America’s Disaster Response Is Failing. Here’s How to Rebuild It.

Experts say stronger local partnerships, more investment in preparedness, and a reimagined FEMA could save lives—and billions of dollars.

This summer, just before four states issued air quality alerts because of unhealthy levels of wildfire smoke, President Donald Trump denied disaster aid to the same states—New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The millions requested were intended to help the Democratic-led states recover from a record-breaking blizzard that struck in February 2026.

Just a few days earlier, disaster aid was given to six Republican-led states, prompting questions about injecting political bias into relief efforts. POLITICO’s reporting shows that during this term, Trump has approved 23 percent of requests from Democratic-leaning states, compared to 89 percent from Republican-leaning states.

This gap in aid approvals is part of a broader set of issues with how the United States prepares for and responds to disasters. Budget and staffing cuts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have raised concerns about the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies. Funding for climate-resilience initiatives and extreme-weather monitoring has been cut. Federal aid intended for reducing disaster costs is stuck in a quagmire of confusion and delay. These weaknesses have real consequences: Slower warning and recovery systems have resulted in community devastation, like in Kerr County, Texas, where survivors of deadly flooding have also struggled to receive federal disaster assistance.

But our nation’s imperfect disaster management system didn’t begin with Trump, explains Deserai Anderson, a professor and co-director of the Center for Community Safety and Resilience at the University of Colorado, Denver. “It hasn’t been one negative decision, but thousands of decisions made over the last 250 years,” says Anderson. “It’s a legacy of inequities.”

Today’s vulnerabilities don’t come from a single source; some are rooted in systemic disparities, such as redlining. Others are the unintended consequences of incremental decision-making, where competing demands beat out disaster work. Americans have inherited infrastructure built without the climate crisis in mind, and despite having the science now, there’s still a struggle to adapt. The current federal approach to disaster work is largely “the opposite of what we should be doing,” says Anderson, but the problem didn’t start with a single administration.

Against that backdrop, the rising cost of disasters is making these longstanding weaknesses harder to ignore. The question is no longer whether the country can just improve its approach, but whether it can keep pace with the growing scale of the challenge.

“What really worries me is we have more billion-dollar disasters increasing year over year,” says Anderson. Disaster frequency and rising rebuilding costs contribute to growing expenses.

If America’s disaster system needs to change, it’s worth examining how it functions, what is working, and what could be reinvented for the better.

The network behind disaster response

There’s a host of disaster terminology that experts use and debate, says Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research at Loyola’s Center on Environment, Land, and Law, but what’s more important is asking communities what environmental problems they see. Turning those needs into solutions requires a web of institutions—including federal, state, and local governments, private companies, nonprofits, and mutual aid groups—each with distinct responsibilities and resources. Understanding how these pieces fit together is an ongoing effort, and each plays an important role, says Anderson.

Humboldt COAD (Community Organizations Active in Disaster), for example, is a nonprofit in Northern California that operates like a very large mutual aid network. Its nonprofit status helps the organization quickly deliver financial aid to in-need communities, while its mutual aid element is a pipeline for goods and services.

It works with over 100 nonprofits during both disasters and “blue sky periods” to deliver immediate help and buttress long-term recovery. Support can include, but isn’t limited to, providing child care, meals from local food producers, and a safe place to live while navigating the emotional and logistical maze of rebuilding. Because the organizations Humboldt COAD works with are based in the same region as where they provide assistance, the help someone receives may come from a friend or neighbor.

“Historically, disaster recovery has been about getting people back to the place they were before the disaster,” says Nick Bown-Crawford, executive director of Humboldt COAD. “I’ve been challenging that my entire career because I think our goal should be to put people in a better place than they were before the disaster.”

But funding is a persistent issue, says Bown-Crawford, who often chooses to volunteer his time to Humboldt COAD, despite working for the organization full time. The nonprofit sector is “in a state of crisis across the country,” he says. While Bown-Crawford wants Humboldt COAD to work side-by-side with the federal government, the federal funding they need still isn’t materializing at the necessary scale. Instead, the organization has figured out how to do as much as it can with the resources that are available.

“We know that we can creatively solve problems with capacity, not just cash,” says Bown-Crawford. “We’re going to be here for the community no matter what the government is doing, no matter who’s in office, no matter what is going on.”

That missing support from the federal government is, in part, increasingly by design. Trump is pushing to shift the burden of disaster response to states. However, state and local governments simply do not have the same capacity as the federal government to help communities rebuild after catastrophes, given the scope and cost, Anderson explains. For example, California has the world’s fourth-largest economy and still needs financial support from the federal government after the disaster.

FEMA was created in 1979 to provide coordinated federal relief for disaster victims. During Trump’s second presidency, there’s been a push to reduce FEMA’s staff, limit some of its response responsibilities, and shift more of the burden to states. Congress approves FEMA’s funding, and after the president declares a major disaster, the agency can provide supplies, coordinate rescue and recovery efforts, and provide financial assistance to affected people and communities. But across multiple presidential administrations, critics have described the financial assistance program as onerous, slow, and confusing.

“We know that the experience of dealing with the bureaucracy itself can be very disempowering,” says Jorellman. “It creates its own harms.”

Still, globally, “it is recognized that there is no entity better at responding to and preparing for crisis response than FEMA,” says Anderson. Any efforts to defang FEMA, like more recent staffing cuts, are a blow to its ability to help.

Some experts also think that, to truly become more capable, FEMA needs to once again become an independent cabinet agency with control over its own budget, able to move quickly and work efficiently with other agencies. In an effort to merge disaster response with national counterterrorism efforts, after 9/11 FEMA became a sub-department of the Department of Homeland Security,  a move that critics say has subsequently slowed down disaster response and limited direct access to the president.

The ability to move quickly is increasingly important, Jerolleman explains, because communities are dealing with different phases of the disaster cycle simultaneously. Too often, people are still rebuilding when another storm or fire strikes. Disaster mitigation and recovery can happen concurrently.

Jerolleman also emphasizes that “myself and others have spent a long time criticizing the way hazard mitigation, climate adaptation, and disaster response have worked under every administration.” Fundamental flaws have endured. Ultimately, the government has a role to play, and while other entities like the private sector and nonprofits have stepped up, “they are not an effective band-aid” despite all the critical help they provide, she says.

Building better partnerships

Improving disaster response may also mean rethinking how each sector works together. Building can be more than adding resources—it requires changing relationships. For example, governments and the private sector could be more effective if they follow the lead of local organizations, which understand a community’s needs long before and long after disasters make headlines, says Jerolleman.

“Our commitment is to the community,” says Bown-Crawford. “When we commit to a recovery project, we do not leave until that project is done. We are the ones who stay.”

SBP is a national nonprofit originally founded in St. Bernard Parish in New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina. It offers both recovery services—helping homeowners rebuild and navigate the FEMA assistance process—as well as advisory services, which help communities increase their capacity and technical expertise in dealing with disasters, and ensure recovery efforts move as efficiently as possible.

Josh Bryant, SBP’s director of advisory services, says that stronger systems and better coordination across sectors lead to more resilient communities. SBP aims to bring partners, like businesses, houses of worship, and local governments, together before a disaster hits. That way, each has a clearly defined role and commitment before the stress of the situation. “No single organization can recover a community alone,” he says. “It really works best when all entities work together to fix a common problem.”

To Anderson, in practice, resilience can look like “if a disaster hits, a community has all it needs to experience minimal damage, can bounce back as quickly as possible, and those who are most vulnerable are not going to bear disproportionate burdens.”

It’s not just about responding to a natural disaster as it arrives. Rather, resilience depends on health care, education, and housing systems that can weather various challenges, she explains. It relies on the social networks and capacities within a community. Any conversation about how to improve disaster work has to also include how we strengthen these factors, says Anderson.

Jerolleman puts it this way: “It’s not about: Is my roof strong enough? It’s about: Are there systems in place to protect the people I care about?”

This stands counter to the reality that the biggest influx of money and political will often happens after disaster strikes, she explains. There’s also a tendency to “underplay the role the private sector can play,” says Anderson. Companies like Walmart, UPS, and FedEx often have the logistics networks to deliver essential supplies to communities.

Staying long after the storm

Strengthening FEMA, restoring scientific capacity, and depoliticizing disaster aid could address some of the system’s most visible failures. But a broader rethinking of exactly what disaster work is and how it should be conducted may also be necessary.

The U.S., for example, has “always underinvested in mitigation” relative to post-disaster recovery, says Anderson. Mitigation is seen as both cost-effective—one study, for example, found every $1 spent on climate resilience and preparedness saves communities $13 in damages and cleanup costs—and an important step for preventing catastrophes. But historically, there’s been a political tendency to avoid continuous costs voters might not see as important and instead invest in short-term needs.

But one of the most important steps in disaster work is understanding a community’s current state of resilience, she explains. This could look like answering questions like: Who is particularly vulnerable, and when is this vulnerability exacerbated?

To that point, Bryant emphasizes that mitigation plans “shouldn’t just sit on a shelf.” Instead, they should be in place and practiced on a regular basis. For example, in 2025, SBP trained 665 local and state leaders on how to respond to, recover from, and mitigate against natural disasters, and provided over 12,900 individuals with preparedness resources and education. Through its advisory services work, SBP also offers consistent trainings on skills like how to navigate FEMA’s damage assessment process, how to oversee disaster construction management, and how to muck and gut a home. “Learning how to recover from the last disaster doesn’t mean you’re necessarily prepared for the next one,” he explains.

This is also why Humboldt COAD’s work is multifaceted: After an emergency, like the King Salmon tidal flooding that happened early this year, people in need are connected with a case manager as quickly as possible. This person can connect them with necessities, apply for aid, and provide assistance with critical home-saving steps like debris removal and mold mitigation.

Humboldt COAD is also increasingly working with research institutions like California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, to produce risk mapping, so households can see how likely they are to experience another disaster in the future. The nonprofit also works with organizations that are already embedded in communities before disasters; first contact doesn’t just happen when tragedy strikes.

There can be a tendency in the United States to frame disaster survival as an individual responsibility, emphasizing personal preparedness and resilience over the collective systems and public investments that shape disaster outcomes. This perspective is why many of the communities that Jerolleman works with “actually hate the term resilience,” she explains. It implies that they must be nimble enough to withstand this endless barrage of attacks.

“But there are ways in which the world around them creates and exacerbates their risk and limits their adaptation options,” says Jerolleman.

It’s established that vulnerable groups, including low-income households, racial minorities, the elderly, and people with chronic health conditions, experience the highest mortality rates, greatest property losses, and slowest recovery times after a disaster. There’s a nod to this reality after disasters strike, says Jerolleman, but not much movement on what to do about it.

After the King Salmon flooding, Humboldt COAD spoke with some homeowners and renters about the possible need to relocate. Coastal flooding in this region is unlikely to stop. But some folks “can’t afford to move even if they wanted to,” says Bown-Crawford.

Historic inequities continue to determine who suffers most. But the climate crisis is expanding the geography of risk, exposing more communities to disasters they may never have expected to face. These risks are coming for everyone, says Anderson—even if you’ve taken steps to prepare.

“A well-supplied family can still be displaced from their home for as much as 10 years because of how slowly the larger system moves,” says Bryant. “But in my experience, a really prepared community can mean a faster recovery process for the people within it.”