The Federal Emergency Management Agency has long been the insurance policy cities rely on when disaster strikes. But with its workforce shrinking and a new federal push to shift responsibility for disaster preparedness and recovery to state and local governments, that safety net is starting to fray, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released earlier this month, underscoring the importance of cities building disaster resilience.

Local governments need to prepare now for the possibility of less support when the next hurricane, flood or wildfire hits, said the report’s author, Chris Currie, a director with GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice Team, in an interview.

When the 2025 hurricane season began on June 1, only 12% of FEMA’s incident management workforce was available to respond to disasters because most staff members were already in the field supporting more than 91 major disasters and emergencies across the country, the report states, showing the need to build disaster resilience.

Since January, FEMA has experienced “reductions across its workforce, including the loss of veteran leadership and within its pool of surge support volunteers,” the report found. The number of active FEMA employees decreased about 10% from Jan. 1 to June 1, from 25,800 to 23,350 people.

Officials from FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency “shared concerns about meeting disaster response mission capabilities” as a result of workforce reductions, the report states.

Currie said President Donald Trump’s January executive order reviewing whether state and local governments and individuals should play a more active and significant role in national resilience and preparedness and the administration’s steps to reduce the size of FEMA’s workforce are worrisome.

“The biggest concern we’re hearing from states and localities right now is that they don’t want to be trying to figure out what support they’re going to get and what they’ll have to provide,” he said. “The concern we have is that you can’t pull the rug out from people quickly and expect them to be ready to respond without federal support.”

Read the full article about cities building disaster resilience by Robyn Griggs Lawrence at Smart Cities Dive.