Every time I read about weather damage, I would get more pessimistic that the people in Walthall County and Pike County whose homes got damaged or destroyed by the March tornadoes would not get the help they deserved.
There were two such stories this week. One, by The Associated Press, had a Tylertown dateline. It said the recovery from the two tornadoes that moved through the county on the same afternoon “has been a slow and painful process.”
This is because Mississippi’s request for financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, two months after the twisters, had not been decided.
Everybody has FEMA stories, going back to Hurricane Katrina when the agency, like all of us, truly was overwhelmed. But now the problem was not getting timely help to those who need it. The problem was that the federal government didn’t seem to want to help at all.
So count me among the surprised when word came Friday that President Trump had approved individual assistance for residents of 17 Mississippi counties and public assistance for 11. Walthall County and Pike County got both, and rightly so.
At least for Mississippi, it’s been only a two-month wait. Another story this week on the Politico website reviewed the lack of federal help for the widespread damage from Hurricane Helene, which hit the mountains of western North Carolina eight months ago, in September 2024.
Conspiracy theories were a part of the problem. Among them: FEMA wanted to force people to leave so it could start mining rare-earth lithium deposits. Or that President Biden directed the storm to the Republican-dominated area (apparently in one of his more lucid moments). Or that FEMA assistance was a loan that had ripoff-sized interest rates.
Politico reported that 6,930 people in North Carolina did not have property insurance or get charity help, making them eligible for FEMA aid. But 3,700 of them have not asked for help yet.
Another part of the problem was Trump himself. As a candidate he claimed last year that FEMA had diverted $1 billion from North Carolina relief to house illegal immigrants.
But Trump’s actions have been worse. After saying he thinks FEMA should be abolished, his administration has followed up by halting up to $10 billion in disaster relief around the country, according to Politico. Until Friday, this included Walthall County and the Progress community in Pike County, where the tornadoes hit.
North Carolina hasn’t gotten much federal help. Arkansas has a governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who worked in Trump’s White House, but even she did not get approved for FEMA assistance until May 14, and only after she appealed the original denial.
With that history, I felt it unlikely that Mississippi would get help. It was very nice to be wrong.
A story in Saturday’s paper said 182 homes and six farms in Walthall County were affected by the tornadoes, along with another 25 homes in Pike County.
Homeowners that had property insurance hopefully will come out OK. And maybe some others have gotten assistance from charities, especially on damage repairs.
But there have to be some local residents without insurance who lost everything in those tornadoes. It would have been intolerable to make a political point, or a budget point, at their expense.
I’m all for Trump’s efforts to cut federal spending (even though that big beautiful bill is supposed to add $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade). But why delay help for people who only had the bad luck of being in the path of a tornado?
Summer’s coming, which means hurricanes and more damage. But it’s pretty easy to figure out a solution to this.
If Trump and his people want to close FEMA, and Congress agrees, then they ought to give fair warning.
Give advance notice that the agency will stop providing direct financial aid on a certain date. That would give states a year or two to build up their own disaster finances.
This has been handled poorly, and it didn’t need to be. At least help is on the way.
