Latest FEMA Headlines
All the headlines from our FEMA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
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...
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...
ICT Pegs Hurricane Harvey Insured Losses at $19B
Sep 15 2017 // The Insurance Council of Texas (ICT) has placed the insured losses from Hurricane Harvey at $19 billion. That number includes an estimated $11 billion in flood losses insured by the National Flood Insurance...
FEMA: 25% of Florida Keys Homes Destroyed by Irma
Sep 14 2017 // With 25 percent of the homes in the Florida Keys feared destroyed, emergency workers Tuesday rushed to find Hurricane Irma’s victims – dead or alive – and deliver food and water to the stricken island chain. As...
Congress Eyes More FEMA Disaster Aid, Short-Term Flood Insurance Renewal
Sep 7 2017 // The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency will run out of disaster assistance funding on Friday unless Congress approves more money, two Florida senators warned on Thursday. As Hurricane Irma barrels through the...
Why the Number of Coastal Homeowners with Flood Insurance Has Been Shrinking
Sep 7 2017 // Amanda Spartz nearly did not renew her home’s flood insurance policy after her first year in Florida. Two hurricanes came close to the Fort Lauderdale suburbs last year, but they didn’t hit and her home...
Harvey, Houston, America, Politics and Building Codes
Aug 31 2017 // Jerry Garcia’s home in Corpus Christi missed the worst of Hurricane Harvey by just a few miles and lost nothing more than some shingles and his backyard pier, which turned up further down Oso Bay. A 5-foot bulkhead...
FEMA Asked to Reconsider Minot Flood Risk Map
Aug 25 2017 // The Souris River Joint Board has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to review the preliminary flood risk map for Minot. Board members said the failure to consider the operations of Canadian dams in the...
Hurricane Harvey Looks to Be First Big Test for Trump FEMA Director Long
Aug 25 2017 // Brock Long knew it was just a matter of time. “We’ve gone 11 years without a major hurricane land-falling in the U.S.—that’s a one-in-2,000 chance,” said Long, President Donald Trump’s...
