JACKSON, Miss. — On Friday, President Donald Trump authorized disaster assistance for eight states, offering relief to communities affected by natural disasters that have been waiting for aid for several months.
This approval of major disaster declarations allows Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas to gain financial support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The states had applied for help following a major storm system that struck in mid-March.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves expressed gratitude for the aid, saying, “This support will go a long way in helping Mississippi to rebuild and recover. Our entire state is grateful for his approval.” Mississippi was significantly impacted, experiencing 18 tornadoes between March 14 and 15.
Residents of Walthall County in Mississippi had aired their frustrations earlier, as they had been waiting months for federal help. The county’s emergency manager reported that cleanup operations had been paused since early May due to a lack of funds while awaiting federal assistance.
This week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged to accelerate Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe’s disaster aid request after U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, raised concerns about the wait time.
Noem remarked that “one of the failures that FEMA has had in the past is that people who incur this kind of damage and lose everything sit there for months and sometimes years and never get the promised critical response that they think or that they believe they should be getting from the federal government.”
President Trump has pointed to these long wait times as a reason for his consideration of significant changes to the agency. The newly appointed acting head of FEMA has indicated intentions to shift more of the disaster response and recovery responsibility onto the states.
FEMA did not provide an immediate explanation for the sudden string of approval decisions.