Lawmakers and officials in Southern states are still trying to figure out what additional resources they may have to request from the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and if they could reliably get it — following this weekend’s heavy snow and ice storms.
More than 600,000 people experienced power outages across the country, with Southern states taking the brunt of the storm. Tennessee experienced more than 200,000 power outages as of Monday afternoon, the most of any state, while Mississippi had more than 140,000 outages and Louisiana had just over 110,000.
As the storm approached, President Donald Trump approved emergency declarations for 12 states, including Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky and Virginia.
However, deep staffing cuts at FEMA created concern that recovery efforts could fall by the wayside. But just prior to the snow storm, FEMA staff were told that the agency would halt its terminations.
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Jeff Yarbro, a Democratic state senator from Tennessee who lost power at his Nashville home Sunday morning, told NOTUS it was “hard to even assess the damage” or what he would request from FEMA due to the immediate concern of clearing roads, restoring electricity and keeping people warm.
“I think I’m still trying to figure that out to be honest,” Yarbro said. “I think that the need for having additional workers to deal with shelters could become extreme if we’re not able to restore more power to more people soon. I don’t know if we’ve got all those resources or not, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out today.”
“What the federal government should be doing, what they are doing, what we need them to do, in the mismatch between all that,” he continued. “In typical times, one of the first things you would do is you want to surge all the federal resources possible. And I think that that’s still probably the case here, but the focus of the federal government is clearly not where it’s supposed to be right now.”
Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat from Louisiana, said he was “prepared to advocate for federal assistance” from the federal government.
“I am also focused on ensuring federal agencies remain ready to assist with recovery efforts should the storm strain state and local capacity,” he told NOTUS in a statement.
Eric Ager, a Democratic state representative from North Carolina, told NOTUS that the storm ended up being “less impactful” than was expected western North Carolina. But Ager said more resources for “preventive” measures could be needed.
“I do think that there’s always a role for more money spent on preventative efforts,” Ager said. “I think the more that we can harden our infrastructure, including cell phone towers and power lines and that sort of thing, and get things ready for a storm, I think the better off we are.”
Texas experienced more than 40,000 power outages across the state from the weekend’s storms. The state is still recovering from July’s deadly floods in Kerr County, after which FEMA employees criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the agency’s slow response to the disaster.
Despite the damage from the storm, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has not applied for disaster assistance from FEMA, catching the ire of some disaster-recovery advocates.
“States cannot handle major disasters alone—especially when they’ve failed to invest in resilient infrastructure. This week, there will be fewer resources just as communities need help most because Abbott is refusing to ask for help,” Derrick Osobase, council member for the disaster-recovery advocacy group Sabotaging Our Safety advisory council, said in a press release Monday.
A White House spokesperson referred NOTUS to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s press conference when asked about the White House’s efforts to coordinate with other states.
“President Donald Trump continues to monitor this situation closely and he has remained in close contact with FEMA and emergency responders,” Leavitt said during the press conference.
She added that the approved declarations would enable “states to access critical federal resources to supplement their response efforts if needed.”
“These declarations will help statewide efforts of turning power back on, clearing roads for emergency services and keeping communities safe,” Leavitt said. “The White House will continue to correspond directly with governors and local officials in the coming days, especially in those states that were harshly impacted by this storm.”
James Etchison, an emergency management coordinator in Brewster County, Texas, told NOTUS that the Texas Division of Emergency Management was activated this weekend, and has enough resources to help its residents without the additional funds.
Etchison believes FEMA should be less “reactive” and learn from the state’s “proactive” model.
“It feels like we’re more organized and we’re more on top of it, and we preplan to a ridiculous extent,” Etchison said. I don’t know much about the FEMA model, but I know that most of the FEMA training that I’ve been to, they do a lot of planning for the big cities, but they don’t do much for rural areas … But Texas takes the rural areas into account.”
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