TENNESSEE RIDGE, Tenn. — They were just drills, but each felt urgent and real. A group of volunteers searched a wooded area for someone who had been injured and stranded, ready to provide aid. Then they practiced a river rescue, attaching a rope near the bank to help pull the victim to shore.
This was Rescue HQ, a gathering in rural Tennessee last month where the founding members of several newly formed disaster response groups ran through emergency scenarios and discussed how to better coordinate in the chaotic aftermath of a storm or a flood.
Groups like this are growing in number — a new model of disaster response taking shape outside government channels. Many volunteers are deeply religious and have military backgrounds.
They’re an unequal match for what the government can do, especially when it comes to long-term rebuilding efforts after natural disasters. But with the Trump administration pulling back staffing and funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and even pledging to eliminate it — communities may soon rely far more on volunteer help.
“The bigger the gap is in terms of what the government isn’t doing, the more we’re going to expect from nonprofits, and the larger their role is going to be,” said Daniel Sledge, a professor at the University of Oklahoma who has studied disaster relief. “Whether nonprofits actually have the capacity or the ability to step in and fill in the gaps that, in all likelihood, we’re going to be creating is a completely different question.”
President Donald Trump said this month that he wanted to phase out FEMA after this year’s hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30, and shift much of its responsibilities to the states. Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA as the homeland security secretary, and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, are overseeing a group that will submit recommendations in the coming months about how to reshape or sharply scale back the agency.
Asked what role outside groups should play in disaster relief moving forward, a spokesperson for FEMA said in an email, “Together with federal, state, tribal, local and territorial agencies, we’re strengthening and enhancing partnerships.”
Already, FEMA has lost at least a quarter of its full-time staff since Trump took office in January, according to a former senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to not jeopardize a new job. That number includes career officials who helped coordinate immediate disaster response and leaders who oversaw the most hurricane-prone regions in the country.
And after a series of experienced emergency managers led the agency in recent years, an acting administrator with no comparable experience is now in charge.
A flurry of new disaster response groups sprang up last fall as residents of western North Carolina expressed deep frustrations with the government’s response to Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic flooding. These groups were sometimes the first to reach people in isolated parts of the region.
While nonprofit volunteer groups have far less red tape to navigate than government agencies do, they face other challenges, including coordinating with local officials and not duplicating other relief efforts. There can be personality and ego clashes or competition among groups with differing priorities.
Newer groups need to develop detailed protocols and reliable funding streams to make sure that their work is sustainable and reputable and that it doesn’t hinder the work of local officials, said Brian Trascher, the vice president of the United Cajun Navy, which formed in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Members of his group worked with some of the groups in Kentucky after the tornadoes.
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