Michael McLemore could feel severe weather coming to St. Louis on May 16. He was able to quickly pull his uncle and dog off his front porch in the Greater Ville seconds before the winds from the EF3 tornado ripped his porch and roof off.
He filed an insurance claim and received about $4,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But his home was tagged with a red sticker by city officials, and the money he received from both agencies was just not enough to cover the loss.
McLemore was one of about 80 individuals from around the country who experienced a natural disaster over the past few years and struggled to get immediate support from the federal government. They spoke to members of Congress in the U.S. Capitol this month on ways to improve FEMA for all.
McLemore is also the electoral justice organizer for Action St. Louis. He said that the country needs a streamlined system that can stabilize the community and respond financially immediately.
"We're seven months post-storm, and there's a lot of stability issues, and a lot of the homes that people are still living in," he said. "A quicker response would be massively important, because I don't believe this storm was declared a major emergency until … close to a month after the storm."
Disasters survivors from Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Puerto Rico shared their stories to lawmakers in hopes to provide insight on how the federal emergency management system is working in their home states and what challenges they have with the system as survivors, community activists and organizers as the months and years go on after the disaster.
"They had folks from Hurricane Katrina, [Hurricane] Eileen, Hurricane Sandy and a host of other disasters from across the region," said Melanie Marie, Action St. Louis' People's Response organizer. "What we were able to see is the alignment in our experiences and how working with the same systems, such as FEMA or our local emergency agencies, we have the same issues as far as response time, inadequate resources and just not enough continuity across the board."
Marie said St. Louis had many similarities with other natural disaster survivors in regard to community organizing moments after each storm. She said people shared stories of being first aid responders, home assessors and grief agents while waiting on support from the federal government.
"It's like, 'What do you do in the waiting?' Even our own local government here was waiting on FEMA," she said. "There's something wrong with this system, and that's what this is about. The system currently is not working, and instead of getting rid of it, we want to assess it and reform it."
In July 2025, U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri introduced the FEMA Act of 2025 to help reform the agency by refining eligibility requirements, improving disaster assistance for special groups and establishing it as an independent agency. The bipartisan House bill does not have a companion bill in the Senate.
Organizers and tornado survivors from Missouri were able to chat with legislators on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure who are helping write the bill. They also met with U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley's team and Missouri U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell's staff. While they were there, they wanted to speak with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but she was unavailable to meet with disaster survivors.
Marie said that if she could speak with Noem, she would tell her to cut the red tape so FEMA could help people who desperately need it.
"People are cold. People are still without power and are still without heat. Mold and mildew do not wait for a response, and we need it now," Marie said. "We need to really evaluate how we are looking at FEMA. We cannot gut FEMA, we cannot cut FEMA. We have to give it the resources that it needs to stand on its own leg."
Marie would like to see FEMA engage more with the community prior to disasters. She suggested FEMA provide educational courses with local organizations to teach them what to do when a disaster strikes. She also wants the FEMA bill to include a seamless application process.
The way community members, organizations and businesses deployed moments after the May tornado, on into months after, should not be the norm for emergency management. FEMA should be granted access to assist at any time, McLemore said.
"What we definitely don't want to happen is for St Louis to become a model of what disaster response looks like moving forward, because we've seen now that it absolutely doesn't work," he said. "We know that the state itself couldn't possibly just take over disaster response on its own, so we really do need a FEMA that's empowered enough to really respond where the state and local governments fall short in response."
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