Up to date at 3:40 p.m. on September 5, 2025
Derrick Hiebert had deliberate to stay it out at FEMA. He was an assistant administrator engaged on hazard mitigation—he specialised in getting communities ready for disasters—and like many emergency-management specialists I’ve spoken with, he thinks that the American strategy to administering disasters wanted an overhaul, even a radical one. The programs had gotten “clunky over time,” he mentioned. One thing wanted to vary. So Hiebert was open to seeing how President Donald Trump would possibly change it.
Then the Trump administration canceled a serious grant-making program that helped states and cities construct infrastructure to climate future storms and fires—a core mission of Hiebert’s division. (Final month, a decide quickly blocked the administration from reallocating its funds.) Some FEMA leaders had been fired, and contract renewals for a considerable variety of his on-the-ground staff have been in jeopardy. Doing his job would solely get more durable, if not unattainable, he thought. Hiebert additionally discovered his spouse was anticipating twins. They already had two youngsters, and out of the blue the danger that his personal position or maybe his entire company may very well be erased at any time appeared extra personally threatening. “If one thing occurred and I have been fired, with twins we might be destitute,” he advised me. He left FEMA in June and took a job in catastrophe contracting, at AECOM, a major participant within the sector.
The AECOM job paid higher, Hiebert advised me, however extra enticing was its safety. No matter FEMA’s precise destiny below Trump, disasters will nonetheless occur. Since many states lack their very own cadre of emergency-management experience or manpower, they may doubtless pay personal contractors to step in the place the federal authorities has stepped out. And lots of can be staffed by former federal staff.
Proper now, the federal authorities’s experience in disasters is actually transferring to non-public corporations. Hiebert estimates that between one-third and one-half of his colleagues in FEMA hazard-mitigation management have taken private-sector jobs, or will quickly. Marion McFadden, who oversaw catastrophe grants on the Division of Housing and City Improvement in the course of the Biden administration, advised me that most of the HUD executives she labored with are shifting to the personal sector. She herself is now a vice chairman on the emergency-management contractor IEM, and is aware of of a number of contractors who’ve been making ready for an inflow of enterprise by hiring disaster-readiness corps. These can be “the very same individuals who previously labored straight for FEMA,” she mentioned.
The trail from authorities emergency administration to catastrophe consulting is properly trod: Former FEMA directors and state emergency-management heads have gone on to steer consulting companies, and firms similar to AECOM and IEM inventory their ranks with former authorities staff. However the catastrophe managers and specialists I spoke with mentioned the present exodus from the general public to the personal sector is exclusive in its scope. “It’s a interval like I’ve by no means seen earlier than within the alternative to rent skilled of us,” Bryan Koon, the CEO of IEM, advised me.
The Trump administration says its goal in shrinking or probably dissolving FEMA is to push extra duty for disasters onto the states. This technique is an inversion of what led President Jimmy Carter to create the company in 1979: Governors, pissed off by the shortage of a coordinating company for disasters, requested it. Having 50 state companies prepared to answer comparatively uncommon catastrophes is inefficient; a federal catastrophe company would have the benefits of standardized protocols, expertise, and employees who might be deployed the place wanted. Now they might be largely on their very own once more. And most states, missing their very own cadre of experience or manpower, will want assist to fill within the gaps left by the federal authorities. States would possibly lean on one another greater than they already do, however they may absolutely additionally flip extra to non-public contractors, a lot of which is able to now be staffed by former federal staff.
Personal contractors already play a big position in catastrophe restoration. A storm sufferer arriving at a disaster-recovery middle would possibly converse with a non-public marketing consultant working alongside federal, state, or nonprofit personnel. Contractors are often employed to clear particles, do welfare checks, and full harm assessments. Typically FEMA hires contractors straight, however states and cities rent them too—usually to assist make sense of the labyrinthine financial-assistance course of for disasters.
This, many specialists each in and out of doors of presidency agree, is a part of the issue that wants fixing. Grants for restoration come from “30 totally different federal-government companies that fund 91 totally different restoration packages,” Brock Lengthy, a former head of FEMA below the primary Trump administration, advised me. Lengthy works in personal catastrophe contracting now too, as the manager chairman of Hagerty Consulting, and he mentioned that, after getting billions of {dollars} promised by the federal authorities, “most native leaders appear like deer in a headlights”—they “do not know what they’re entitled to, the best way to search the cash, or use it inside the entire guidelines and conditions.” That’s the place companies like his are available. The grant course of additionally usually entails attorneys, and years-long fights by which states attempt to recoup catastrophe funds from the feds. “Proper now it takes a group of attorneys to get a declare by way of. That’s why I’ve a job. It’s insane,” Danielle Aymond, a lawyer on the agency Baker Donelson and former government counsel for Louisiana’s emergency-management workplace, advised me.
Essentially, the catastrophe consultants I spoke with felt that they have been serving to individuals at a few of their worst moments. They tended to view their private-sector work as akin to the work they did in authorities: “A number of us nonetheless see ourselves as public servants,” Hiebert mentioned.
Nonetheless, for-profit corporations can include their very own issues. Horne LLP, a consulting firm that has labored on catastrophe restoration in quite a lot of southern states, not too long ago paid $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit by which federal prosecutors alleged that the corporate falsified applicant data and filed pretend invoices whereas working for the federal authorities. (The corporate denied wrongdoing and settled.) Federal-government auditors finally discovered that, in Texas, after Hurricanes Dolly and Ike, catastrophe consultants have been charging exorbitant charges for his or her companies. In Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, the federal government spent practically $9 billion on contracts later understood to be tormented by “waste, fraud, mismanagement, or abuse.”
Already, discovering out what governments do with the cash they get for catastrophe response is tough, Madison Sloan, a lawyer who directs a disaster-recovery undertaking at Texas Appleseed, an advocacy group, advised me; she worries that including in additional contractors would make monitoring spending unattainable. Plus, unshackled from federal civil-rights obligations, states could not work as arduous to distribute help equitably, DeeDee Bennett Gayle, the chair of the College at Albany’s emergency-management division, advised me. “The challenges that existed earlier than will doubtless enhance.” The Trump administration has achieved away, for instance, with civil rights and fair-housing obligations beforehand required for recipients of post-disaster housing grants from a serious HUD program. Within the absence of such restrictions, “some states are going to create guidelines that unfairly deal with sure teams,” Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow on the nonprofit City Institute, advised me. And nevertheless good their intentions, contractors can be working for the state. “They don’t have a public-good mission. They’re doing the work that they’re contracted for,” he mentioned.
Many emergency-management specialists do agree that extra of the burden of catastrophe threat must shift again onto states; FEMA, because it stands now, is making an attempt to do an excessive amount of. How precisely the Trump administration will reform the company continues to be unclear: Trump has mentioned he’ll finish FEMA, however his administration additionally not too long ago introduced it’s getting the company “again on observe.” Its staff and former directors beg to vary: Final week, simply earlier than the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, virtually 200 FEMA staff signed a letter warning Congress that the company was liable to one other failure on the identical order. Jennifer Forester, a FEMA worker who signed her title to the letter and was, alongside together with her fellow signatories, subsequently placed on go away, advised me that, though personal corporations are a part of the combo of catastrophe response, they’re no substitute for presidency, which “will not be and shouldn’t be motivated by assembly a backside line,” she mentioned. The president’s FEMA-review council is meant to make suggestions in regards to the company’s destiny by November. “FEMA’s outsized position created a bloated paperwork that disincentivized state funding in their very own resilience,” the White Home spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in a press release; the overview council’s suggestions would assist make sure the company’s work “stays supplemental and applicable to the size of catastrophe.” A FEMA spokesperson mentioned in a press release that the council would “strengthen how help is delivered.”
One very actual chance is that the nation will merely spend much less on catastrophe preparation and restoration within the years to return. Koon, the IEM government, is hiring some departing FEMA of us, however advised me uncertainty over how or whether or not the Trump administration will fund states’ catastrophe recoveries has saved him from hiring extra. Disasters will maintain getting worse and extra frequent, “so there’s loads of work that may should be achieved,” he mentioned. However with out FEMA and different federal companies to step in when their budgets fall quick, state and native leaders will ask themselves whether or not they can afford to or whether or not they want to provide the total suite of catastrophe work that the federal authorities as soon as did. Monetary help, housing help, and disaster-care administration could shrink, Koon mentioned. So his contracts could too.
At current, most states preserve a rainy-day fund, however few have sufficient saved to handle a catastrophe. Small states might be overwhelmed by a catastrophe that leaves just a few million {dollars}’s value of harm; Eric Forand, the director of Vermont’s division of emergency administration, advised me that harm from flooding in 2023 ran to $600 million statewide. Floods have pummeled the state each summer time since: This 12 months, flooding in Sutton, residence to fewer than 1,000 individuals, ran to 25 instances the city’s annual street price range, he mentioned. The state has pre-disaster agreements with some personal contractors however, relying on what occurs to FEMA, may must lean on the personal sector extra. “We will’t enhance and reduce the scale of our everlasting employees” as disasters come and go, Forand mentioned.
As summer time floods enhance with local weather change, Vermont has been working towards altering its price range so it may handle extra of its smaller disasters by itself. However personal contracting is dear, and irrespective of how the state contorts itself, “there’ll at all times be a spot for FEMA and the federal authorities for giant disasters,” Forand advised me. The associated fee and personnel calls for of a serious catastrophe will at all times far outstrip Vermont’s capability to pay for and employees one, as they’d outstrip the capability of many states. Catastrophe restoration in each state is already an extended, arduous, imperfect street. If FEMA stops stepping in after catastrophic occasions, Hiebert advised me, “I feel you’d see a variety of locations that may simply by no means recuperate.” Catastrophe contractors will undoubtedly step in additional, however solely as a lot as a state will pay.
This story initially reported incorrectly that Horne LLP had been barred from receiving authorities contracts in West Virginia. In response to Horne’s settlement with federal prosecutors, in July 2025, the Buying Division of the West Virginia Division of Administration initiated debarment proceedings, which Horne fought. The state withdrew the proceedings on September 4, 2025.