Acres of charred trees jut out from freshly fallen snow on the 340,000-acre burn scar of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, pictured in February 2023. Amid threats of a federal spending freeze, the head of a federal office administering $5.45 billion in compensation to fire victims said at a meeting Wednesday that the funds would not be affected, three attendees told Source NM. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM)
Amid confusion regarding the impacts to New Mexicans from President Donald Trump’s threatened federal spending freeze this week, questions arose Tuesday regarding the fate of federal compensation for Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire victims.
Three of those victims told Source Wednesday they were given assurances in a meeting with U.S. Sen Ben Ray Luján by the claims office director of operations, Jay Mitchell, that the funding would be spared from any potential cuts.
Since Tuesday, the FEMA claims office has not responded to requests for comment about whether potential cuts would impact Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire victims, instead sending inquiries from Source New Mexico to “FEMA HQ,” as a spokesperson called it. Luján has also publicly called on FEMA to issue a statement to assuage concerns, but the agency had not done so as of Wednesday afternoon.
A spokesperson for Luján confirmed Mitchell offered reassurances to the victims in the meeting: The Federal Emergency Management Agency “shared in the meeting that the money is not frozen, and Senator Luján will fight to get this relief out the door,” spokesperson Adan Serna told Source via text message.
Mitchell offered the reassurance at the beginning of a meeting and told about 30 attendees, – including Yolanda Cruz, Tyler White and Meg Sandoval, who spoke to Source New Mexico – that Trump’s threatened freeze will not affect money appropriated specially by Congress to fully compensate victims of the federally caused wildfire.
The meeting, weeks in the making and attended by people in-person and online, was initially organized amid concerns that the claims office was not focused enough on providing compensation to people who lost their primary residences in the fire, said Cruz, an organizer who moderates a Facebook page of survivors from the wildfire. Mitchell sought to address those concerns, but first addressed widespread fears about Trump’s threatened cuts.
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“Because of the way (Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Act) funds are structured, Trump can’t get his hands on it,” said Meg Sandoval, who lost her home in the fire, reading to Source from her notes from Mitchell’s opening remarks.
According to Sandoval and White, Mitchell could not offer similar assurance for federal disaster funding that comes from what’s known as the Stafford Act. That 1970s-era law dictates how FEMA should respond, and what aid it can provide, for disasters across the country.
Stafford Act aid, which is limited, goes to both individuals and local governments. The deadline to apply for individual assistance from FEMA Stafford Act funding ended more than two years ago, though multiple infrastructure projects, like burned bridges or washed-out roads, are still winding their way through the process.
In late 2022, Congress enacted the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, which established a claims office to “fully compensate” victims for what they lost in the fire. They’ve awarded $5.45 billion in three installments to achieve that aim, and the claims office has distributed about $1.8 billion of that money so far.
That money awarded by Congress under the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act is separate from disaster assistance awarded under the Stafford Act.
As of Wednesday at 5 p.m. a federal judge had temporarily paused the spending freeze as multiple legal challenges remain pending, and a second judge appeared poised to block it as well.
Nonetheless, FEMA’s fate remains uncertain. In his first days in office, Trump publicly floated abolishing FEMA before assembling a committee to consider ways to overhaul the agency.
The actions from the federal government have seeded rifts in the 13,000-member Facebook group that Cruz oversees, she said, with posts flooding in at all hours from pro- and anti-Trump fire survivors. She generally tries to keep the group focused on policy, she said, and keep politics out.
Given how unprecedented the cuts are, how shocking and cruel they seem, Cruz said, it’s hard to know what’s real or what’s in the realm of possibility.
With Trump promising drastic FEMA reform, Cruz said, “Some people want to bring it up to Trump, some others are saying, ‘It’s not on his radar, don’t put it there,” she said. “I don’t have the answer to that. I wish I did. It’s scary times, just the things that we’ve been hearing.”