AUSTIN (KXAN) — Amid uncertainties surrounding the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Donald Trump’s administration, data collected by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed Texas is one of the largest state-level recipients of federal disaster relief funds in the country.
Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that relegates disaster preparation responsibilities to state and local governments, with calls to alter critical infrastructure policy “to better reflect assessed risks,” per Reuters reporting. Historically, disaster recovery has operated in the U.S. based on a three-legged approach, with government funding sitting in tandem with insurance and private funding, the Carnegie Endowment noted.
In the Carnegie Endowment’s Disaster Dollar Database, Texas was the fourth-largest recipient of federal grants related to disaster recovery, with nearly $22 billion allocated to the Lone Star State between September 2003 and January 2005. Also in the top five were Louisiana, with nearly $47 billion, New York, with $28 billion, Florida, with nearly $28 billion, and Mississippi, with almost $11 billion.
Federal grant funding for disaster recovery is divvied into three types: FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program, FEMA’s Public Assistance aid and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery, per the Carnegie Endowment.
Looking through Texas’ largest disasters, Hurricane Harvey in 2017 was the state’s costliest incident in terms of federal relief sustained. Relief dollars broke down into more than $1.6 billion for FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program, nearly $3 billion for FEMA’s Public Assistance and more than $5.7 billion for HUD’s allocations.
Other costly incidents in Texas included Hurricane Ike in 2008, Hurricane Dolly in 2008 and Hurricane Rita in 2005. More recently, last summer’s Hurricane Beryl, alongside 2024 severe storms, tornadoes and flooding made the rankings, as well as the 2021 severe winter storm that rippled across Texas.
The full dashboard is available for review online.
