FEMA has $11 billion in Disaster Relief Fund as Milton makes landfall

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has approximately $11 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund as it responds to Hurricane Milton , the second major hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in three weeks. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell is working to assure the public the agency will have enough money for the immediate response.

“The biggest tool we have is what we call immediate needs funding,” Criswell told reporters Wednesday, Oct. 9. “We keep a reserve within our Disaster Relief Fund to make sure that I can always cover these life saving activities like we're seeing right now.”

Congress gave Criswell the authority to tap into $20 billion from the fiscal year 2025 budget, of which the agency has already spent about $9 billion. In August, FEMA put approximately $8 billion in spending on previous disasters on hold. It has been using the newly approved funds to respond to Hurricane Helene and reimburse communities whose projects were paused.

“I have over a hundred open disasters across the United States for recovery, and I need to continue to be able to reimburse these communities for their recovery projects as well as sustain the response that we're seeing right now,” Criswell said.

Criswell put in a $9 billion supplemental funding request to Congress earlier this year which she says still stands. After they have a better understanding of how much these recent disasters will cost, FEMA will ask for additional money on top of that.

Criswell said she’s never seen more open disasters than right now. She attributes that to a busy tornado season, catastrophic flooding and wildfires in the West.

“This increase in the number of severe weather events we're seeing as well as the complexity of many of these events because of the amount of damage that they're doing, is increasing the number of open disasters,” Criswell said. “The recovery is more complex and it takes longer to help reimburse these communities as they rebuild from the weather events.”

FEMA is still spending billions of dollars a year on disasters as far back as Hurricane Katrina. Spending on previous disasters accounts for billions of dollars a year.

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