President Donald Trump said he would be signing an executive order to start the process of fundamentally overhauling or “getting rid of” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), while touring areas in western North Carolina on Jan. 24 that were devastated by Hurricane Helene last year.
Trump made the comments at a press conference in Fletcher, North Carolina, a small town close to Asheville. He criticized the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, a catastrophic Category 4 tropical cyclone that tore through the southeast in late September 2024, leaving tens of billions of dollars in destruction and killing more than 200 hundred people across several states.
Trump called for immediate disaster relief for North Carolina without conditions for aid. He also suggested that FEMA may no longer be up to the task of providing funds to rebuild areas facing devastation.
“I'll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” Trump said.
“I think, frankly, FEMA is not good. I think when you have a problem like this ... you want to use your state to fix it, and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The president said he would provide direct aid from the federal government to North Carolina so it could “come back bigger, better, stronger than ever before.” He said the timeline for federal aid would be immediate so infrastructure rebuilding can commence.
FEMA had provided more than $316 million in cash grants and more than $6.2 million in rental assistance to survivors in Western North Carolina as of Jan. 20, according to an agency news release.
Additionally, the U.S. Small Business Administration has approved more than $213 million in low-interest loans for survivors, which carry zero percent interest for the first 12 months.
“FEMA, the state of North Carolina, other federal agencies and volunteer organizations continue working with families to help them begin their recovery,” the release stated.
Over last weekend, the agency began contacting survivors of the storm who are staying in FEMA-funded hotel rooms to ensure they still need access to the “Transitional Sheltering Assistance” program. It provides short-term sheltering via hotel rooms for homeowners and renters who were displaced by Helene, which struck the state after it was downgraded to a Tropical Storm.
FEMA stated that nearly 13,000 survivor households in Western North Carolina have used the program, and the agency conducts a review every two weeks to ensure the rooms are still being used by those who need them.
FEMA said survivors will no longer be eligible for the program if they meet a series of qualifications: a home inspection finds no “eligible damages” to a home or rental unit caused by the storm, an inspection determines the residence is now habitable, FEMA cannot reach the survivor after multiple contact attempts, the survivor misses multiple inspections, the survivor withdraws from the Individual Assistance program, or the survivor was “unhoused” before the storm.
The agency said 740 of the 2,700 households in the program are no longer eligible, and FEMA is contacting them with relocation notifications.
“Survivors who still need assistance with their recovery should stay in touch with FEMA to provide regular updates on their housing status and update contact information, so their recovery process is not delayed,” the agency wrote in its release.
The outgoing Biden administration on Jan. 6 provided FEMA with $1.35 billion for two grant programs to help communities enhance their resilience to impacts from extreme weather events.
Trump to Tour California Wildfire Devastation
Trump will also be visiting Los Angeles later today, after the region has been scorched by wildfires since early January, leaving tens of thousands of buildings in rubble.The president said there will be conditions for aid to California: The state must first pass a voter ID law and also route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for fire response and agriculture. California had implemented policies to allow water runoff into the Pacific Ocean to protect an endangered fish species, the Delta smelt.
“If they release the water, they wouldn’t have had a problem,” Trump said, adding that North Carolina was facing a destructive storm it could not control.
