Disaster readiness
Virginia must pursue resilience, preparedness in light of Trump order
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin visit areas impacted by Hurricane Helene in Damascus, a town in southwestern Virginia, on Oct. 3. Steve Helber/ap
While Hampton Roads faces a threat of tropical weather each year, it’s thankfully been decades since the region took a direct strike from a serious hurricane. But should a Category 3 hurricane make landfall here, researchers at Old Dominion University believe it could inflict $15.6 billion in damage.
Increasingly it appears that our communities, along with the commonwealth, would shoulder much of that burden alone. An executive order signed by President Donald Trump intends to shift responsibility for recovery to states and localities, a move that abdicates the federal government’s long-standing role in disaster relief.
While that order doesn’t follow through on Trump’s threats to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it does represent a profound change for which storm-threatened states such as Virginia must prepare.
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active in history, producing 18 named storms, of which 11 reached hurricane status, including five systems that strengthened to at least Category 3 (meaning sustained winds of at least 111 mph).
Two of those major hurricanes made landfall, causing widespread destruction and misery that still has affected communities reeling. Estimates put the total cost of hurricane-related damage as high as $500 billion and, as seen in southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, it will be years before flooded cities and towns recover.
Including the hurricanes, the United States experienced 27 disasters in 2024 that inflicted at least $1 billion in damage. In November, Gov. Glenn Youngkin requested $4.4 billion from the federal government to help communities in southwest Virginia flooded by Hurricane Helene in September, and Congress included $100 billion in funding for hurricane recovery in a December spending bill.
That speaks to the traditional role the federal government has played in helping when disaster strikes. States and localities do most of the heavy lifting in the wake of a storm, but Washington provides much of the funding due to a belief that we, as a country, have a responsibility to support our fellow Americans when they need it.
It also reflects the realities on the ground. Few states have the resources to rebuild from a severe natural disaster without help from the federal government.
Consider states along the Gulf Coast, where hurricanes have repeatedly, and sometimes annually, made landfall to devastating effect. Florida, Texas and Louisiana have received the greatest share of FEMA money since 2015 to help affected communities recover and rebuild.
Trump’s executive order, signed last week, intends to change that.
It doesn’t go as far as the plan to eliminate FEMA set forth in “Project 2025,” the blueprint for radically overhauling the federal government that Trump repeatedly dismissed on the campaign trail, then embraced in office. But it does propose shifting more responsibility to states and localities, narrowing the role Washington would play in recovery.
In fact, a White House spokesman told Politico on Wednesday that the order aims to encourage states to increase investment in “resilience, infrastructure and disaster preparedness” to ready their communities. That’s a message that should resonate strongly in Hampton Roads and across Virginia.
It also suggests that the administration will look to reform FEMA rather than eradicate it, something that should be viewed with cautious optimism. There is no question that the nation must place greater emphasis on preparation and resilience before a disaster rather than clean-up in its aftermath. Doing so is likely to save lives and reduce the cost of rebuilding again and again.
Yet, there remains a real concern that reducing the federal government’s role in recovery could enable the president to determine which places receive help and which do not. In his first term, Trump was quick to assist states with Republican governors while dragging his feet for those with Democrats at the helm. His threats to California after the wildfires this year echoed that approach.
For Virginia, though, this should be a call to expedite resilience efforts in places such as Hampton Roads and to consider how the commonwealth would handle a disaster on its own. As last year’s hurricane season aptly demonstrated, there’s no time to waste.