TYLERTOWN, Miss. – More than two months after a tornado demolished his Mississippi home, Brian Lowery still sifts through the rubble, hoping to find a tie clip his mother gave him, made from the center stone of her wedding band.
“I still have hope,” Lowery said.
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He, his wife and 13-year-old son made it to safety before the tornado ripped apart their trailer home of 15 years during a severe weather outbreak in mid-March. But the recovery since has been slow and painful. Mississippi’s request for federal aid is still pending before the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meaning badly needed assistance has not yet made it to his hard-hit community of Tylertown.
“I don’t know what you got to do or what you got to have to be able to be declared for a federal disaster area because this is pretty bad,” Lowery said. “We can’t help you because, whatever, we’re waiting on a letter; we’re waiting on somebody to sign his name. You know, all that. I’m just over it.”
It is not unusual for weeks to pass before FEMA approves a declaration. President Donald Trump has pointed to these waits as a reason he is considering dismantling the agency, calling FEMA “very bureaucratic” and “very slow.”
The wait offers a glimpse of what could be in store for communities around the country as the summer storm season arrives and FEMA is mired in turmoil. States including Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma have already been battered with tornadoes this week, setting the stage for more disaster requests to FEMA. And the Atlantic hurricane season is just around the corner.
FEMA is able to respond quite effectively in many ways, but “getting the resources to those communities after the fact has been slowed,” said Susan Cutter, a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina and co-director of the Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute.
In coming disasters, Cutter said, she anticipates seeing slower progress in getting needed resources to communities in a timely manner.
FEMA acting chief David Richardson has pushed back on claims that FEMA is ill-prepared for severe weather this summer. In an agencywide town hall last week, he said FEMA was “to some degree, to a great degree, ready for disaster season ’25.”
March storms left 7 dead and wrecked hundreds of homes
In Mississippi, nearly 20 tornadoes tore through the state on March 14 and 15, leaving seven people dead and hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged. Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves asked the Trump administration for a major disaster declaration on April 1.
Such a declaration would allow access to an array of FEMA resources, including financial aid for individuals and for government agencies still removing debris and repairing infrastructure.
“We don’t have a declaration yet. People are still hurting,” said Royce McKee, emergency management director for Walthall County, which includes Tylertown.
Walthall County was especially hard hit by the massive storm system that tore across multiple states. The storm spawned two significant tornadoes in the county, where four people died.
McKee said the county has sunk an estimated $700,000 into the cleanup, but it can’t afford more. It has halted recovery operations while awaiting federal assistance.
“We need federal help, and we need it desperately, and we need it now,” said Bobby McGinnis, a Tylertown resident and firefighter. “I know President Trump said that — America first, we’re going to help our American folks first. But we haven’t seen the federal folks down here.”
Requests for help come at a time of upheaval for FEMA
Mississippi’s request comes at a time of upheaval for FEMA. Its acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, was recently ousted after he publicly disagreed with Trump's proposal to get "rid of FEMA.”
Richardson, FEMA’s new acting administrator, has committed himself to executing Trump’s vision for the agency. He also previewed potential policy changes, saying there could be “more cost-sharing with states” and that FEMA would coordinate federal assistance “when deemed necessary."
While Mississippi has been waiting, a similar major disaster declaration request out of Arkansas after the storms was initially denied. The decision was then appealed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and finally approved on May 13.
In Missouri, there are frustrations about the federal response to March storms
In Missouri, the federal response to earlier storms is being criticized as residents pick up the pieces after a recent EF3 tornado. Packing winds of up to 150 mph (240 kph), it slammed into parts of St. Louis on Friday.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, told Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday that the need was urgent, and she responded by vowing to expedite Gov. Mike Kehoe's request for an emergency disaster declaration so the state can get money to clean up the ruble.
“That is one of the failures that FEMA has had in the past is that people who incur this kind of damage and lose everything sit there for months and sometimes years and never get the promised critical response that they think or that they believe they should be getting from the federal government,” Noem said.
After touring the damage Monday, Hawley began publicly demanding help and expressed frustration over the federal response in March, saying, “We cannot wait months. I’m not happy about the fact we’re still waiting from all of that damage two months ago.”
Mississippi lawmakers press federal officials about assistance
Mississippi lawmakers continue to press for federal help. At a congressional hearing in early May, Republican Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest asked Noem to push forward the request.
“I would ask you if you could make sure that you could do everything to expedite that request,” Guest said. ”It is impacting my local jurisdictions with debris cleanup. It is impacting people as they seek to recover.”
Republican Mississippi U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith also asked Noem about FEMA assistance and the administration’s new approach to the agency.
“President Trump has been very clear that he believes that the way that FEMA exists today should not continue,” Noem responded. “He wants to make sure that those reforms are happening where states are empowered to do the response and trained and equipped, and then the federal government would come in and support them and financially be there when they need them on their worst day.”
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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, and Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.