WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal disaster aid is nearly everywhere. About 94% of Americans live in a county that has gotten Federal Emergency Management Agency help for disasters since 2011.
But disaster aid — for decades a mostly bipartisan issue — is suddenly a political hot button after Hurricane Helene last year and this year’s California wildfires. President Donald Trump and a conservative think tank have floated the possibility of shifting disaster response to the states, including eliminating FEMA or curtailing federal handouts.
Experts worry about that.
“Most states don't even have the ability, including Florida, to manage these disasters,” without federal money and help, said Craig Fugate. Fugate has been a county emergency manager in Florida, head of the state of Florida's disaster office under a Republican governor and director of FEMA under President Barack Obama.
Most states simply don't have enough money to handle big disasters, said Susan Cutter, director of the University of South Carolina’s Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute.
“They're going to suffer because they don't have capacities to deal with it without federal help.”
Experts say every state gets millions in federal help — and a little more goes to Republican states and congressional districts.
New York University’s Rebuild By Design, a nonprofit that focuses on disaster prevention, created an It found that every state and all but a few hundred counties have been helped.
“It's clear that climate is not a red or blue challenge,” said Amy Chester, the atlas creator and Rebuild by Design's director. “Communities are suffering whether you are a red state or blue state.”
Since 2011, more than $68.2 billion in FEMA aid has been spent on disasters that don't include the pandemic or oil spills. And that's payments just to governments, not people. Tens of billions more came — mostly from Housing and Urban Development — to people needing individual help to rebuild.
States with Republican governors or two Republican senators tend to have more disasters and get slightly more money per person than states with Democratic governors and senators, according to an Associated Press analysis of Rebuild by Design's data.
States that now have Republican governors have gotten an average of $222 per person in FEMA aid since 2011 with 475 federal declared disasters in 27 states. The 23 states with Democratic governors average 15% less at $193 per person over 320 disasters.
The six swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024 – and states with split U.S. Senate delegations – get considerably less FEMA aid per person, averaging only $35 per capita. Those purple states have 15% of the country’s population but get only 2.5% of the FEMA aid.
Overall, states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024 averaged 15% less in FEMA funds per person than those that voted for Kamala Harris, but that's mostly skewed by the six swing states of Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia that get less than their share.
Red states with 42.7% of the population have 56.6% of the number of federally declared disasters and get half the FEMA aid. Blue states with 42.2% of the population and 35.8% of the number of disasters get 47.5% of the FEMA aid.
The disaster-heavy states that former FEMA chief Fugate calls his “frequent fliers” also tend to be more Republican. About two-thirds of the top 15 states in total FEMA funds, FEMA spending per person and number of federally declared disasters are Republican. Those include Florida, Louisiana, Alaska, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Twelve congressional districts have had at least a dozen federally declared disasters since 2011; three-quarters of them are represented by Republicans. Those are in Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia.
Disaster aid and declarations are “less political now than 40 years ago, 30 years ago,” South Carolina's Cutter said.
The first thing that has to happen in any disaster is the state has to ask the president to declare it a federal disaster, which lets the money flow, Fugate said.
In general, the federal government pays 75% of the cost with state and locals picking up 25%. But in the biggest disasters the state share can shrink to 10% or even close to nothing, especially if Congress steps in.
In disasters, government bills pile up quickly. States may have a hard time even making payroll because of that and that's where FEMA can step in early, helping with initial payments sometimes within 30 days.
And FEMA simply has specialized expertise. In California, for example, the state's wildfires mean tons of debris — much of it toxic — has to be cleared and quick, Fugate said. FEMA can ask the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers — experts who cleared World Trade Center debris — to take charge, making it faster and cheaper for taxpayers.
Experts also worry that states will struggle to stop waste, fraud and abuse that are currently harder with FEMA due to federal procurement laws.
“When Charlotte County (Florida) got flattened in Hurricane Charley (in 2004), you as a taxpayer rebuilt all of our fire stations. You rebuilt our schools,” Fugate said.
The state could not have done it alone, he said.
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