The Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA

Federal disaster relief began in 1803, when Congress helped a New Hampshire town rebuild after a fire, and for most of the next two centuries it was improvised one catastrophe at a time. By the 1970s more than a hundred agencies had some role in disasters. At the urging of the nation's governors, Jimmy Carter consolidated them into the Federal Emergency Management Agency by executive order on April 1, 1979. The Stafford Act of 1988 set out the framework that still governs: when a disaster overwhelms a state, the governor asks the President for a declaration, and the declaration unlocks federal aid.

FEMA does not take over disasters. States and local governments lead the response, and FEMA coordinates the federal agencies that support them, moves supplies, deploys search and rescue teams, and above all pays. Its Disaster Relief Fund reimburses states and localities for most of the cost of debris removal, emergency work, and rebuilding public infrastructure, and provides individual assistance to households for temporary housing and repairs. It also runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers about 4.7 million policies, administers preparedness and hazard mitigation grants, and maintains continuity of government plans.

The agency has swung between competence and failure in public memory. It was widely praised in the 1990s under James Lee Witt, folded into the new Department of Homeland Security in 2003, and condemned after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when its slow response in New Orleans became a symbol of government breakdown. The Post-Katrina reform act of 2006 restored some of its independence within DHS. FEMA has about 20,000 employees, many of them reservists and temporary staff mobilized for disasters, and its Administrator requires Senate confirmation.

Disasters have grown costlier, and the number of major declarations has risen to well over a hundred a year. In 2025 the President said FEMA should be phased out and its responsibilities returned to the states, a review council was appointed to recommend changes, the agency cycled through acting leaders, and grant programs for mitigation were canceled. Supporters argue that states should own disaster response and that federal aid has encouraged building in risky places. Governors of both parties, emergency managers, and many in Congress warned that most states could not absorb the cost of a major hurricane or earthquake without federal help. On May 7, 2026, the review council approved a final report recommending a smaller FEMA, lump-sum formula grants to states in place of project-by-project reimbursement, higher thresholds for federal declarations, and changes to flood insurance, to be phased in over two to three years, with many changes requiring legislation.