Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor, thinks the state can shoulder the burden, but Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner warns of “bankrupting” states that suffer heavy hurricane damage.
By Charles Paullin
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
CHESTERFIELD, Va.—Virginia was one of several states in the Appalachian region slammed by Hurricane Helene’s rainfall last September. The storm caused the New River to crest at 31 feet a day after it battered the region. In one area of Damascus, homes were lifted up and washed away.
A separate storm besieged southwest Virginia in February, knocking out power to 203,000 homes and closing 270 roads. Last month, a 1.5-mile stretch of U.S. Route 58, a major thoroughfare in the road-constrained mountainous region, reopened after getting washed out.
Now, at the beginning of a 2025 hurricane season forecast to be “above average,” Virginia is in preparation mode for the season that typically picks up steam throughout summer and does its damage in the fall, like Helene did last year.
Scientists have continuously pointed to human-created emissions leading to atmospheric warming and rising oceans that contribute to hurricanes’ more intense rainfall. Jeff Orrock, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service’s Wakefield office, said research indicates there have been more major hurricanes in the last 13 years than there had been in the half-century before that.
“What we consider normal is a higher number of storms than what we considered normal, say, 20 years ago,” Orrock said in an interview.
Against this backdrop of worsening disasters, the Trump administration is suggesting that states should shoulder significantly more of the burden of response and recovery. Layoffs and buyouts have cut a big swath through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and President Donald Trump has said he might want to eliminate FEMA entirely. His proposed budget for the fiscal year starting in October would cut $646 million from the agency.
In January, Trump ordered a newly established council to “assess” FEMA. Later, the administration fired the acting administrator of FEMA a day after he told a congressional subcommittee that he didn’t think eliminating the agency was “in the best interest of the American people.” His replacement reportedly said during a recent staff meeting that he didn’t know there was a hurricane season.
Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, is one of two sitting governors, alongside Texas’ Greg Abbott, on Trump’s council conducting the FEMA review. At a June 1 media event marking the start of hurricane season, Youngkin told Inside Climate News that “we’ll be doing the transformation design work” over a 180-day span. That, he said, will make “FEMA more effective and more efficient and more responsive to state needs.”
“Meanwhile, FEMA’s ready to go to support anybody during hurricane season that needs it,” said Youngkin, a Trump ally.
On the other side of the political aisle, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he’s worried about the implications for his state if federal involvement in disaster response and recovery shrivels. When the losses communities suffer are too big to handle on their own, states need federal help, he said.
“Think about western North Carolina that got devastated,” he said. “I believe the costs were in the roughly $60 to $80 billion [range]. That would bankrupt the state if you had to do it all on your own. … All you’re doing is passing the buck.”
He added: “Frankly, for states like ours that can get hit both by hurricanes with our shoreline as well as this increasing number of storms that come up, for example into Southwest Virginia, we would bear a disproportionate burden. It wouldn’t be fair, it wouldn’t be right.”
What disaster recovery might look like in a post-FEMA world isn’t clear. Among the Republican proposals is to instead send federal block grants to states based in part on historical disaster frequency. But FEMA does a lot that states would find challenging or impossible to replicate, from flood insurance to training and multi-agency coordination. Youngkin acknowledged at his media event that such coordination happens on a “deep” level with local, state and federal agencies.
The changes Warner would like to see from FEMA include faster resource deployment and more equitable assistance to help climate-vulnerable states like Virginia.
Warner pointed to the agency’s individual assistance program, which provides disaster relief funding to people whose property has been damaged in a storm. But in the case of some Southwest Virginia communities, the program has provided no assistance. In a region where nearly 18 percent of people live below the federal poverty level, he said, “you can have a hundred houses destroyed in Hurley and Buchanan County that wouldn’t have the same property value as 20 houses in Fairfax County.”
Because of the lower property values in those southwestern communities, the damage costs didn’t meet FEMA thresholds, which Warner said should be adjusted.
“That’s unfair,” Warner said.
Neither the White House nor FEMA responded to requests for comment about concerns over the federal government’s role in disaster response.
The Impact of Cuts to the National Weather Service
FEMA isn’t the only agency important to disaster response that’s sustaining cuts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has faced major workforce reductions in recent months, and Trump has proposed cutting $1.5 billion from its budget starting in October, about a quarter of its current spending.
Within NOAA, the National Weather Service is down about 600 employees—the agency is looking to hire again after warnings that the cuts could endanger lives. Many of its 122 local forecasting offices are operating with reduced personnel.
When Inside Climate News asked the five offices in Virginia for their current staffing levels, each referred questions to a spokesperson for the National Weather Service, who did not answer the question. Instead, the agency sent a statement that it “continues to conduct short-term Temporary Duty assignments (TDYs), and is in the process of conducting a series of Reassignment Opportunity Notices (RONs) to fill roles at NWS field locations with the greatest operational need.
“Additionally, a targeted number of permanent, mission-critical field positions will soon be advertised under an exception to the Department-wide hiring freeze to further stabilize frontline operations,” the statement read.
Orrock said his Wakefield office was able to maintain its forecasters and technicians to monitor storms and communicate with other offices, including sending out weather warnings.
It’s important to watch for a “swinging door” weather pattern, he said. Winds from across the mid-Atlantic shut that figurative door, pushing storms into the Chesapeake Bay. But with “a nice southerly flow” the “door swings open,” causing a weather pattern to stay for weeks or months, Orrock said.
“If you get a hurricane anywhere from the Bahamas and East, and that door’s open, she’s coming up here,” Orrock said. “It’s just a matter of if it’s going to re-curve or is it going to come on in.”
Existing Planning at the State Level for Disaster Relief
A key to mitigating flood damage, environmental advocates say, is ensuring flood protections through planning and nature-based solutions to absorb water accumulations and storm surges.
Virginia provides funds to its Community Flood Preparedness Fund for that planning. But Youngkin in December 2023 withdrew the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the main source of those funds via payments made by power plant owners. Of the $830 million Virginia received, state law directed 45 percent toward the flood fund, 50 percent for energy efficiency efforts and the rest for administrative costs.
Lawmakers have clashed over how to sustain continued funding for flood mitigation without RGGI revenues while also providing disaster relief.
Youngkin in December 2023 put $100 million in general funds toward the flood fund and this year added $50 million in non-general funds, said Peter Finocchio, press secretary, who did not clarify if the second funding stream came from the final RGGI revenue that hadn’t yet been divvied up. Another $100 million in general funds went to a Resilient Virginia Revolving Loan Fund, a separate flood mitigation program.
For disaster relief, lawmakers this year ultimately put $50 million from the general fund toward what became the Virginia Disaster Assistance Fund for Helene and February storm victims, with half for relief and half for making communities more resilient.
Trump, meanwhile, made cuts to FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program, which helped communities bolster their ability to deal with flooding. The Environmental Defense Fund, in an email to Inside Climate News, said Trump’s cuts result in a loss of about $69 million for 39 projects that “may weaken Virginia’s safety, preparedness and economy.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also canceled a $20 million grant intended to provide flood mitigation for Aberdeen Gardens, a historically Black neighborhood in the Hampton Roads region.
The funding came through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Community Change Grants Program. Several groups are challenging Trump’s cancellation of IRA grants that were appropriated through Congress. Norfolk-based Wetlands Watch, the beneficiary of this grant alongside the city of Hampton, said in a news release that the two “are exploring all options to appeal the surprise termination.”
“This is not just about one grant,” said Mary-Carson Stiff, executive director of Wetlands Watch. “It’s about the principle that public commitments made to protect vulnerable communities cannot be violated according to political caprice. We intend to fight—and we are calling on our supporters and the public to stand with us.”