Should FEMA recognize extreme heat and wildfire smoke as 'major disasters?'

The nation's top emergency response agency has long been a lifeline for cities and states struggling with disaster. When hurricanes strike, earthquakes rattle, and tornadoes carve paths of destruction, the Federal Emergency Management Agency moves in to provide critical resources and aid.

Yet for all its assistance, FEMA's official definition of a "major disaster" does not include two threats that are increasingly posing harm to millions of Americans: extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

In a rule-making petition filed Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity and more than 30 other environmental organizations, health care groups and trade unions argued that it's time to change that. They are requesting that the Stafford Act—FEMA's animating statute— be amended to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke in its regulations.

Doing so, they say, would unlock crucial disaster relief funding that would allow local governments to invest in cooling centers and air filtration systems, work toward resilient energy solutions such as community solar and storage, and better prepare for emergencies.

"These twin climate-fueled catastrophes now consistently, year after year, vastly exceed the economic and technical capabilities of state and local governments to manage them, adapt to them, and mitigate further harm," the petition says. "Federal action is necessary."

Currently, the Stafford Act defines major disasters as "any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, wind-driven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm, or drought), or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, in any part of the United States."

Attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity argue that the definition is already broad enough to include heat and wildfire smoke but said agency officials have historically been hesitant to provide aid in those situations, when property damage and other material outcomes can be harder to define.

In 2022, FEMA rejected a request from California for a major disaster declaration in response to a heat wave that baked the state for 10 days, killing 395 people and pushing the power grid to its limits. In its rejection, the federal agency said the "precedent is to evaluate discrete events and impacts, not seasonal or general atmospheric conditions," according to the petition.

But the Stafford Act has been amended in the past, and FEMA hasn't been afraid to use it in other extenuating emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump approved COVID-19 major disaster declaration requests for all states, tribes and territories under the Stafford Act. President Biden later approved similar requests from the Navajo Nation and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, and made available $3.46 billion in hazard mitigation funding for all areas that had received COVID disaster declarations.

"Together, the Biden and Trump administrations recognized that infectious diseases constitute major disasters under the Stafford Act, despite the fact that these events are not listed in the definition of 'major disaster,'" the petition said.