As thousands of residents in Spokane, Washington begin to grapple with a long recovery after a destructive set of blazes that consumed hundreds of homes in the state’s second most populated city this month, victims of the Los Angeles firestorm broke a grim record – they have faced the longest delay in modern history for federal aid. Nearly 600 days since a historic firestorm roared into communities across Los Angeles, reducing more than 16,000 structures to ash and toxic debris, the Trump administration has failed to appropriate more than $15bn in long-term recovery funds that are crucial to rebuilding. The delay in supplying the badly needed funds is months longer than the last record set when victims of the Maui fires had to wait 500 days to receive the support, LAist noted this week.
Recoveries from large-scale disasters like these have long stretched across years. But there are concerns that lags or lapses in support from the federal role will add new challenges to already complex rebuilding efforts in devastated areas across the US. Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of politicizing disasters, to the detriment of communities left in limbo.
It has just been absolutely ripped open and has not been able to recover yet,” he said. The group, which was led by California’s Rob Bonta, claimed the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) have used a “campaign of coercion”, leveraging the needed disaster support in an attempt to force states to implement voting and immigration policies pushed by the president. Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states far more often than his predecessors, approving only 23% of their requests compared to 89% of requests from states largely represented by Republicans, Politico reported in March.
The president also initially threatened to attach political conditions to federal aid he said would go to Los Angeles fire victims. Meanwhile, recovery there has been painful and slow. The fires, which erupted in the parched southern California hillsides and cascaded into the surrounding suburbs with shocking ferocity in January 2025, left behind unprecedented levels of destruction in the city and county of Los Angeles.
Thirty-one people were killed directly by the disaster. Homes, businesses, churches and schools were leveled in the aftermath, with thousands more structures left uninhabitable or damaged from smoke and surrounding toxic debris. With the two-year anniversary of the fires just months away, scores of Angelenos remain in limbo.
Roughly two-thirds of survivors were still displaced as of late July, according to a report from the Department of Angels. In their sixth survey done with more than 2,000 fire victims, the group found that all forms of financial assistance have decreased in recent months, while homeowners typically face a roughly $500,000 gap in trying to rebuild. Close to half of those impacted had to take on debt to stay afloat and 20% have had to delay rebuilding or repairs due to financial constraints.
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