Few states, cities have capacity to handle disasters without FEMA, reports find

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton told emergency managers that states should prepare to respond to disasters without federal help in as soon as six months, Politico reported this week.

But two recent federal government reports indicate that funding and staffing challenges at state and local emergency management agencies could make that difficult.

Politico obtained a recording of Hamilton’s remarks during the National Emergency Management Association’s annual conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The study found that more than half of local emergency management agencies have one or fewer full-time employees and “a notable percentage” of local emergency management directors are volunteers.

States’ rainy day funds, designed to cover gaps when revenues are insufficient to meet spending demands, “may be limited by statute in when and how they can assist disaster-related budget shortfalls,” the CRS report states.