A series of disasters taught SC how to work with FEMA. Leaders encourage reform, not ending it.

It’s been three months since the Strickland family fled their Spartanburg home — their young children in their arms — wading through flood waters that spilled out of Lawson’s Fork Creek with torrential rain from Hurricane Helene.

They loved their little neighborhood, which had no history of floods. In the days after the storm, the support of friends and neighbors bolstered them to rebuild despite not having flood insurance to cover the cost.

They had already started tearing out damaged walls and flooring, furniture and appliances when the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved them for funding, allowing them to hire subcontractors instead of building it back all on their own. But getting that aid wasn’t easy.

“They knew me well,” Michael Strickland said. “I called at least once a week for an update.”

It took multiple appeals and more than two months, but the federal disaster agency ultimately came through for the Stricklands.

They were able to get the maximum amount FEMA provides for housing assistance — $42,500 — plus $15,000 for what FEMA calls “other needs,” which can pay for new furniture and appliances, as well as rent and moving expenses while they wait for repairs. (That, too, maxes out at $42,500.)

Still, the bureaucratic labyrinth was frustrating.

“We’re ready for all of this to be behind us,” Strickland said.

They lived through deadly Helene. Now families across western SC seek to rebuild, help others.

Overhauling FEMA

It’s against the backdrop of western North Carolina towns ravaged and still reeling from Hurricane Helene that President Donald Trump suggested abolishing the agency.

“FEMA has been a very big disappointment,” he said Jan. 24 during a briefing alongside North Carolina officials in Asheville. “They cost a tremendous amount of money. It’s very bureaucratic, and it’s very slow.”

He announced the beginning of “fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

Trump said he may recommend that states fully run their own disaster response with direct payments from the federal government rather than coordinating with the federal disaster agency, reported States Newsroom affiliate NC Newsline.

States “take care of problems. And a governor can handle something very quickly,” Trump said.

While South Carolina Republicans have voiced support for a FEMA overhaul, they’ve stopped short of doing away with the agency altogether.

“If you want to look at FEMA, reshape FEMA, to make it more effective, count me in,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator, told reporters in Columbia.

As promised, Trump signed an order Jan. 24 calling for a review of the agency’s performance in responding to disasters. Graham expects anything that comes out of the study to land somewhere in the middle — cutting through some of the red tape but not completely eliminating the federal agency.

“FEMA is frustrating at times,” Graham added. “I’d like to make it easier to help people with disaster relief.”

Responding to disaster

Ahead of and in the midst of a disaster, preparation and response starts at the local and state level, with help from volunteer organizations including the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and religious-affiliated groups.

When there is warning — as with hurricanes — FEMA can pre-position stockpiled supplies like water or tarps in areas likely to be most affected.

It can also deliver more as needed. In the aftermath of Helene, it shipped more than 7 million meals, more than 6.5 million liters of water, 150 generators and more than 200,000 tarps to bolster state-led efforts across the Southeast, the agency announced Oct. 1, four days after the storm ripped through the Carolinas.

But it’s the state and city road crews that clear debris and repair roads.

Within one week of Helene, 859 of the 900 roads closed across South Carolina were back open. Cleanup continues. As of last week, crews working for the state Department of Transportation had collected 4 million cubic yards of debris, according to DOT Secretary Justin Powell. He expects $50 million of his agency’s expenses won’t be reimbursed by FEMA — which he’s asking legislators to cover.

State agencies also set up emergency shelters alongside charitable organizations and hand out medical supplies. The religious groups cook meals, and help clean and repair homes. And while FEMA has search-and-rescue teams it can deploy, that’s mostly done by local first responders, alongside the National Guard and state police.

In South Carolina, the heads of state law enforcement agencies as well as the state military department — which includes the State Guard, National Guard and Emergency Management Division — all report to the governor.

FEMA has contracts with hotels to put people up while their homes are being repaired. If destruction is particularly widespread, the agency can also bring in temporary housing trailers.

But the bulk of FEMA’s aid is financial.

“FEMA is essentially a bank, and they provide funds,” Gov. Henry McMaster said.

This aid is only triggered by a disaster declaration from the president. Governors request those declarations when a natural disaster overwhelms what a state can handle on its own.

FEMA’s financial lifeboat comes in three forms — direct funding for families, funding to reimburse local and state agencies, and funding for projects to reduce damage in future storms.

The question remains whether states could do a better job giving out that federal money on their own.

Disaster by the numbers

In its report 30 days after Helene struck the Palmetto State as a tropical storm, FEMA said it had deployed more than 650 workers in South Carolina, operating 24 centers where residents could apply in person for aid and conducting upwards of 43,000 home inspections of the uninsured and underinsured.

Fewer South Carolinians are buying flood insurance. Some may not even realize they should.

If FEMA were abolished, it would be up to the states to find the extra personnel to do that work.

It would also throw into question the fate of the National Flood Insurance Program, which the agency oversees. The federal government has been the primary underwriter of flood insurance in the United States since the late 1960s and has a little under 200,000 active policies in South Carolina.

Asked whether he thought South Carolina could handle its own major disaster response, McMaster instead said the state has a good working relationship with FEMA by virtue of the frequency of hurricanes impacting the Palmetto State.

That includes widespread flooding in the wake of Hurricane Joaquin in 2015, Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Florence in 2018, Ian in 2022 and most recently Helene.

According to data from FEMA, about 442,000 South Carolina families applied for aid after Helene. That’s nearly three times the number who applied for help after the 2015 flood, Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence combined.

A little more than half of those Helene applications were actually approved.

Reasons for denial vary, but top reasons reported by FEMA include not sending all requested documentation or cases where damage ends up being covered by insurance or a different source, such as crowdfunding or assistance from volunteers. From submitting an application to receiving a check or direct deposit takes 30 days or more — two to four times that if a person is denied and has to appeal.

The Stricklands had a friend who had gone through a similar experience seeking aid after a disaster. His advice to them was to be persistent.

“When storms like this hit, it’s not just my house,” Michael Strickland said. “There were millions affected and they have a full docket. Their job is to help those who need it so proving (proof of) damages was crucial.”

Aid to residents

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, who represents the coastal Lowcountry where flooding and hurricanes are common, said the president is right “to put FEMA under a microscope.”

She invoked past hurricanes, saying “states are still recovering years after these storms made landfall because FEMA’s bureaucracy slows everything to a crawl.”

“North Carolina is still in ruins post-Helene, and parts of South Carolina are still recovering as well,” said the Charleston County Republican.

But money paid from FEMA directly to families is meant to give residents a hand up. It does not rebuild lives.

The agency is not designed to restore a home to its former condition; it only helps make homes habitable and digitally connected.

That means getting them to a condition that’s structurally sound with a working bathroom, bare kitchen essentials such as a refrigerator and a stove, beds for each member of the household, power, heat, air conditioning, a couch, a television, a computer. But it does not cover repairs to rooms such as spare bedrooms or home offices.

After Helene, about 1,500 people reported to FEMA that their homes had been destroyed, South Carolina’s Office of Resilience chief Ben Duncan, told legislators this week. But by FEMA standards, only about 200 of those homes meet the definition for total destruction, meaning the cost to restore it exceeds 50% of the home’s prior market value.

“The problem is, even if FEMA identifies it as a destroyed home, their maximum payout is $42,500 and you can’t replace a home for that amount of money,” Duncan added.

That leaves people turning to charitable organizations for help, or if they can afford it, taking out a low-to-no-interest federal disaster loan.

One way the state has sought to aid victims through this process is establishing a trained corps of case managers who stay with families through the entire rebuild to answer questions or guide them through any snags in the application process. Established by the Office of Resilience in 2022, the corps has about 50 reservists who can be called into action after a major storm, with plans to recruit more.

In early 2024, before Helene was even on meteorologists’ radar, the Biden administration did announce efforts to get more funds into the hands of victims, such as quick cash payments for families to get essentials in the early days of recovery and more aid for those who are underinsured.

In South Carolina, FEMA reported more than $96 million worth of damage to impacted homes. Less than half that amount has been approved for home repairs not covered by private insurance.

The agency also paid out $215 million to South Carolinians for everything from storage costs and prescription drugs to clothing. It also replaced what’s deemed essential furniture, such as a bed for each resident, and appliances, such as a refrigerator and a washing machine, that’s not covered by homeowners’ or renters’ insurance.

Applications for aid closed near the end of last month.

Aid to cities

The federal government also reimburses states and local governments for work they do, such as debris removal, road repairs or first responder overtime costs.

In the past decade, FEMA has approved $230 million to South Carolina state and local governments, which are often required to partially match that with funds of their own.

SC is buying out more than 200 repeatedly flooded homes. Here’s how the effort has gone.

But FEMA takes longer to distribute this funding and some say it hasn’t always been a smooth process.

For the Upstate town of Seneca, it took more than four years and a lawsuit to get paid for cleanup work the town conducted after it was struck by a tornado in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assistant City Administrator Josh Riches was new to the job managing the town’s finances. His predecessor told him the application for aid would be straightforward. It was anything but.

Seneca is one of a handful of South Carolina towns that operates its own power grid. When the tornado snapped more than half the poles around the town, it needed funding to replace them. FEMA twice rejected the request before finally reaching an agreement to cover $6.5 million in costs.

“Aside from management costs, we’ve been made whole,” Riches said.

But had a disaster like Helene struck in the interim, the town’s disaster reserves were already wiped out.

Part of what slowed the process, Riches said, was a dual review process — first by FEMA and then by the state’s Emergency Management Division. He said two of the four years were spent working with the state to get their sign off, but because those employees were in South Carolina, he could at least put faces to the regulators’ names.

“With FEMA it feels almost like a black box,” he said.

Riches said having just one review conducted by the state would take out a level of redundancy while still preventing misspending.

“I get it, but it sure makes it frustrating,” he said.

Rainy day funds

That delay also was a point of frustration for Kevin Shwedo, who former Gov. Nikki Haley tapped to lead recovery efforts after the historic floods of 2015. The state waited 18 months for money, said the former deputy commanding officer at Fort Jackson.

“The bureaucracy that takes place slows things down,” said Shwedo, director of the state Department of Motor Vehicles. “We needed a way to get (Washington, D.C.) to accelerate the process because those people’s lives were put on hold.”

It’s what led the state to create its OneSC fund, taking in private donations that are sent to charitable organizations aiding storm victims. The state also has as a pair of rainy day funds for early response, as well as future prevention. Those funds allow the state to address immediate needs, like buying and passing out tarps to cover roofs and funding crews to tear out flood-damaged walls and flooring. It also pays for permitting and environmental evaluations needed to get homes ready for a rebuild.

McMaster, for his part, has asked for money in the state budget to replenish those funds after Helene.

If approved, that will give the Office of Resilience more than $70 million to help victims Helene or future storms with the necessary prep work as the agency waits for grant funding from other federal agencies it can use to rebuild homes for low-income families impacted by the storm.

“I’ve seen families not getting what they should have gotten,” Shwedo said. “We can’t afford to let that go dormant again.”

SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.