FEMA Fails to Renew Funds for Crucial State Disaster-Response System Operations

The Emergency Management Assistance Compact ensures that states can quickly send resources to each other in the aftermath of a disaster. The group that runs it just lost its funding.

Kristi Noem
Etienne Laurent/AP

The nation’s state disaster-response system is at risk of becoming nonoperational as of Friday, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency failing to fund the group that operates it.

The Emergency Management Assistance Compact is a mutual aid disaster-response system for all 50 states that ensures resources can be quickly sent to areas in the aftermath of anything from a hurricane to an act of terrorism.

Funding for the group that manages EMAC, a nonprofit organization of state emergency-management officials called the National Emergency Management Association, expired Sept. 4.