Latest FEMA Headlines

All the headlines from our FEMA Topic Page, ordered by recency.

FEMA Announces Federal Disaster Assistance for Several Northeast States

Jan 4 2018 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has announced that federal disaster assistance has been made available to the states of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the...

Disasters Affected 8% of U.S. Population in 2017, FEMA Notes in Review of Historic Year

Jan 3 2018 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supported 59 major disaster declarations and 16 emergency declarations in 2017, a year during which unprecedented disasters affected more than 25 million Americans, almost...

FEMA OKs Disaster Declaration for California

Jan 3 2018 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency has made federal disaster assistance available to California to supplement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by wildfires from Dec. 4, 2017 and...

Special Reuters Report: The High Cost of Building in High Flood Risk Areas

Dec 12 2017 // When Hurricane Harvey sent two feet of water rolling into this small community about 35 miles north of Houston, Alfredo Becerra had to flee his modest 1,500-square-foot house.Muddy floodwater submerged the furniture and...

U.S. Flood Program to Collect $1 Billion in Reinsurance for Hurricane Harvey Claims

Dec 6 2017 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is seeking to recover the full $1.042 billion of its reinsurance coverage to help pay the federal flood insurance program’s losses from Hurricane Harvey. Those paid...

Nearly 894,000 Texans Apply for FEMA Harvey Aid

Dec 4 2017 // Nearly 894,000 people in Texas met this week’s deadline to register for federal disaster assistance to help them recover from Hurricane Harvey, with more than $1.4 billion in funding approved so far, the Federal...

Puerto Rico Agrees FEMA to Approve How Disaster Aid Is Spent

Nov 28 2017 // Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said the island has agreed to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency unprecedented power to oversee disaster-relief spending, a step that may mollify Congress as the territory...

How Much Harm Did Harvey Do to Texas Homes?

Nov 27 2017 // Note: This story originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.As the state undertakes what could be the biggest housing recovery in American history after Hurricane Harvey, potentially thousands of Texas renters and homeowners...

Florida’s Everglades City Pushes Toward Recovery After Irma’s Hard Hit

Nov 16 2017 // Two months after Hurricane Irma’s storm surge slammed through tiny Everglades City, the mountains of debris that lined the streets have been reduced to scattered piles and the occasional abandoned stove or...

House Passes Flood Insurance Program Extension with Reforms

Nov 15 2017 // The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 237-189 to pass the 21st Century Flood Reform Act (H.R. 2874) – a package of seven bills that reauthorizes the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) until 2022 and...

Florida CFO Voices Concerns to FEMA Over Policy Management Vendor Transition

Oct 25 2017 // Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reconsider an upcoming vendor transition that he says could delay the processing of federal flood claims in...

Nashville Keeps Winning FEMA Flood Appeals

Oct 20 2017 // While Federal Emergency Management Agency denials and reversals have roiled some communities following natural disasters, officials in Tennessee’s capital have been unusually successful at winning their appeals.An...

Joplin School District Still Haggling with FEMA over Cost of Tornado Repairs

Oct 17 2017 // More than six years after a deadly tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, the heavily damaged local school district has rebuilt.Exactly how much of those costs the district will have to shoulder remains up in the air. The...

Common Reasons FEMA Denies Disaster Funds

Oct 17 2017 // Local governments and nonprofits trying to recover from major disasters have sometimes learned the hard way that money spent on protective measures, cleanup and rebuilding is not always reimbursed by the U.S....

House Approves $36.5B Disaster Aid with Puerto Rico, Wildfires, Flood Insurance Funds

Oct 12 2017 // The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved $36.5 billion in emergency relief for hurricane-hit Puerto Rico and other areas that have suffered recent disasters.In addition to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico,...

Mobile Home Communities in Florida Keys Face Uncertainty After Irma

Sep 29 2017 // Architect Kobi Karp has a vision for affordable housing in the Florida Keys: residences set at coconut-tree height to keep them dry, atop concrete columns holding them in place.Key West clients sought out his designs...

FEMA Statement on Texas Toxic Sites Clarified by EPA

Sep 26 2017 // The Environmental Protection Agency said on Sept. 24 it has recovered 517 containers filled with unidentified, potentially hazardous material found floating in or washed up along Texas waterways after the devastating...

Note to Texas, Florida: Insurance Fights Over Sandy Rage On

Sep 25 2017 // The destructive floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy receded quickly, but some storm victims are still neck-deep in a battle over insurance payouts. And many victims of this year’s storms in Texas, Florida and elsewhere...

Researchers: FEMA’s Houston Flood Maps Outdated Long Before Harvey

Sep 22 2017 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood plain maps for parts of southeastern Houston were woefully out-of-date long before Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas coast, a new study suggests.Researchers at Rice...

FEMA Not Relying on Trailers to House Hurricane Victims

Sep 20 2017 // The hurricanes that battered Texas and Florida have likely spawned the worst disaster-created housing crisis since Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents without homes more than a decade...