WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has announced plans to sign an executive order to overhaul or potentially eliminate FEMA, the federal agency tasked with responding to natural disasters.
Visiting flood-ravaged areas of North Carolina, which suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Helene in September, Trump strongly criticised FEMA’s handling of relief efforts.
His proposed changes signal a significant shift in the federal response to emergencies, raising questions about the future of disaster management in the United States.
He said his executive order would begin the process of fundamentally overhauling or eliminating the agency.
“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” he said during a tour of a neighbourhood destroyed by Helene where trees were felled and homes had boarded-up windows. “I think we recommend that FEMA go away.”
FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies, and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters, and funding for the agency has soared in recent years as extreme weather events increase the demand for its services.
The agency, which has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country, was run for the last four years by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
During a briefing about recovery efforts, the Republican Trump promised to speedily help North Carolina “get the help you need” to rebuild. He said he would prefer that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves rather than rely on FEMA to do the job.
FEMA was a target of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term prepared by the president’s allies, which the president distanced himself from during the election. The plan called for dismantling DHS and relocating FEMA to the Department of Interior or the Department of Transport.
In addition, it suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states.
