It may be a club none of its members actually want to be in, but the growing number of people in the US affected by extreme weather disasters are starting to organize into a political force. Severe wildfires, floods storms and other calamities now touch the lives of huge numbers of Americans – about half of all people in the US by one estimate – as the climate crisis supercharges extreme events. Some survivors are now coalescing to push for improved disaster response and even action on the politically contentious issue of global heating.
Survivors overwhelmingly feel that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) should be more responsive but also that disaster aid should not be politicized, Kos said. Donald Trump has enacted deep cuts to Fema, stressing that states should take more responsibility for disaster relief, and has been accused of withholding resources from states that did not vote for him. A meeting of survivors this month in Texas, though, suggests that politicians don’t yet feel overwhelming political pressure to engage with those affected by extreme weather.
In a community hall in Kerrville, near where flash floods killed 136 people in 2025, all of the Texas gubernatorial and senate candidates were invited to speak to survivors but only one, Vikki Goodwin, Democratic candidate for lieutenant-governor, showed up. Several of those who spoke at the event expressed surprise at how they had been thrust into the role of advocate. I never thought I’d be doing this,” said Kylie Nidever, a former pre-school teacher whose childhood home in Hunt, Texas, was one of the few in the neighborhood to survive inundation from the floods.
So that was initially how I dealt with the trauma,” said Nidever, who has spoken to a committee of Texas lawmakers and expressed shock at the lack of Fema response to similar, less deadly, floods that hit the region again this year. I guess I knew it would flood again, I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.” Georgia Bishop, whose best friend Felicity Jarmon died in the 2025 floods, said she still finds it difficult to talk about the disaster, which caused “devastating” damage to her own home. But the 19-year-old has got involved with Extreme Weather Survivors events and traveled to Washington in June to speak to members of Congress about the need for better flood warnings, such as sirens, for communities like hers.
The reception she got was mixed, she said, with some lawmakers appearing uninterested while some promised to do more. Several people at the Texas meeting spoke of how they will soon be evicted from temporary housing, with no payments from Fema or other bodies to help make their ruined homes habitable again. Other survivors have been rejected multiple times for Fema assistance, under this and previous administrations.
After several rejected applications, Anderson had to take out a loan to cover the $400,000 needed to repair her home from flooding that had forced her, her husband, child and two dogs to sit on the top of their car to escape the rising waters. These common woes help pull together survivors from different parts of America’s politically fractured landscape, even helping foster a greater appreciation of the role of the climate crisis in disasters among those previously skeptical of such links. Scientists have been clear that global heating likely worsened the floods in Texas and elsewhere, as well as recent heatwaves
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