Life is inching back to normal in the town of Cave City seven months after a tornado slammed into its corner of northeastern Arkansas. The only grocery store is about to reopen. Crews are starting to dig the foundation for a rebuilt funeral home.
But the town — like so many others facing daunting recoveries from recent disaster — has had to go it alone, Mayor Jonas Anderson said.
The Trump administration denied Cave City’s requests for Federal Emergency Management Agency money to help it recover. Anderson was forced to forge ahead anyway, racking up a bill of about $300,000 he said could end up eating 15% of the small town’s annual budget.
Some of the nearly 2,000 residents have gotten federal help. FEMA agreed to cover repairs to the more than 50 homes damaged or destroyed when 165 mph winds struck in March. The state pledged relief money, too. But Anderson said Cave City is carrying more of the burden of recovery than expected.
“We’re making a really good recovery not because of some big FEMA reimbursement we got, but in spite of not getting it,” Anderson said. “People here are super resilient.”
This could be the future for more communities across the country, based on Trump’s vision for emergency management in the United States: one that would transfer responsibility for disaster recovery from the federal government to the states in all but the largest catastrophes. For many places, it is already the reality.
FEMA has been delaying disaster declarations and aid payments to communities, adding new hurdles to access some grant funds and cutting off the flow of money intended to boost resilience and prevent future disasters from causing so much damage.
Emergency managers and elected officials across the country are adjusting to a system in which they can no longer count on the sort of disaster aid they typically expect from FEMA, which was established in 1979 to coordinate and professionalize disaster response. They are figuring out how to prepare for future disasters without key FEMA grants, raising private funds to replace federal aid and turning to state governments to beef up their preparations. In some places, volunteer disaster recovery squads have sprung up.
In an emailed statement, FEMA spokesperson Daniel Llargues said the agency has held back some disaster relief funding, saving it for the future. For example, a monthly report on the agency’s spending this summer showed it withheld $11 billion for projects tied to a coronavirus pandemic disaster declaration that states had expected to receive by Sept. 30. Agency officials said those payments are not canceled, but rather deferred into the new fiscal year to ensure the solvency of the government fund used to pay for disaster aid.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, FEMA remains committed to supporting disaster survivors,” Llargues wrote. He said the agency is managing disaster funding “in a way that prioritizes immediate needs and long-term recovery efforts.”
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