Critical Delays: Trump Admin Finally Approves Last Year's Disaster Declarations As Another Hurricane and Wildfire Season Approaches
WASHINGTON, D.C. — New reporting from the Associated Press exposes a crisis hiding in plain sight: under President Trump, FEMA has finally begun working through disaster declaration requests from last year, even as the nation barrels toward another hurricane and wildfire season in a few short months. What once took less than two weeks for presidents to approve in the 1990s and early 2000s now takes over a month on average under the Trump administration — and for some states, the wait has stretched to nearly six months and counting.
While FEMA finally approved seven disaster declarations this week, none of the approvals include hazard mitigation funding. This is a critical oversight as every dollar invested in hazard mitigation now saves $13 dollars in future disaster costs.
This is already too late — and it's about to be disaster season again. Simply put, the administration is just now getting to what should have been approved last year. As FEMA continues to drag its feet on 2025 disasters, meteorologists are projecting another active Atlantic hurricane season and fire conditions across the Southwest are worsening. Communities hit by last year's disasters are heading into another season without the federal resources they were promised, while FEMA's leadership remains consumed by a backlog that should have been cleared months ago.
"FEMA is supposed to be the safety net Americans can count on when disaster strikes. Instead, the Trump administration has turned the declaration process into a bureaucratic gauntlet that leaves families without help for weeks, months, or indefinitely,” said Davante Lewis, Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member. “It didn’t have to be this way. When you're still processing September's floods in April, you are not ready for what's coming next. Secretary Mullin must clear this backlog immediately and start working on preparation for the upcoming disaster season instead of waiting for the next hurricane to make landfall. An administration that prides itself on efficiency cannot justify response times that are four times longer than historical norms, while communities remain in ruin and another disaster season looms."
Sabotaging Our Safety has been demanding FEMA become an independent cabinet-level agency following a year of incompetence and politicization that left millions facing disasters in danger. The organization continues to call for transparent data-sharing with Congress, accountability in disaster aid allocation, and an end to the diversion of FEMA resources away from their core mission of protecting Americans from disasters.
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