But states are now struggling with funding their basic emergency management needs which, in the off season, include planning and preparing for future events as well as recovery from past disasters. This is thanks in large part to frozen FEMA funding, which has been caught up in a broader Office of Management and Budget directive from late January instructing agencies to temporarily pause disbursement of federal assistance to states, and to review that funding to ensure it’s “consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.” Twenty-two Democratic states filed a motion for enforcement against the federal government in February, alleging that the administration’s review of funding has held up crucial FEMA funds for both disasters and state-level emergency management staff.
A representative from Oregon’s emergency management program told WIRED that FEMA was still withholding millions of dollars in funds, including the state’s Emergency Management Performance Grant, which the state uses to pay local emergency managers. Oregon usually reimburses counties for staff salaries at the end of each quarter, but if funding continues to be frozen, the representative said, “we will not be able to reimburse local jurisdictions.”
Local partnerships are also breaking down following new agency policies. Last summer, Middletown, New York, a flood-prone rural city in the Hudson Valley, was selected to participate in a program as part of FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. FEMA representatives came out to Middletown to tour floodplain areas, vulnerable water wells, and bridges that had been impacted by floods. Town representatives began regularly meeting with FEMA to talk over grant opportunities and share expertise.
In mid-February, minutes before a scheduled 9 am meeting with town representatives, Middletown’s FEMA contact sent an email cancelling the call and sharing that the BRIC program had been paused. When town council member Robin Williams began searching for other grants to replace the federal funds, she says she realized information from FEMA designating Middletown as a specific at-risk disaster zone had been deleted from the agency’s website, just a few days after the canceled call. FEMA never reached back out to the Middletown group; Williams learned that the BRIC program was ending earlier this month from an article on the environmental news site Grist.
“They haven’t said, ‘Hey, sorry, the program’s actually over with,’” Williams says. “They haven’t said anything.”
An internal FEMA communications memo seen by WIRED sent in early March instructs employees that activities—ranging from webinars to conferences to external meetings—not related to current disasters now require submitting an authorization form to get approval before staff can attend or participate.
“I’ve submitted a ton of things and have been shot down every time,” an employee says. “Thing is, flood and tornado and fire season is practically here. And now we are expected to just sit and wait for these terrible things to happen before we can so much as pick up the phone and talk to our partners.”
In its press release announcing the cancellation of BRIC, a FEMA spokesperson described the program—meant to help vulnerable communities prepare for future storms, floods, and hurricanes—as “another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program.”