State and local officials are preparing for possible changes to federal disaster relief following President Donald Trump’s announcement last month that he wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which would leave states without a significant source of support when managing disaster preparedness and response.
The Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts from June to November, is often a dangerous time for states along the Gulf Coast. Louisiana has experienced six hurricanes of category three or higher since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Between 2015 and 2024, Louisiana residents received the most FEMA direct assistance of all states, at $53 million through the Individuals and Households Program.
New Orleans has “highly” relied on federal funding to rebuild after devastating natural disasters in the past, said a spokesperson for New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell in response to a question from Verite News about the potential impact of eliminating FEMA.
“If FEMA no longer exists, the City hopes that there is a clear, strategic plan to provide funding to impacted cities, parishes, and counties because local government is small and depends heavily on various assistance elements,” Cantrell spokesperson Leatrice Dupré said in a statement.
One FEMA-funded resilience project in the city has already lost $1.2 million in funding after the agency ended its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April.
The Resilient Algiers Project aimed to repurpose vacant lots in Algiers into an urban farm and green space designed to manage stormwater and prevent flooding, said Austin Feldbaum, director of the city of New Orleans’ Hazard Mitigation Office, at a recent community meeting held at Rosa F. Keller Library.
“We are not sure if we’re actually going to be able to get that money,” he said. “But we’re going to go ahead and negotiate everything with the engineer and figure out if we can afford to risk the funds not getting paid back to us.”
Feldbaum added that he and his colleagues are worried about all of the office’s projects going forward.
“Not so much for existing projects, but for anything moving forward, yes I think [there is concern],” he said.
At a press conference on June 3, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said he does not believe significant funding cuts will take place during this year’s hurricane season, which ends in November.
“What we have seen from the time of Katrina through now is that the bureaucracy inside the federal government has a tendency to tangle things up,” he said. “I think that all the president is trying to do is to make sure that … the state has the ability of actual mission control and the authority to be able to act quickly.”
He added that the state remains ready for the upcoming hurricane season and urged Louisianians to do their part in preparing for natural disasters.
“Make sure that you have an evacuation plan, make sure that you secure important documents and make sure that you check vital supply kits,” he said.
Samantha Montano, an associate professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said while it is valid to criticize FEMA, significant funding cuts would leave states unsupported.
“What the Trump administration is proposing feels to me like the opposite of the solution here,” she said. “There are other ways of streamlining FEMA programs.”
Montano said that if the priority is efficiency, offering initiatives such as a universal aid application and improved fraud protection measures would be a better solution than cutting funding entirely.
“Before FEMA existed, it was even more inefficient, because you had all these different federal agencies involved in emergency management,” she said. “That’s not to say we can’t make it more efficient or whatnot, but the agency itself serves that purpose.”
At the June 3 press conference, Brigadier General Jason Mahfouz, director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the state had been in touch with FEMA ahead of hurricane season.
“The logistics apparatus that kicks in from FEMA normally when state resources are overwhelmed has been validated and pledged to us,” he said. “The plans have been rehearsed and are in place.”
Mahfouz asked that Louisianians use the website getagameplan.org for tips and checklists to prepare for a natural disaster.
But even if plans for this hurricane season are in place, how much federal help Louisiana will get with emergency management and disaster recovery in the future is unclear. Montano noted that the proposed FEMA cuts have not been well received by the people most affected by natural disasters.
“That’s antithetical to what communities are asking for post-disaster,” she said. “What we’re hearing from the public is that they want more support from FEMA, not less.”