Hurricanes, Floods, Wildfires, and Tornado Season Without FEMA

you seemed to be blaming the damage and the need for evacuations on the cut in funding. the funding cuts may be regrettable (maybe not?), but they are not the cause of what happened in Alaska.

 

Predictably, someone in DHS finally recognized that personnel cuts affect response. This revelation will not last beyond the current winter storm though.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/23/politics/fema-halts-terminations-winter-storm

 

Who could have known?

 

Ice (h2o ice, not ICE) is a big worry with this winter storm. In addition to the normal grid/ice issues, there are still lots of temporary power lines in the Helene hit areas that are especially vulnerable to ice accumulation. This is what is meant by compounding disasters. If you can't recover from one before another hits, it is difficult to get ahead of the recovery game and communities suffer. With a sidelined FEMA and reduced federal support, this will become even more common.

 

All these long durations without power:

 

Not sure why she even cares. Their motto is it’s up to the state, so let it be. But of course, that’s all politics, and when reality hits, their minds go numb. Eventually, they’ll be back to not caring about the downstream impact of their disastrous decisions. It will only get worse.

 

Our Vice-President speaking about the changes to DHS leadership today:

"We recognized, frankly, that we needed the new leadership to hasten the delivery of resources to the people of North Carolina ... we think it's useful to have somebody come in and focus on some of this disaster relief and recovery stuff."

You think? Just bumbling idiots all over who should have never been allowed anywhere near government of any kind.

 

Great. $200+ million for an ad campaign, but we can't spend $200,000 on a critical tornado tracking tool.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/fema-response-tornado-tracking-tool-kristi-noem

There is a lot more in the article about DHS and FEMA dysfunction, all of which could have been avoided with just the bare minimum level of competence.

Remember kids, when you elect a president, you're also electing to be governed by a lot of other people too.

 

how'd FEMA do in 2024 in NC?

 

Pretty damn well considering complexity of the incident, the mis- and dis-information being spewed, and the politicization of disaster aid pushed by the Trump campaign.

 

i'd wager folks in western NC and eastern TN would beg to differ.

 

I figured they would have thrown you into one their internment camps by now

 

Not the sheriffs and the emergency managers and the public works folks and the elected officials. MAGA types, the ones who were convinced FEMA directed the hurricane and was stealing their rare earth minerals or some such, might believe the opposite of reality.

There are dozens and dozens of articles out there about how the Trump administration has shut off funds and resources to Helene-hit areas. Many quote Repub officials and appointees. You should read some of them.

 

Trump wasn't president in 2024.

 

Sigh. You brought up Biden with your 2024 reference and so I'm talking comparisons between how Biden responded and Trump did not. Again, go read up on the subject.

 

the problem was FEMA's response in 2024.

 

The problem was not FEMA's actions, but the disinformation surrounding that recovery effort.

In the first month, FEMA brought the following to North Carolina (stuff was flowing to other affected states too):

• $850 million for individual and public assistance.
• 7,000 federal employees mobilized, including a bevy of technical specialists from Corps of Engineers, DOT, Forest Service, a bunch of USDA programs, and many more.
• 1,500 federal troops, some with heavy equipment.

All told, FEMA spent 75% of their annual budget in the first 38 days of the 2025 Fiscal Year on Helene.

By the end of the year, all of this additional stuff was either in place or in the pipeline for North Carolina:

• $314 million in SBA loans.
• $115 million from the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration.
• $94 million from the Department of Labor for unemployment assistance and workforce training.
• $950 million available through HUD's Community Development Block Grant funding.
• $90 million from Interior agencies, including the NPS, to work on landslide mitigation and watershed restoration.

On top of that Biden requested from Congress an additional $98.6 billion for recovery across all states.

So yeah, those are some damn good stats in the aftermath of a disaster of that size and complexity. Keep in mind that Helene closed every road into Western North Carolina. Every damn one from all directions. In addition to the 6,000+ miles of roads that were made impassable, the impacts were profound:

• 160 municipal water systems were ruined.
• 126,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
• 1,400 reported landslides.
• 20,000 farms nonoperational.

Of course, there was not going to be instantaneous assistance and return to normal given the disaster's scale and scope. And that provided an opportunity for all kinds of mischief. How many times do you show up on this graph?



But again, we were originally talking about how FEMA screwed up tornado response not even two weeks ago. To allow yourself to disregard the utter failure of the Trump administration, you immediately went to blaming Biden for, what exactly? I guess it doesn't matter.

Anyway, any thoughts on the tornado tracker? I can tell you that in those very red areas where the tornadoes hit, more than a few local Republicans were upset they didn't have access to the tracker because of the administration's incompetence and ignorance.