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Transformed FEMA faces a torrent of challenges to its growing relief efforts

Nearly 20 years after the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flawed response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, its efforts after floods in western North Carolina point to successful reforms, though FEMA remains a piñata for budget hawks and a culture war battleground.

The agency is short-staffed. A fragmented federal approach to disaster recovery compromises its programs. And suspicions about government intent or inaction have negatively impacted its effectiveness.

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Effective deployment of the nation’s emergency resources depends on the goodwill of public officials, responders, and citizens. That goodwill is being tested now, as is the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s agility, in North Carolina.

Still, FEMA soldiers on, ultimately holding both checkbook and playbook for recovery from extreme weather events.

And in the North Carolina towns of Bat Cave and nearby Hendersonville – both decimated by the rains of Hurricane Helene – there’s a sense of unity among many who formed impromptu emergency platoons to rescue neighbors.

“Until Katrina, disaster response was framed in terms of what the professional response was, with one decision-maker,’’ says Natalie Simpson, an emergency operations professor at SUNY Buffalo, referring to FEMA. Now, communities are starting “to focus on a common framework, a common language, and recognizing each other.”

The grim faces of police officers blocking a main road into Bat Cave, an iconic Appalachian community, underscore the trauma and tragedy of an epic flood that has left nearly 100 residents of the mountain region still missing.

“We don’t need anybody down there complicating what’s going on any more than it already is,” a police officer says.

Nearly 20 years after FEMA’s flawed response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s efforts in western North Carolina point to successful reforms that lean on local first responders, volunteers, and neighbors while providing key financial support for lifesaving and longer-term efforts.

Why We Wrote This

A story focused on

Effective deployment of the nation’s emergency resources depends on the goodwill of public officials, responders, and citizens. That goodwill is being tested now, as is the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s agility, in North Carolina.

Even as FEMA has improved, the current recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene also show how the agency has become a perennial piñata for budget hawks and a culture war battleground – complicating America’s already polarized views of what government in action means.

“Communities know how to pull together in times of crisis, and FEMA does the same thing – they don’t come riding in on horses with hats on and say, ‘We’re here!’” says Susan Cutter, a professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and co-director of its Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute. But “what’s happened in western North Carolina is that [people] don’t necessarily want FEMA there – they do and they don’t. They don’t trust the government, and they haven’t trusted the government for a long time.”

By its own admission, the agency is short-staffed, and a fragmented federal approach to disaster recovery compromises its effectiveness. FEMA programs are spread across 30 different agencies, making coordination of recovery efforts almost impossible, according to a 2023 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

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