As Trump seeks disaster response cuts, mutual aid networks grow

• Trump panel to offer reform recommendations in November
• Cities would struggle to replace federal funding
• Mutual aid networks say their response is growing

WASHINGTON - After Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico, Katia Aviles-Vazquez recalls the first problem was simply getting out of her house where the doors were jammed shut by debris.

Her neighbors faced the same problem, she said, if they even had doors after the September 2017 storm that caused some 3,000 deaths and more than $115 billion in damages.

It felt as though residents of the U.S island territory were left all alone but also that they had each other, Aviles-Vazquez said.

"I could hate my neighbor, but if we didn't help each other, there was no way we were going to get through this,” she said.

Building mutual assistance networks, over the following months local residents cleared roadways, checked on far-flung neighbors and stabilized homes.

"It became a chain," said Aviles-Vazquez, founder of the Agroecology Institute, which works to empower farmers.

Hyperlocal responses and preparation for natural disasters have gotten increased attention as climate change effects have mounted.

The focus is growing even more now that President Donald Trump seeks to reduce the role of the federal government in disaster preparedness and response.

In his first days in office, Trump released a critical assessment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and an official panel is slated to recommend reforms in November.

Experts say they are concerned the panel could raise the damage threshold for assistance or do away with the agency entirely.

Last month, FEMA employees warned that cuts are already having "cascading effects" on the agency's ability to respond.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email that FEMA's outsized role "created a bloated bureaucracy that disincentivized state investment in their own resilience."

Trump seeks to empower "state and local governments by enabling them to better understand, plan for, and ultimately address the needs of their citizens," she wrote.

'Period of uncertainty'

FEMA's current purpose is largely the result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the country's most destructive natural disaster, when the government's response was criticized for being slow, said Sara McTarnaghan, who co-leads work on climate and communities for the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.

FEMA has more recently focused more on pushing local communities to build pre-disaster resilience, particularly in poorer communities, she said.

Now the route forward is unclear, she said.

"I feel for state and local emergency planners. We're in a period of uncertainty, and it's not yet clear what responsibilities they will need to pick up," McTarnaghan said.

Proposed changes from the Trump administration – such as halting federal assistance for snowstorms – would mean more than 70% of disasters would no longer receive presidential emergency declarations, McTarnaghan and her colleagues have found in their research.

SBP, a national nonprofit that helps communities recover from disasters, is working with local governments in nine states to identify community priorities related to disaster preparedness, devise plans and raise funds.

"A lot of America lives in small to medium-sized communities where people have disaster risk, but the government is so small or resource-constrained that they're not able to go out and get knowable information about their risk,” said Reese May, SBP's chief strategy and innovation officer.

‘Like wildfire'

Local and volunteer groups say they are seeing a rise in demand and interest for their services.

A group called Team Rubicon, created to help in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, has grown from a handful of volunteers that year to 200,000 nationwide today.

"We do a lot of the hard, physical work – expediting home repair, debris work," said Jeff Byard, senior vice president of operations. "We want to be the first in and last out."

Rubicon is doubling down on local work in anticipation of funding and capacity gaps amid federal reforms, Byard said.

More severe and frequent natural disasters from wildfires to flooding are prompting communities to strengthen their organizing and recruit volunteers, said KD Chavez, executive director with Climate Justice Alliance, a national network of about 100 organizations.

The alliance is fostering a "brigade" model to get disaster warnings from the field and surge resources in response.

"One of the really deep benefits of the alliance is that when we are in that waiting period, we are doing a lot of mobilization of folks on the ground," Chavez said.

Organizers with another national group, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, say its decentralized network of community responders includes hundreds in communications channels and working groups and thousands more general volunteers.

In the past year, it has mounted disaster responses in more than a dozen states in addition to supporting pop-up clinics, community air filter programs, tool libraries, solar installations and water treatment planning.

Local communities know their needs best, said Devin Ceartas, an organizer in North Carolina with Triangle Mutual Aid, which participated in last year's Hurricane Helene response.

"Mutual aid is like wildfire that catches on when people have a passion,” he said. "It's this magical thing. People truly come alive."

Triangle Mutual Aid has seen a spike in interest with 500 volunteers joining after new flooding hit the state in July, he said.

Ceartas said he hopes to use the momentum to make preparations like building crews and get licensed to use radio communications equipment.

"There's nothing FEMA has that isn't already here and that people can't already give to each other," Ceartas said.

"Our job is to prepare ourselves to be able to accept that and integrate that into a mutual aid effort."

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron. Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)