Severe Weather, Uncertain Funding: What’s It Like to be a Local Emergency Manager These Days?

In the middle of May, a rare, severe dust storm swept across the dry farmland of Central Illinois and headed in the direction of Chicago. Driver visibility on roads dropped to zero, and wind speeds rose to over 60 miles per hour. 

“I got a report from a weather spotter who said, ‘Hey, I can’t move on this highway on the west side of the county. And I called the [National] Weather Service, and said, ‘We can’t see.’ Then the warning came out,” said John Dwyer, coordinator for the Champaign County Emergency Management Agency and president of the Illinois Emergency Services Management Association. “I’m surprised we didn’t have more damage than we did; it could have been a lot worse.”

The Midwest has experienced its share of extreme weather events lately, and Illinois is no exception. In 2023, another massive dust storm in the state left seven people dead. Last year, Illinois experienced a historic number of tornadoes, breaking the previous record set in 2006, according to the National Weather Service. 

And now emergency managers here and across the country must figure out how to do their jobs with much less federal support. Major changes afoot include staffing cuts at the National Weather Service and President Donald Trump’s plans to begin dissolving FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in November. Trump has said the federal government would give out less financial assistance to states even as it shifts more responsibility for disaster response their way.

This has, unsurprisingly, spread confusion and alarm through the local emergency management community. In Illinois, FEMA grants constitute a substantial part of their budgets.

When asked to comment on the coming changes, a FEMA spokesperson said via email that “FEMA is laser focused on disaster response, and protecting the American people” and that the agency “is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

Inside Climate News reached out to Dwyer, who has worked in emergency management for more than a decade, to learn more about Illinois’ experience during this fraught time and what sort of changes he expects to see. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ALEXIA UNDERWOOD: Tell me about the weather—about the season we’re in, and what you’ve seen recently. 

UNDERWOOD: Have the number of tornadoes or storms increased lately, and if so, do you have a sense of why?

DWYER: Yes. Illinois, in the last two years, has ranked [near the top] in the U.S. as far as the frequency of tornadoes. Now, granted, most of them are EF zeros and ones, but yeah, it seems like they’re happening more and more. 

Obviously, climate is changing, and I know they keep talking about, well, maybe the tornado alley is shifting. That, I don’t know. But the frequency is increasing. We’re also seeing, in the summer, higher temperatures after dark. So that’s a concern.

[In terms of flooding], we’re seeing more water in a shorter amount of time than we ever have. So water’s getting in—and I love farmers, and we all do—but they’re putting in more drainage tile and more populated areas are pushing the water into the typical draining ditches, and, well, the water’s getting there faster, and in a larger volume than it ever has. So, certain areas that are prone to flooding flood more and more frequently. 

I hate the term 500-year flood, because I’ve seen two “500-year floods” in 10 years. And then we had a weather phenomenon not too long ago in another county where, they’re not in a flood area, but the problem was that a storm system just kind of stayed over their town and flooded the town because it just didn’t move. Six-plus inches of rain in a matter of hours. 

UNDERWOOD: What are some of the challenges that you face in terms of local emergency management? 

DWYER: Funding has been my biggest issue … and old equipment, trying to get new technology on board. 

Radios are getting more and more expensive. Computers, software. For my EMPG [federal Emergency Management Performance Grant], it’s never gone down in 10 years, but it’s never gone up either. So we have a lot of needs, but don’t necessarily get them met because, well, “we only need that in an emergency.” 

“I hate the term 500-year flood, because I’ve seen two ‘500-year floods’ in 10 years.”

UNDERWOOD: Who are the communities most at risk in these extreme weather events?

DWYER: Everybody is at risk. But some of the highlighted areas that keep coming up—and I don’t have a solution because this goes back to funding, as well as how funds are allocated—are, I would say, special populations where English is not necessarily the primary language, and those who live in trailer parks or in insufficient housing. [It’s] a concern. 

So, if we want to build a storm shelter, there has to be a [grant] match to it. So how do you match a shelter for a private business such as a trailer park? They don’t want it built, and they’re not going to pay the 20 percent, even though there’s inadequate sheltering for the persons in the trailer park [who may be mainly] immigrants. So where do they go? 

It has to come from somewhere. You can’t match federal funds with federal funds. The county or the city is not going to pay the 20 percent to put a shelter on that private property. It’s very difficult. There’s no community shelter like in the old days, where there were fallout shelters designated everywhere; we don’t have that for tornados. 

UNDERWOOD: How does your office work with FEMA? 

DWYER: We work through our state. We don’t necessarily work directly with FEMA. I mean, I will get calls or work with FEMA on certain grants. With the change in administration, there was one grant that I was approved for, but the grant program went away. However, what I was trying to get funding for, there’s another [grant] program that it could be eligible for, and I’m hoping it will get funded; it’s our county hazards mitigation plan. It’s up for renewal, getting ready to expire at the end of the year. …  

We still don’t know what is going to happen after Sept. 30, because that’s when our main emergency management performance grant is due to expire. I think there’s another year on it, but we depend on that for a portion of our salaries and things like that. And if that was to go away, [neither] the state nor the county, I think, is ready to make up the difference. 

UNDERWOOD: Since the Trump administration came in in January, and the changes they’ve implemented, and the talk of dissolving FEMA, are people in your field more concerned about the future? 

DWYER: Yeah, I’d say we are concerned about where the money’s coming from. … If we don’t get the funds, we start limiting programs [in the state] or eliminating staff. 

The state just put another mandate on us that’s not funded. It’s doing more work with schools to be prepared for a hazardous materials incident because of the East Palestine [train derailment]. We actually had a hazmat incident in Teutopolis, which is a rural community where a tanker flipped over because the car was passing it when it shouldn’t have, ran the tanker off the road and caused this mass ammonia release, which killed people and critically injured several passengers. But I don’t get any more money to do this yet. 

It’s House Bill 71. We will work with them, and we’ve got a phase-in time, but we need to keep engaging with them. They haven’t come out with the guidance yet, what it means. 

UNDERWOOD: Speaking of new things, are there any projects coming up that you’re interested in or excited about, or that you think people should be aware of?

DWYER: Well, I’m working a lot with our local university, the University of Illinois. They do a lot of cutting-edge things. We’re working with their civil engineering department on a project about incorporating emergency management and engineering and civil or environmental engineering about building resiliency, whether it’s the structures themselves, or even roads for evacuation routes. …

Oklahoma has a Mesonet [a network of automatic weather monitoring stations across the state, showing changes in real time] but Illinois doesn’t, and [the university is] looking at how they can set one up. That would definitely help with storm predictions, among other things. 

UNDERWOOD: Given all this, in terms of the new administration, and changing weather patterns and everything you’ve mentioned, what are the challenges you see coming up?

DWYER: Funding’s the biggest thing. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. We [in emergency management] are not very good at promoting what we do, we stay in the background, which is mostly how we want it. As long as things are going well, it’s fine, but when things are going bad, we get the blame. But people don’t realize everything we do. 

With COVID, when everybody else was working from home, we were in the office getting resources for everybody. And then what I like to say, and I’m not complaining, but when COVID happened, we were going 120 miles an hour. And now, we’re still going 60. We never had a chance to reset. 

And that’s the other thing that we didn’t even mention: If you look at the faces of emergency management and the first responder community as a whole, there was a complete change after COVID. People retired. So we lost a lot of institutional knowledge. And so now we’re having to re-educate people. 

And that’s another challenge, especially with funding—and this started happening even before the Trump administration—but we have more people that need to be trained than we ever have, but there are fewer classes. 

Like anything else, do you strike when the iron’s hot or do you wait until something bad happens and then it floods the gates? Instead of being proactive, it seems … very reactive about what’s the crisis today.

Gone are the days right after 9/11, where you got all this money. But a lot of the [infrastructure and equipment] that we’ve had is also getting old, and there’s not really a plan to retrofit or replace. 

UNDERWOOD: That makes sense. And how would you ideally fix some of these things? Would you get more funding from the state? 

DWYER: I would say more funding from the feds, but that doesn’t seem like the answer right now.