This article was created for Propublica’s local reporting network in partnership with Capital & Main, a 2022-2023 LRN partner. Sign up for Dispatch to get stories in your inbox every week.
In January, Katy Clark’s one-bedroom rentals for over 15 years, and almost everything inside, were incinerated by Etonfire in Los Angeles County, one of the most devastating wildfires in California’s history. Due to her troubles, she received a one-time $770 payment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She used it to exchange dog clothes, food and wooden frames. That was just a small part of what she needed, but the money was at least available while she waited for other funds.
As the organizer of the Altadena Tenants Union, who helps renters with FEMA applications, Clark knows how common her experience is for fire survivors. She believes federal and local agencies have severely underestimated the need and costs of the 150,000 homes evacuated to the fire, and many still struggle to recover. A FEMA spokesperson denied the charges, saying it “indicating that the current rental assistance program effectively meets the housing needs of survivors eligible for FEMA support.”
Disaster response is “surprisingly bad,” Clark said, but she recognizes that “it’s way worse because it was.” Without FEMA’s help to deal with a fire that killed at least 30 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures.
“We’d seen more people left on their devices, and what that means is homeless. That means people just abandoned,” Clark said.
Even before President Donald Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom, President Donald Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom squared Trump’s decision to quell immigration protests before he likened Trump to a dictator and supported the idea that Trump would arrest the governor.
It is a key issue for states that frequently suffer from some of the country’s most expensive disasters, with earthquakes, wildfires, floods, droughts and extreme heat.
Since Trump took office, his administration has been floating sweeping proposals that cut the FEMA dollar and make it difficult to declare a disaster. This makes both blue and red states wrestling in a scenario where FEMA has to pay for things they don’t. The state has long been counting FEMA to cover at least 75% of declared major disaster response and recovery costs.
In the past few months, FEMA has denied federal support for devastating floods in West Virginia and devastating storms in Washington. The agency approved such funding for a fatal tornado in Arkansas after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders initially called for denial and personally sought help from the president.
Last month, Propublica reported that FEMA missed the May deadline for opening a number of grant application processes, including funds that rely on payments for basic emergency management businesses. Delays not explained by agents seem to be very few precedents.
In California, Trump is questioning whether he would approve the $40 billion he requested to help pay fire-related recovery costs, including removing $16.8 billion in real estate, infrastructure and debris from FEMA. This adds to the nearly $140 million that agents are already offering to individual survivors.
The president told reporters last month that the states will need to wean from FEMA and that the federal government will begin distributing less federal aid after hurricane season ends in November.
The current questions are: How much will you get approved? Is that enough? And if not, what?
A FEMA spokesman did not directly respond to questions about expected funding cuts from Capital & Main and the potential impact on state and local communities, but the agency said “arguing that disasters will be best managed when federally supported, state-controlled and executed locally.”
“It’s extremely difficult to plan this uncertainty,” said Heather Gonzalez, chief fiscal and policy analyst for emergency services in the California Legislative Analyst’s office. “The little bean counter behind emphasizes that they are trying to understand, ‘What do we have to work with?’ ”
She said the recent “dust” between Newsom and Trump only underscored the unpredictability. When it comes to disaster response, the news said they prefer a “open hand” of cooperation over a “closed fist” of battle.
“Emergency preparation and emergency planning, recovery and updates – period, complete suspension – it should be apolitical,” he said on Monday marking six months after the fire.
Firefighters fight the flames in Altadena during Eton’s fire. Credit: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main
Increased cost of disasters
Since at least the 1980s, California has seen 18 occurrences between 2015 and 2024 alone, with a rapidly increasing number of $1 billion disasters.
As California’s disasters grow in frequency and severity, so does rely on federal assistance to respond. According to a spokesman for FEMA, the aftermath of the Eton and Palisade fires in January (the second and third most destructive wildfires in California history, respectively) are the second and third most destructive wildfires in California history, respectively, and already provide $139 million, with agents “allocating billions of dollars for debris removal.” Over 5,000 facilities have already been removed from ashes and fire debris.
Ruins of a bank destroyed in the Palisade fire in the Pacific Ocean. The wildfire was the third most destructive in California history. Credit: Sarahbeth Maney/Propublica
The Department of Los Angeles County Emergency Management Communications Director Emily Montanes said fire recovery efforts have not been completed for many years and are heavily dependent on FEMA.
“After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, FEMA had a field office here for 28 years,” Montanes said. “We think this isn’t different. It was a lot more devastated and more impactful. So this could be years and definitely decades.”
Montanez acknowledged that some survivors do not have sufficient resources to provide the potential “gaps” in disaster response efforts, but she said the recent operation coordinated between the FEMA in Los Angeles and local agencies has been mostly efficient and successful.
FEMA’s federal aid supplements California’s own disaster response and mitigation resources, such as those allocated to the Department of Emergency Services, which was allocated $4.4 billion in May of the state’s 2025-26 budget. If the office’s funds do not cover all disaster costs, California can also withdraw from many reserves, such as budget stabilization accounts and special funds for economic uncertainty.
Newsom told Capital & Main Monday that the state has increased discretionary reserves as a direct result of Trump’s continued threat to FEMA, but admitted that even the increase in investment would not make up for potential losses in federal funds.
California “can’t fill the exclusion of FEMA,” Newsom said. “There is no nation in America.” [that can]even the most donated states are the largest in the nation and the fourth largest in the world, even in an economy of $4.1 trillion per year. ”
And California’s $12 billion budget deficit will make the shortage of offices particularly difficult when the next major disaster strikes, according to Laurie Schuman, a senior advisor on climate resilience to former President Joe Biden.
According to Schoeman, that becomes even more difficult if the still de-active proposals outlined in the internal FEMA memo are implemented. One of the reforms posted a memo to post the percentage of federal recovery costs covered at the current 75% baseline. Under current rules, the president can increase FEMA’s cost share by up to 100%, just as it didn’t take Los Angeles to take office for less than two weeks.
Another proposal quadrants the amount of damage that must be damaged in a disaster before FEMA awards public assistance grants for infrastructure repairs and debris removal. This will bring California’s loss threshold to approximately $75 million to nearly $300 million per disaster.
Trump’s first EPA has pledged to crack down on eternal chemicals. His second EPA is being pulled back.
If that second reform had been implemented between 2008 and 2024, California would have received 26% less public assistance funds from FEMA, and nearly $2 billion in losses, according to a May analysis by the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank.
Such reduced funding during future events will trigger a “apocalyptic scenario” in which California communities struggle to run shelters and pay emergency response fees to rescue disaster victims, according to Sarah Labovitz, a senior fellow at Carnegie’s Carnegie Fund’s Geopolitics Program for International Peace.
But already, Schoeman said, there have been major damages.
In April, the Trump administration cancelled the Building’s Resilient Infrastructure and Community Program, a FEMA initiative dedicated to funding disaster preparedness projects. More than $880 million in federal funds have been withdrawn. This includes a $35 million grant in Napa County, California, primarily dedicated to wildfire prevention work. The administration refused to respond to Capital & Main’s request for comment and referred to FEMA for questions. An agency spokesperson said the approach to disaster response reflects an approach to disaster response. FEMA will play a supportive role.
“All kinds of preparations begin with family, individuals, local and state officials ahead of an emergency or disaster,” the agency’s statement said.
Schumann said the repealed federal funding risks eroding the community’s ability to protect against future disasters, and will restore the work achieved under Trump’s first term.
“They are just cutting these projects, but they are proof of the cost-of-benefit analysis being implemented,” Schoeman said. “The BRIC program was launched under the Trump administration, so it feels like the administration is about to amputate its own leg.”
Smoke drifts through the Rogers Beach and the Pacific Ocean during the Palisade fire. Credit: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main
Clark said she was already struggling to get help. She has disagreement about whether her transitional home qualifies as temporary, so her insurance provider has withheld more than $25,000 so that her additional FEMA assistance application has been denied because she is technically insured. Some wealthy survivors had the “insulation and resilience that economic resources provide,” while others had to rely on nonprofits and the types of government assistance that risks them to buy their homes.
“If you don’t have these economic resources, your only option is to rely on philanthropy or the state,” Clark said. “If neither of them is available, then tough luck.”
