The Federal Emergency Management Agency helps prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. Credit – Amy Beth Bennett—Getty Images
Severe storms hit the Pittsburgh area earlier this week—killing three and causing widespread power outages in the region.
It’s the latest in a string of deadly storms in the U.S.—at least 24 people were killed after storms hit the south and midwest in early April, and at least 32 people were killed when storms swept through much of the country in mid-March. Following both storms, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), stepped in to provide assistance to individuals and counties.
While Pittsburgh might not need FEMA aid, if the Trump Administration has it their way, many communities across the country could be left in the lurch on disaster recovery aid, as the administration looks to dismantle the agency and shift disaster response onto states. And climate change is only making it more complicated.
The reality of leaving disaster response to states would be “devastating,” says Allison Reilly, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland. “FEMA exists because there are times when the state can simply not respond.”
Trump first posed the idea of overhauling FEMA while visiting North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in January. “I’d like to see the states take care of disasters, let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen. And I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response,” he said.
One of his first executive orders was establishing a council to assess the effectiveness of the disaster response agency. Just days before the Pittsburgh storm, Trump appointed 13 people—including Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem—to review FEMA. The group is expected to submit a report to the president within 180 days, according to the executive order.
Trump’s move to dismantle the agency comes as extreme weather events are only becoming more common—and more costly. In 2024, the U.S. saw 27 weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages each—second only to 2023, which had 28 billion-dollar events. And researchers predict an above-average hurricane season is on the horizon.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity for national emergency management capability to invest in… the impacts of climate change, and how can we better prepare,” says Jeff Schlegelmilch, associate professor of professional practice and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School.
FEMA wasn’t designed to meet our changing climate. “FEMA and the structure of disaster response and its inception was really designed to handle maybe one or two major disaster recoveries at a time. And currently there’s over 100,” says Schlegelmilch. “The mechanisms of disaster response recovery have vastly outgrown.”
Traditionally, FEMA has worked alongside state officials— not independent of them. The agency does more than just give out money: FEMA deploys experts in disaster response and recovery and maintains stockpiles of emergency equipment. Outsourcing this to states would prove to be more expensive, according to research from the Atlantic Council—and could lead to states bidding for emergency supplies and expertise in the event of a natural disaster.
In the absence of FEMA, states would have to hire their own disaster response experts to be on standby. “It means that every state has to have such a large body of people who could respond to a disaster, but for exceedingly rare events,” says Riley. “You’re going to need a lot of people on staff with nothing to do for a long period of time until disaster happens. Or you’re going to have states who are just completely ill prepared, which is probably more likely to happen.”
Larger states—like California or Texas—might have the funding to pick up the slack, but smaller states simply would not have the capacity to respond to natural disasters.
Experts say that FEMA has very real issues that need to be addressed—the agency’s staff is stretched thin across an increasing number of disasters, and the agency often leaves behind low-income survivors in disaster response.
“The need for emergency management reform is something that’s actually been called on by people of all walks of life. If we can rebrand and create something for 21st century challenges, we should,” says Schlegelmilch.
But getting rid of the system without a meaningful replacement will only cause harm, says Schlegelmilch. “That shock [for] municipalities from that sudden change of one system to suddenly nothing being there [would] be very measurable in terms of lost lives and livelihoods.”
Write to Simmone Shah at simmone.shah@time.com.
