WUFT | News and public media for north central Florida
Cedar Key residents question FEMA's value ahead of hurricane season
By Michael Orlando
May 1, 2025 at 8:07 PM EDT
CEDAR KEY, Fla. – Less than two months away from hurricane season, the island community of Cedar Key is still recovering from being ravaged by two of the strongest storms to ever hit the Big Bend region. Several homes, businesses and the city’s post office are still boarded up -- and it’s unclear if FEMA will be in the city’s corner by the time hurricane season starts.
Sue Colson, the former mayor of Cedar Key, says recent threats against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, made by President Donald Trump and cabinet members, are frustrating. She said the agency plays an important role in disaster recovery, even with its flaws.
“We need FEMA, we have to have it, but we need it to have a faster and more efficient way of being done,” Colson said. She said giving money for disaster relief is “one of the things that the government should do.”
Last year, FEMA officials said they gave Floridians more than $1.6 billion worth of disaster relief in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. They said around 299,000 families received money.
Since announcing his desire to make FEMA “go away” in January, Trump has stepped back from direct threats against the agency. In March, he signed an executive order telling national security advisor Mike Waltz to review the findings of a FEMA council set up by the president in January. So far, the council has not announced its findings, but Waltz is scheduled to meet with Trump Nov. 14 and recommend ways of changing the agency.
Cedar Key residents and Americans across the country have criticized FEMA for being wrapped in red tape. They say the agency takes too long to respond, bounces applicants from agent to agent and is too confusing to navigate.
“I don't think we should get rid of anything. I think we should improve it,” Colson said. “We need it. What would you do if there was no FEMA? It's better to fix what's already there, rather than start from square one.”
But Trump, and members of his administration, like Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, have cited those concerns as grounds for abolishing the agency.
Visiting Helene victims in North Carolina in January, Trump said FEMA was “not good,” and said states would do better with the agency's disaster relief money. Last month, Noem, whose department FEMA reports to, said outright she would “eliminate FEMA”, moving to cut the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRICS) program, which set aside nearly $1 billion to help communities prepare for natural disasters.
“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need,” says a FEMA press release announcing the $1 billion cut, after calling BRICS wasteful and too concerned with “political agendas.” Noem is on the FEMA review council that will meet with Waltz to determine FEMA’s future.
Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has started preparing for a future without the agency. At a press conference in Kissimmee on April 14, he noted that he expects the president to allocate disaster relief money for Florida.
“I can tell you that the FEMA bureaucracy is an impediment to disaster recovery,” DeSantis told a crowd of supporters. “FEMA is not doing a good job.”
https://youtu.be/Id5dVm6bJeA
Florida’s Sen. Ashley Moody, while she was the state’s attorney general, also wrote a letter to FEMA’s former director months after Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall. She asked him to ease certain home reconstruction regulations that she said stopped lower-income families from being helped by the agency.
Rick Scott, Florida’s other U.S. senator, introduced a bill, which didn’t go anywhere, to put $20 billion into FEMA’s disaster relief fund shortly after Milton hit. A month earlier, he skipped voting on a resolution to fund the government. Republicans shot down a version of the resolution that would have allocated money for the relief fund and instead pushed through a version that didn’t.
Dealing with the agency often, Colson didn’t hesitate to list FEMA’s shortcomings -- like wait times, being bounced from agent to agent, struggling with debris removal -- but she says those issues should be ironed out instead of abolishing the agency.
“I don't think we should get rid of anything. I think we should improve it,” Colson said. “We need it. What would you do if there was no FEMA? It's better to fix what's already there, rather than start from square one.”
Phil Prescott, 70, is a firefighter, priest and director for the Cedar Key Food Pantry. He says he’s helped dozens of people land back on their feet after devastating storms and he says FEMA has not supported his community as much as it could have.
“I have to say that FEMA is not particularly effective,” he said. “If people don't have personal resources and understanding how to deal with bureaucracy, FEMA is of very little help, right?”
FEMA couldn’t help after a devastating fire tore through several businesses on Cedar Key’s flagship Dock Street. The street, and the businesses on it, was a staple of the island city for years.
“One hundred people lost their jobs in that one day, and so we were prepared to write checks,” Prescott said. He said the Cedar Key community was the safety net that supported dozens of people who lost their source of income in the fire, not FEMA.
“If FEMA were to go away, I'm not so sure that it would be devastating to Cedar Key,” Prescott said. “There would be a bump in the road. But again, we find ways to help one another.”
Colson said residents have had issues getting use out of FEMA. She said residents got tired of recounting their tragedies to so many different agents without a resolution.
She also says that with hurricane seasons getting more and more intense, FEMA’s method of dividing grant money has become monotonous. FEMA disburses money based on what storm or disaster caused damage. With hurricanes Helene and Milton hitting less than two weeks apart last year, she said it was difficult to tell which storm caused what damage.
“Now that the storms are coming more frequently and more severely, they're stacking, and we have these files like, this is Idalia, and now this is Helene, and this is Milton,” Colson said. She says filing the paperwork to get money for her city is a chore when so many storms are forming.
Colson said that waiting days, weeks or even months to hear back from FEMA is not possible for people who have nothing to return home to.
“It becomes problematic, because nobody's made decisions. FEMA hasn't decided for sure whether or not you qualify,” Colson said. “When you wait for help, it sometimes takes weeks and months. You need a dollar now. You need it now.”
The director of the Cedar Key Historical Society, Anne Hodges, remembers a time when FEMA was instrumental in bringing her island community back to life.
On March 13, 1993, a cyclonic storm hit Florida, causing billions of dollars worth of damage and killing hundreds. The out-of-season storm, sometimes called the “No-Name Storm” or “The Storm of the Century”, was especially devastating to Cedar Key.
Hodges said Cedar Key residents were shocked to find out their insurance wouldn’t cover those damages, but said FEMA officials were on-site “right away”.
“I had no idea who they were,” Hodges said. “Right away, they started helping people. Even down to, ‘Here’s a voucher, go buy a refrigerator.’”
Hodges said it was a blessing that FEMA was able to swoop in when nobody else could.
“I can’t even describe to you in words how good it feels that there’s an agency that comes in and helps,” Hodges said. She wasn’t aware that DeSantis, the Trump administration and fiscal conservatives wanted to axe the agency. She said that “once you’re beat up and battered, you’re not watching the nighttime news.”
More than 30 years since the storm, Colson said she remembers when FEMA was invaluable to her island community. But she says times have changed and the agency has much more to worry about.
“FEMA didn't have the stressors on it it has today. I mean, we have a nation full of tragedies now,” Colson said. “This agency has gotten bigger, and spread out more, and is probably mammoth.”
DeSantis says Florida might be better off if Trump went through with his suggestion of gutting FEMA. He says he’s confident the state could handle running its own disaster relief and mitigation programs, saying that the agency’s “bureaucracy” is a hindrance.
“Empower the states,” DeSantis said. “Give us the resources. And we don’t need necessarily the federal government, to be involved at all.”
DeSantis was hopeful money allocated for FEMA would be granted to states rather than being given back to the federal government, but says he is also planning for the chance President Trump leaves Florida and other states to fend for themselves.
Residents who are not happy with FEMA say the state’s counterpart, the Florida Department of Emergency Management, does a great job helping out where the federal agency does not.
“They were here immediately,” Prescott recalled. “Just needed us to say we need them. They brought water and other supplies, and they were here immediately and continually.”
In Cedar Key, FEMA was not able to approve temporary housing, but state officials could. FEMA is able to give trailers to people whose home was damaged in hurricanes, but they won’t bring them into areas that are at risk of flooding. According to FEMA’s website, almost the entire island of Cedar Key is a flood zone.
Colson says she was able to give 26 families a trailer to sleep in. She didn’t call D.C. for those RVs. She phoned Tallahassee.
“That was through Florida,” Colson explained. “Within 12 hours, I could have a trailer for you. ‘Don't you cry anymore, I'm going to get you one today.’ ”
Colson recounted conversations with residents who lost their homes last year: “We're going to get you one two hours later. Can you be here at eight o'clock in the morning? It's here. Here's your trailer.”
The Cedar Key community looks out for one another, too. Prescott says after a hurricane, everyone on the island starts pulling together.
“You have that immediate reaction- all the groups in this city, Lions Club, Eagles, churches, the pantry, everyone worked together,” Prescott said. “There's two hurricanes that if somebody lost a home or a job, they got a check, no questions asked. We just needed to know that they were in need.”
But Colson says some communities, and some states, don’t have the safety nets Cedar Key does. She says she’s confident that Florida could tackle hurricane relief, but worries for other states that are not as well acquainted with disasters.
Colson said giving FEMA’s money to individual states could be a good solution. She says every state deals with different disasters, meaning each state could develop a plan for themselves using money from the federal government.
Hurricane season starts June 1. Cedar Key residents say they’ll be ready for the summer, FEMA or not, but hope to have as many helping hands as they can. Fortunately, nobody on the island has to look far for help.
“Even when we don't get along, we get along,” Prescott said. “It doesn't matter who it is. If there's a moment of need, it's a need for all of us, and we find one way or another to step in and help one another out.”
Sue Colson, the former mayor of Cedar Key, says recent threats against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, made by President Donald Trump and cabinet members, are frustrating. She said the agency plays an important role in disaster recovery, even with its flaws.
“We need FEMA, we have to have it, but we need it to have a faster and more efficient way of being done,” Colson said. She said giving money for disaster relief is “one of the things that the government should do.”
Last year, FEMA officials said they gave Floridians more than $1.6 billion worth of disaster relief in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. They said around 299,000 families received money.
Since announcing his desire to make FEMA “go away” in January, Trump has stepped back from direct threats against the agency. In March, he signed an executive order telling national security advisor Mike Waltz to review the findings of a FEMA council set up by the president in January. So far, the council has not announced its findings, but Waltz is scheduled to meet with Trump Nov. 14 and recommend ways of changing the agency.
Cedar Key residents and Americans across the country have criticized FEMA for being wrapped in red tape. They say the agency takes too long to respond, bounces applicants from agent to agent and is too confusing to navigate.
“I don't think we should get rid of anything. I think we should improve it,” Colson said. “We need it. What would you do if there was no FEMA? It's better to fix what's already there, rather than start from square one.”
But Trump, and members of his administration, like Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, have cited those concerns as grounds for abolishing the agency.
Visiting Helene victims in North Carolina in January, Trump said FEMA was “not good,” and said states would do better with the agency's disaster relief money. Last month, Noem, whose department FEMA reports to, said outright she would “eliminate FEMA”, moving to cut the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRICS) program, which set aside nearly $1 billion to help communities prepare for natural disasters.
“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need,” says a FEMA press release announcing the $1 billion cut, after calling BRICS wasteful and too concerned with “political agendas.” Noem is on the FEMA review council that will meet with Waltz to determine FEMA’s future.
Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has started preparing for a future without the agency. At a press conference in Kissimmee on April 14, he noted that he expects the president to allocate disaster relief money for Florida.
“I can tell you that the FEMA bureaucracy is an impediment to disaster recovery,” DeSantis told a crowd of supporters. “FEMA is not doing a good job.”
https://youtu.be/Id5dVm6bJeA
Florida’s Sen. Ashley Moody, while she was the state’s attorney general, also wrote a letter to FEMA’s former director months after Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall. She asked him to ease certain home reconstruction regulations that she said stopped lower-income families from being helped by the agency.
Rick Scott, Florida’s other U.S. senator, introduced a bill, which didn’t go anywhere, to put $20 billion into FEMA’s disaster relief fund shortly after Milton hit. A month earlier, he skipped voting on a resolution to fund the government. Republicans shot down a version of the resolution that would have allocated money for the relief fund and instead pushed through a version that didn’t.
Dealing with the agency often, Colson didn’t hesitate to list FEMA’s shortcomings -- like wait times, being bounced from agent to agent, struggling with debris removal -- but she says those issues should be ironed out instead of abolishing the agency.
“I don't think we should get rid of anything. I think we should improve it,” Colson said. “We need it. What would you do if there was no FEMA? It's better to fix what's already there, rather than start from square one.”
Phil Prescott, 70, is a firefighter, priest and director for the Cedar Key Food Pantry. He says he’s helped dozens of people land back on their feet after devastating storms and he says FEMA has not supported his community as much as it could have.
“I have to say that FEMA is not particularly effective,” he said. “If people don't have personal resources and understanding how to deal with bureaucracy, FEMA is of very little help, right?”
FEMA couldn’t help after a devastating fire tore through several businesses on Cedar Key’s flagship Dock Street. The street, and the businesses on it, was a staple of the island city for years.
“One hundred people lost their jobs in that one day, and so we were prepared to write checks,” Prescott said. He said the Cedar Key community was the safety net that supported dozens of people who lost their source of income in the fire, not FEMA.
“If FEMA were to go away, I'm not so sure that it would be devastating to Cedar Key,” Prescott said. “There would be a bump in the road. But again, we find ways to help one another.”
Colson said residents have had issues getting use out of FEMA. She said residents got tired of recounting their tragedies to so many different agents without a resolution.
She also says that with hurricane seasons getting more and more intense, FEMA’s method of dividing grant money has become monotonous. FEMA disburses money based on what storm or disaster caused damage. With hurricanes Helene and Milton hitting less than two weeks apart last year, she said it was difficult to tell which storm caused what damage.
“Now that the storms are coming more frequently and more severely, they're stacking, and we have these files like, this is Idalia, and now this is Helene, and this is Milton,” Colson said. She says filing the paperwork to get money for her city is a chore when so many storms are forming.
Colson said that waiting days, weeks or even months to hear back from FEMA is not possible for people who have nothing to return home to.
“It becomes problematic, because nobody's made decisions. FEMA hasn't decided for sure whether or not you qualify,” Colson said. “When you wait for help, it sometimes takes weeks and months. You need a dollar now. You need it now.”
The director of the Cedar Key Historical Society, Anne Hodges, remembers a time when FEMA was instrumental in bringing her island community back to life.
On March 13, 1993, a cyclonic storm hit Florida, causing billions of dollars worth of damage and killing hundreds. The out-of-season storm, sometimes called the “No-Name Storm” or “The Storm of the Century”, was especially devastating to Cedar Key.
Hodges said Cedar Key residents were shocked to find out their insurance wouldn’t cover those damages, but said FEMA officials were on-site “right away”.
“I had no idea who they were,” Hodges said. “Right away, they started helping people. Even down to, ‘Here’s a voucher, go buy a refrigerator.’”
Hodges said it was a blessing that FEMA was able to swoop in when nobody else could.
“I can’t even describe to you in words how good it feels that there’s an agency that comes in and helps,” Hodges said. She wasn’t aware that DeSantis, the Trump administration and fiscal conservatives wanted to axe the agency. She said that “once you’re beat up and battered, you’re not watching the nighttime news.”
More than 30 years since the storm, Colson said she remembers when FEMA was invaluable to her island community. But she says times have changed and the agency has much more to worry about.
“FEMA didn't have the stressors on it it has today. I mean, we have a nation full of tragedies now,” Colson said. “This agency has gotten bigger, and spread out more, and is probably mammoth.”
DeSantis says Florida might be better off if Trump went through with his suggestion of gutting FEMA. He says he’s confident the state could handle running its own disaster relief and mitigation programs, saying that the agency’s “bureaucracy” is a hindrance.
“Empower the states,” DeSantis said. “Give us the resources. And we don’t need necessarily the federal government, to be involved at all.”
DeSantis was hopeful money allocated for FEMA would be granted to states rather than being given back to the federal government, but says he is also planning for the chance President Trump leaves Florida and other states to fend for themselves.
Residents who are not happy with FEMA say the state’s counterpart, the Florida Department of Emergency Management, does a great job helping out where the federal agency does not.
“They were here immediately,” Prescott recalled. “Just needed us to say we need them. They brought water and other supplies, and they were here immediately and continually.”
In Cedar Key, FEMA was not able to approve temporary housing, but state officials could. FEMA is able to give trailers to people whose home was damaged in hurricanes, but they won’t bring them into areas that are at risk of flooding. According to FEMA’s website, almost the entire island of Cedar Key is a flood zone.
Colson says she was able to give 26 families a trailer to sleep in. She didn’t call D.C. for those RVs. She phoned Tallahassee.
“That was through Florida,” Colson explained. “Within 12 hours, I could have a trailer for you. ‘Don't you cry anymore, I'm going to get you one today.’ ”
Colson recounted conversations with residents who lost their homes last year: “We're going to get you one two hours later. Can you be here at eight o'clock in the morning? It's here. Here's your trailer.”
The Cedar Key community looks out for one another, too. Prescott says after a hurricane, everyone on the island starts pulling together.
“You have that immediate reaction- all the groups in this city, Lions Club, Eagles, churches, the pantry, everyone worked together,” Prescott said. “There's two hurricanes that if somebody lost a home or a job, they got a check, no questions asked. We just needed to know that they were in need.”
But Colson says some communities, and some states, don’t have the safety nets Cedar Key does. She says she’s confident that Florida could tackle hurricane relief, but worries for other states that are not as well acquainted with disasters.
Colson said giving FEMA’s money to individual states could be a good solution. She says every state deals with different disasters, meaning each state could develop a plan for themselves using money from the federal government.
Hurricane season starts June 1. Cedar Key residents say they’ll be ready for the summer, FEMA or not, but hope to have as many helping hands as they can. Fortunately, nobody on the island has to look far for help.
“Even when we don't get along, we get along,” Prescott said. “It doesn't matter who it is. If there's a moment of need, it's a need for all of us, and we find one way or another to step in and help one another out.”