On 13 April, Tess McGinley was working in her Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cubicle inLos Angeles, calling people who had lost their homes in theJanuary wildfires, when her team was told to stop what they were doing and leave the office immediately.
McGinley, a 23-year-old team leader for AmeriCorps, the US agency for national service and volunteerism, was helping Fema by reviewing wildfire survivors’ cases to ensure they received housing assistance. Over the past six weeks, she and her seven teammates had reviewed more than 4,000 cases and made hundreds of calls to survivors. Now, even as the team drove home after their jobs were cut, their government phones kept ringing. “Survivors just kept calling us … And we weren’t able to help,” McGinley said.
“I think of one survivor calling over and over, getting my voicemail, and thinking that Fema has abandoned them,” she added.
More than 400 AmeriCorps staff and volunteers were deployed in the aftermath of the January megafires that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and killed 30 people. Theyhelped26,000 households affected by the fires and packed 21,000 food boxes. But in April, the agency placed about 90% of its staff on immediate leave.
The cuts were among the harshest doled out byDonald TrumpandElon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). But AmeriCorps is just one of several agencies involved in the response to emergencies like the LA fires that has seen drastic reductions as Trump has sought to slash costs across the federal government andshiftdisaster preparedness on to state and local governments. Fema, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the army corps of engineers and the Small Business Administration (SBA) have all been affected as well.
A flurry of lawsuits are challenging the Trump administration’s cuts to various federal departments, including two lawsuits led by thestate of CaliforniaandDemocracy Forwardover the gutting of AmeriCorps.
But the cuts are already being acutely felt in LA’s burn zones. Disaster relief is composed of many different agencies at the local, state and federal levels, and the federal support is now being pulled out. “Jenga is one of the best ways to describe it,” said Kelly Daly, AmeriCorps employees union AFSCME Local 2027 president. “It’s going to come tumbling down.”
Anthony Garcia-Perez, 25, spent more than three months helping wildfire survivors, working six days a week and 10 hours a day. AmeriCorps made it possible for him to volunteer by covering his hotel and meals. He worked at a YMCA in Pasadena, handing out food and clothing donations to survivors, and at a disaster recovery center, assisting Fema workers and translating for wildfire survivors who only spoke Spanish.
He recalls meeting a family of five who lost their home in the Eaton fire and became regulars at the YMCA. The mother, father and three young children were living in their car. The children had no toys. Garcia-Perez found dolls for the two girls, and a rattle toy for the family’s newborn son. “Seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces, getting something as simple as a doll, definitely made my day,” Garcia-Perez said. “The mom was overwhelmed. She started crying and thanking us for everything. We said we were more than happy to help. We’re here for them.”
Garcia-Perez heard on 28 April that the funding supporting him was cut. “We were told to go back to our hotels, pack and then be ready to go home the next day,” he said.
Nearly a month after leavingLos Angeles, his mind still turns to the families he helped. “I wonder if they’re OK, I wonder if they’re getting the help they need.”
After the fires, the Small Business Administration contributed $2bn in disaster loans – thelargest sourceof federal disaster recovery for homeowners, renters, businesses and non-profits. In March, the Trump administration announced cuts to43%of the agency’s workforce.
Judy Chu, the US congresswoman who represents wildfire survivors in Altadena, said she feared the federal cuts would make it harder for survivors to navigate recovery. “So many of them need help, especially the elderly and disabled,” she said. “I worry about them being able to make their way through the morass of bureaucracy.”
Chu said she had already heard from Altadena residents who felt frustrated by the federal cuts.
A woman who lost her home in the Eaton fire had told Chu she had secured a loan from the SBA, support she said was crucial because she was underinsured and couldn’t afford to rebuild without a loan. Since the Doge cuts, she said her caseworker was not responsive and she experienced long wait times to get questions answered.
“Our community was devastated,” the woman wrote to Chu. “We want to rebuild and move forward, but how can we when the very support we rely on is being stripped away?”
To help the city recover, Fema approved more than $200m in relief funds for eligible wildfire survivors, and helped fund transitional hotels and shelters. The agency also deployed 70 staff to help survivors apply for aid. The White House said in a statement that Fema deployed hundreds of staff to Los Angeles and provided shelter for more than 2,800 households.
The agency delivered crucial aid in LA, but now it is facing possible extinction. Trump hasthreatenedto get rid of Fema, and on 9 May, he fired its leader, Cameron Hamilton,one dayafter Hamilton publicly disagreed with dismantling the agency. The administration hasfiredhundreds of Fema employees and offered deferred resignations. Fema isendingdoor-to-door canvassing in disaster areas, andcancellingthe $750m set to be allocated this year through the building resilient infrastructure and communities grant program, which funds local projects to protect against disasters including wildfires.
Brad Sherman, the US congressman who represents the fire-stricken neighborhood of the Palisades, said Trump had demoralized federal workers when the presidentsuggestedgetting rid of Fema while visiting Los Angeles in January. “I talked to Fema people, and they were, of course, upset. They’re professionals. They did their job. But it’s hard under those circumstances,” Sherman said.
Sherman called it “absurd” that Trump wants to abolish Fema by pushing its responsibilities on to states. “The idea of shifting it to the states is absolutely crazy,” he said.
Two federal agencies, the EPA and the army corps, are responsible for the majority of wildfire debris cleanup in Los Angeles. But both agencies are bleeding staff.
“We’re relying on the army corps to do the debris removal, which is the single thing that has to happen before rebuilding can start,” Sherman said.
As the climate crisis fuels more destructive wildfires, army corps workers are deploying to more burn zones. They had barely finished cleaning up after the fires in Lahaina, Hawaii, when they were deployed to Los Angeles, said Colin Smalley, president of IFPTE Local 777 representing army corps workers.
The Doge deferred resignation program pushed a large number of army corps employees out the door, meaning there are fewer workers available to respond to wildfires, Smalley said. Supervisors can only approve staff to deploy to disaster missions to the extent that it doesn’t compromise the agency’s core functions, he explained. “It creates a concern about our ability to absorb these kinds of disasters. [Our disaster response] is jeopardized by these personnel actions thatElon Muskand Doge have forced upon us,” Smalley said.
The EPA, the agency responsible for the hazardous materials cleanup in Altadena and the Palisades, has faced brutal cuts, with Trump moving toreduce staff to 1980s levels.
When Doge began slashing EPA staff in early March, it prompted an urgent letter from members of Congress, including Chu and Sherman, asking the agency to reconsider. “In the wake of the recentCalifornia wildfires, it is more critical than ever that EPA is fully staffed and supported to ensure EPA’s efforts to identify hazardous materials on properties impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fires is completed promptly,” they wrote.
EPA staff completed the hazardous debris removal in Los Angelesin record time, but the cuts will harm future wildfire recovery, said Mark Sims, who recently retired from his role representing EPA workers at Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20, IFPTE. He explained that the EPA was suffering brain drain as both senior and new staff leave in droves. “Their responses will be a lot less robust, and take a lot longer to do,” he said.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email that “President Trump led a historic, record-breaking effort to clean up the damage from the LA wildfires, including turning on the water to prevent further tragedy,” referring to awidely debunkedclaim that Trump’s order for the Army Corps to release billions of gallons of irrigation water could have helped Los Angeles fight the fires. Fire hydrants ran dry in the Palisades due to aninfrastructure issue, not a water supply problem.
She argued LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, slowed down recovery efforts “by dragging their feet and bogging down the process with unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape” and the president had pushed them to speed up. “TheTrump administrationremains committed to empowering and working with state and local governments to invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes,” she wrote.
A White House official said AmeriCorps had failedeightconsecutive audits and, in the fiscal year 2024, the agency had found and publicly reported $45m inimproper payments, which are outside the control of the agency and were made by grantee partners.
Trump have argued his federal cuts are necessary to root out fraud and waste. But McGinley, the AmeriCorps team leader, said part of her team’s job was to review cases and ensure people were not receiving double benefits. “It made a difference that it helped people receive housing assistance, and it helped identify that waste in the government system, too,” she said.
“My team worked really hard,” McGinley said. She recalled a woman who lost her home in the Eaton fire. She was blind, making it harder for her to upload the necessary documents to receive assistance. But McGinley’s team sent people to the woman’s hotel to help her upload the files to prove she was eligible. “She was able to stay in housing, which is huge after you’ve lost everything in your life,” McGinley said.