By chance, it was California, a blue state that had the ongoing climate enhanced disaster as Trump was taking office, but inevitably, disasters now hitting Red States, as the administration, following the Project 2025 blueprint, is dismantling FEMA and disaster responses.
FEMA currently showing up in Kentucky, but stiffing Georgia, which is still digging out from Hurricane Helene.
In January, Gov. Brian Kemp requested that FEMA extend the period in which local governments in Georgia could be reimbursed for costs associated with Hurricane Helen cleanup. Sens. Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock also called on the administration to extend the deadline.
Last Wednesday, Cameron Hamilton, the senior official performing the duties of the administrator, informed Kemp that the request had been denied.
The backstory:
Hurricane Helen tore through the South in October, leaving flooding, fallen trees, and other damage behind in its wake. At least 34 people in the state were killed during the storm.
Experts estimate the cost to farmers, timber growers and other agribusinesses from Florida to Virginia will reach more than $10 billion. The toll includes ravaged crops, uprooted timber, wrecked farm equipment and mangled chicken houses, as well as indirect costs such as lost productivity at cotton gins and poultry processing plants.
Georgia farmers suffered storm losses of at least $5.5 billion, according to an analysis by the University of Georgia. In North Carolina, a state agency calculated farmers suffered $3.1 billion in crop losses and recovery costs after Helene brought record rainfall and flooding.
Writing to President Donald Trump, Ossoff and Warnock said that the funding for the Debris Coverage Program from FEMA “has been crucial in assisting these impacted counties in helping these communities rebuild.”
While states like Florida and South Carolina had their programs extended 180 days, Georgia’s was only extended 120 and was set to end on Feb. 3.
What they’re saying:
In the acting administrator for FEMA’s letter to Kemp, Hamilton wrote that “it has been determined that the increased level of funding you have requested for major disaster FEMA-4830-DR is not warranted.”
From tornadoes to mudslides and floods and more floods, Kentucky has endured an unlucky streak, stretching back too many uncomfortable years to count, of being pounded by one climate disaster after another. Over the last four years, the flooding in Eastern Kentucky has killed more than 50 people. The previous December, tornadoes on the western side of the state left 80 dead.
Ms. Lewis, 44, who also works as a respiratory therapist at Pikeville Medical Center, said that, while her house had not been damaged, many of her neighbors had not been so lucky. Many, in fact, had just begun to move back into homes after being flooded out in 2022.
“The rain, PTSD, so many people have it, just the sound of rain, and it was just awful,” she said. “I mean, your heart sinks for everybody who had to swim out and lost everything.”
In Clay County, about 75 miles west of Whitesburg, Todd Hicks, the pastor at Oneida Community Church, said he could tell by looking at remote cameras at the church that there was about five feet of water in the basement. There will likely be mold issues, he said, and the heat and water pumps will probably be affected, too.
He said the church had served as a refuge for many after the devastating floods in Eastern Kentucky in 2022. “We were the place that they come to,” he said. “Now I hope and pray we can get some help back when we’re in trouble.”