsides came loose and tumbled down.
Where the road wasn’t blocked with debris from above, it was washed out from below. After crossing the top of Strawberry Gap, Route 74 follows Hickory Creek as it spills down the side of the eastern continental divide toward the Broad River. In places where floodwaters from the storm came into conflict with anything man-made, the creek won. The road is open now thanks to piles of gravel and steel plates filling some of the washed-out sections. Hastily constructed culverts have replaced destroyed bridges in so many places that I lost count.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this, and I hope I never do again,” says Jay Alley, who has been the chief at the volunteer fire department in Gerton since 1994. “We had pretty much no roads, no bridges, no power poles, nothing. Had a lot of homes destroyed.”
Despite the damage, he’s proud to report that the town didn’t lose a single life in the flooding. “We actually gained one,” he says. “We had a baby born in the middle of all this, so that was really great.” The stories that kid will be told.
Other places have not been so lucky. As of October 23, there have been 96 deaths attributed to Helene’s impact on North Carolina—seven of them in Henderson County, where the town of Bat Cave (just down the road from Gerton) was nearly wiped out.
Flooding washed out sections of U.S. Route 74, slowing relief efforts. (Photo by Eric Boehm)A message of defiance in Bat Cave, North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Debris from homes line the roads of western North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
Donations and supplies that poured into Gerton overflow onto the driveway outside the firehouse: propane heaters, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and more. A trailer with a massive propane-fueled rotisserie oven—one that’s normally used to cook turkeys for church dinners, says Debbie, who offers me a chili dog while I wait to chat with Alley—has been churning out hundreds of hot meals every day for first responders and residents alike.
“It speaks to the generosity of the people who have come to help us,” says Alley. “We had lots of faith-based organizations and volunteers who came in and they rebuilt roads and they rebuilt things for everyone in the community.”
Wait, even the roads?
“We’ve had private organizations from Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, just all over the country have been here rebuilding our roads,” Alley says. “I don’t know how they got here, but we said ‘hey, go fix this problem,’ and they went and fixed it.”
Groups with names like God’s Pit Crew have poured into North Carolina in the weeks since Helene, armed with the power of prayer, chain saws, and front-end loaders. In a church parking lot near Mills River, I meet a group of volunteers from Pennsylvania as they’re packing up a trailer to head home after a week of cutting tree limbs and clearing debris. In two days of driving around, I see more “Texas Strong” decals on trucks and trailers than Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logos.
The Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based disaster response team that made headlines in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is here too. At an outpost the group established in the parking lot of a Dollar General in Black Mountain, Chris Woodard is serving corn bread and chili. He’ll be here for a week, and then other volunteers will arrive to take his place. World Central Kitchen, the relief group founded by Chef José Andrés, has set up a massive outdoor kitchen in downtown Asheville, where the public water supply was only partially restored this past Friday: For the first time since the storm, toilets could be flushed and residents could take showers, but the water was not yet safe for drinking or cooking.
Outside of the more well-established relief efforts, local networks of volunteers have sprung up around churches, firehouses, and other gathering points. Many rely on the ingenuity of the people running them, or at least a willingness to think outside the box. At BattleCat Coffee in East Asheville, staff are hauling tanks of water from a nearby World Central Kitchen distribution point, and using a jury-rigged pump system to feed it into the expresso machine.
The community pool in Black Mountain has become another of the many ad hoc relief centers in the region: Piles of donated clothes fill the locker rooms, hot food is being grilled on a trailer in the parking lot, and volunteers who traveled from Maryland and Indiana are crashing in the swim team’s clubhouse. This one has something that many other do not: hot showers.
“We had an idea and we just went with it,” says Heather Hensley, who works as the pool’s assistant manager during the summer months. A few days after the flood took out Black Mountain’s power and water supply, Hensley and her colleagues realized that the pool could be used to filter the available water—which was unsanitary due to broken pipes—to make it usable. A generator got the filter up and running. Then, another problem: the October sun wasn’t warm enough to heat the solar shower bags someone provided. So, she called a friend who owns a propane-powered turkey fryer.
Like so many of these off-the-cuff setups, it’s the sort of thing that almost certainly violates at least a few of the town’s ordinances. Hensley says she’s found it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission when attending to flood victims’ needs.
That approach has turned Hensley into something of a field marshal. Our conversation is interrupted at one point by a volunteer who is in contact with some members of the 101st Airborne Division, which has been deployed to the region. The other woman asks Hensley to decide what task the airmen should be given: Are they needed here to unload a truck of donations scheduled to arrive shortly, or focus on clean-up efforts down the road?
“Did you ever think you’d be giving orders to the 101st Airborne?” I ask her after the volunteer steps away to deliver the message (the airmen get clean-up duty, as Hensley has enough volunteers here).
“I’m not,” she laughs, “I’m not giving orders.”
But, yeah, she is.
Makeshift hot showers in Black Mountain, thanks to a community pool and a turkey fryer. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
The road from Black Mountain back to Swannanoa is lined with piles of debris—the guts of homes that were swamped when the Swannanoa River overflowed its banks. The football bleachers from the Asheville Christian Academy have been dragged across the field and crushed like an empty beer can. Mud-logged cars and trucks have been strewn in fields and flushed down the riverbank.
Amid the destruction, the Valley Hope Church has become a hub of activity. Inside, Amy Berry oversees the stockpiles of donated clothes, bedding, furniture, and food that have poured in from as far away as Canada and Connecticut, and now fill the church’s rec center.
“It just has been amazing to see the best of humanity,” Berry says. “We can always talk about the worst of it, but I have seen the best of it, I really have.”
On the church’s front lawn, Taylor and Frances Montgomery are serving a full hot dinner of roasted chicken, Tex-Mex soup, parmesan pasta, and vegetables to dozens of families from the area. Kids are playing tag in the playground. The buzz of generators and an approaching autumn chill hang in the air.
“We’ve seen tears over salad,” says Taylor, who has been a chef for more than two decades. “My whole career, I concentrate on learning the next culinary discipline or new trend or how to develop flavor. And not one of those plates has been more important or impactful than the plate I’m handing to a person on the other side of this slide.”
In more normal times, Taylor and Frances run the Montgomery Sky Farm and an associated animal rescue center in Leicester, about 10 miles northwest of Asheville. If Smith and his brand of redneck mountain tough guy represent one-half of the western North Carolina cliché, then the Montgomeries are the yin to that yang: crunchy, flannel-wearing folks who talk about “scratch” cooking and run a carefully curated Instagram page. They’re also the type who depend on the area’s agritourism, which usually peaks in the autumn.
Not this year. With their farm partially flooded by the storm and the tourists staying away, Taylor and Frances hit the road with a mobile kitchen trailer and food that’s been provided by fundraising on social media. For two weeks, they’ve been feeding desperate people in stricken communities across the Black Mountains. They’re hoping to keep this up through Thanksgiving, and maybe longer if the donations keep flowing.
“We figured we could sit and cry,” says Frances, “or we could be proactive.”
Scenes of destruction along the banks of the Swannanoa River. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“We’re the ones seeing our friends float away”
The question that will be asked in the wake of Helene is whether FEMA’s response was sufficient. For what it’s worth, President Joe Biden has already delivered his verdict—”you’re doing a heckuva job,” Biden told FEMA Director Deanne Criswell on October 9 (an irony-free callback to then-President George W. Bush’s questionable praise for then-FEMA chief Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina).
Many in western North Carolina will have a different view, no doubt. Threats of violence against FEMA personnel earlier this month caused a brief suspension of federal relief efforts in Rutherford County, where the town of Chimney Rock was wiped off the map by the same floodwaters that devastated Gerton and Bat Cave. The man responsible for those threats was quickly arrested, and the recovery efforts resumed.
Threats like that are not helping anyone, obviously, and the people engaged in the actual work on the ground—from first responders like Alley to the redneck airforce leaders like Smith—are quick to dismiss that incident as an outlier. It’s no secret that FEMA’s efforts are often slow, incompetent, and ineffective, but the aid is accepted for what it is. (And it hasn’t been completely insignificant: FEMA says it has shippedover 9.3 million meals, more than 11.2 million liters of water, 150 generators, and more than 260,000 tarps to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.)
But the people here also know that FEMA can’t be trusted with the really important tasks.
“If we weren’t here, there wouldn’t be people getting warm clothes, because FEMA doesn’t give out clothes,” says Bob Wright, who is running another of these roadside donation distribution centers, this one in a shopping center parking lot in Swannonoa. Wright works for a local nonprofit, Hearts and Hands, that is distributing heaters, canned food, blankets, and other items alongside plastic bins containing sweaters and jeans in various sizes.
“They give you $750 to go buy some,” he adds, gesturing at the nearby Ingles grocery store that’s been closed due to damage from the flood as if to underline his point.
In any disaster, a federal response is bound to be insufficient. There will always be the need for people in the affected communities—first responders and other public officials, yes, but also ad hoc volunteer efforts and charity.
Not everyone involved in the recovery is a former Green Beret. Not everyone knows how to fly a helicopter or operate a front-end loader. That’s fine. Surviving the first three weeks after Helene required the assistance of farmers and pool managers, of breweries and barbeques, of chefs and fishmongers from the next state—and untold contributions from the wallets of ordinary Americans and the corporate accounts of some of the country’s biggest businesses. The overflowing donations, the pallets of bottled water, the fresh food, and the helicopters, too. They all represent the wealth of America, and not in some metaphorical sense but in a very literal one.
“I do not have time to defend what the government is doing. They are doing a lot of hard, dangerous work,” says Berry. But grassroots organizations like her church have a vital role to play. “We can respond a lot faster. We’re a lot smaller, but they are our neighbors. It is our home. We are going to respond faster because we are the ones standing in the water, in the mud. We are the ones seeing our friends float away.”
Down the road, at the Harley-Davidson dealership, Smith and his collaborators are working on a planto ferry huge tanks of clean water into the mountain hollows that might not have regular service restored for months.
“This is a long-term effort. And we’ve given our word to the community that we will stay and support them as long as it takes for them to get back on their feet,” says Smith. “The mission is to get the local economy up and running again, make sure the community and residents of western North Carolina are taken care of, and to remind them on a regular basis that they haven’t been forgotten.”
