How did FEMA spend $9 billion so quickly? Back-to-back disasters

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency is rapidly spending its disaster funding as it responds to back-to-back major hurricanes Helene and Milton – coming on top of a nonstop disaster year filled with tornadoes, wildfires and floods.

After getting a recent infusion of around $20 billion from Congress to respond to hurricane season, FEMA is now down to $11 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters Wednesday. That means the agency spent about $9 billion of its recently appropriated money in a little over a week – before Milton even made landfall Wednesday night.

This rapid spend rate is a reflection of just how many earlier disasters the agency is dealing with in addition to Milton and Helene. And it may mean Congress needs to appropriate billions more in disaster funding for the agency earlier than expected. Here’s what to know:

FEMA had already run out of money earlier this year, so Congress recently opened up the agency’s fiscal year 2025 budget. That gave FEMA about $20 billion worth of funding to tap into as it responded to Helene and Milton.

On Wednesday, Criswell said about $9 billion of that has already been spent since the agency came out of immediate needs funding (a designation that means FEMA just focuses on immediate storm response and pauses longer-term recovery projects) on October 1.

Essentially, once FEMA got the authority to spend, it was able to send recovery and assistance money back to communities in Texas, California and New Mexico that have been hit by earlier hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. Criswell said that about $7 billion to $8 billion has been spent reimbursing other states for those earlier disasters, and the remaining balance has been spent on Helene and Milton recovery and response.

“In August, we had paused obligations for recovery projects for all of those other open disasters,” Criswell told reporters. “Once I was given the authority to spend against the budget, we began to reimburse communities for their recovery projects, in addition to the spending that we are doing for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.”

In short, a lot of extreme weather disasters have hit different parts of the US this year.

The current tally for billion-dollar extreme weather disasters in the US is hovering around 23 or 24 so far this year, according to Adam Smith, a climatologist with NOAA who helps compile the government’s count of expensive extreme weather disasters. That number is unofficial and likely to change, but it includes hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, and it could possibly grow to add a separate complex of earlier severe summer storms.

But there’s a lot more than hurricanes. Wildfires are still burning in multiple parts of California and other western states. Hurricane Beryl hit Texas early in the summer, and Beryl’s remnants dumped rain and caused deadly flooding in states as far north as northern New England. And Texas and other states experienced a spate of vicious thunderstorms and tornadoes this spring – wreaking havoc and causing power outages.

“This is the most open disasters that I have seen with FEMA, and it’s because we’re seeing an increase in the number of events,” Criswell said Wednesday. “We had an incredibly busy tornado season earlier this year. We had catastrophic and historic levels of flooding across many states this spring as well. We’ve had wildfires across much of the West.”

It’s too early to know. It will take time for states and municipalities to do a full assessment of the damage and get their disaster assistance requests into the federal government.

On Wednesday, Criswell added FEMA is constantly assessing the balance of its disaster recovery fund and could have to ask Congress for more money sooner than it anticipated – although she didn’t say exactly when that might be.

NOAA’s Smith anticipates both Helene and Milton’s impacts will cost “a multiple of tens of billions of dollars each,” but added it will take time to know total costs.

Congress isn’t expected to return until after the November election, but there are lawmakers from impacted states clamoring for further action if it’s needed. Often, disaster aid would be tied to a larger spending bill, but given the deadline isn’t until December 20, it’s possible that Congress may have to tackle this as a standalone bill when they return in November.

It’s also worth noting the hurricane season won’t be over until the end of November, meaning more storms could still develop.

Federal data shows they are.

Last year, the US had a record 23 disasters costing at least $1 billion by September – with 28 such disasters in the calendar year, the most ever recorded.

More than 100 separate disasters each costing at least $1 billion dollars have impacted all parts of the United States over the last five years, Smith told CNN.

“In the 1980s there were about 3 months between billion-dollar disaster events, but over the last decade we are experiencing them every 3 weeks,” Smith told CNN in an email. “The combination of our exposure, vulnerability and the influence of climate change is supercharging the increasing frequency and intensity of certain types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters.”

CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.