FEMA has now had time to reconstitute and has been on a hiring binge for over a year. They are a much more robust organization than they were half a decade ago. The FEMA Regions are the ones in particular that have a slew of new staff.
In the month of April we have seen a record number of tornadoes impacting the Midwest and South. May is typically one of the more active tornado months of the year and there is no indication that the outbreak of tornadoes is going to stop anytime soon.
The challenge for FEMA now is not so much the disaster response, but I see the recovery being a challenge. The response for a tornado is not as difficult as that of an earthquake or hurricane that devastates entire regions. With a tornado there are still portions of cities, counties and states that were not impacted and can respond. While a tornado can be a mile wide, it is not hundreds of miles in diameter.
The test for FEMA will be in the disaster recovery phase. They already have had hundreds of tornadoes to respond to earlier in the month and now portions of Georgia and Alabama have been hard hit. Staffing up for all the necessary disaster recovery teams and maintaining an ongoing presence during the recovery process will be difficult for the impacted FEMA Regions. You can expect that there will be plenty of staff resources being shifted from other parts of the nation to come help in these endeavors.
Politicians always want to make proclamations about "being there" through thick and thin for those impacted by disasters. The truth of the matter is that neither government or nonprofits will make anyone whole. Good primary insurance is your first line of defense. It you don't have that, there is a government safety net, but it will not put you back where you were before the disaster. For those people with resources the Individual Assistance offered by FEMA will end up being Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Loans--which you still need to be able to qualify for. Outright grants to those who have little means is possible, but that amount while it has gone up in recent years is not such that it will replace a home.
The other factor in play is that this is the first series of disasters that have happened since the housing crisis has hit the nation. Home values have fallen and that is sure to complicate the recovery process.
