PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA — A wildfire resilience project in El Dorado County, California, designed to protect more than 500 homes in and around Placerville, has been stalled for more than a year because FEMA has not approved the project plan, a county official said. The delay is part of a broader backlog in which FEMA owes communities almost $10 billion in disaster funding, according to internal agency documents.

County staff have spent three years preparing to enroll the homes in the program, which provides financial support for fire-resistant building materials and brush clearance and is largely funded by FEMA. Under the Weber Creek Project, which FEMA approved in 2023, homeowners are eligible for up to $40,000 of work, with El Dorado County managing the contractors. The county submitted an environmental review for the project to FEMA in February 2026, a county official said, but approval has not come.

Placerville's rolling hillsides contain dense brush and older wooden homes prone to wildfire ignition. The 2021 Caldor Fire prompted El Dorado County to recognize its wildfire risk, and state and local agencies on the outskirts of the city are thinning dense underbrush to reduce that risk. "It's a perfect storm for devastation," El Dorado County wildfire resilience officer Tanya Harlow said. She described the condition of aging structures in the area: "That rotted wood is just dry and ready for ignition."

Placerville homeowner Adele Montgomery said a wildfire inspector recommended removing her deck and installing fire-resistant flashing around the base of her house. "I'm so ready. The deck is really a problem in my mind," she said. "They say if a fire starts behind us, that it'll go straight down into the city of Placerville because of all the trees."

The broader FEMA backlog extends well beyond wildfire mitigation. The majority of disaster funding owed by the agency falls under the Public Assistance Program, which reimburses states for repairs to major infrastructure such as roads, bridges and water treatment plants after a disaster. Communities typically plan and pay for such projects upfront and then seek reimbursement from FEMA. Some stalled grants are funded by FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which helps communities rebuild and retrofit infrastructure to withstand future disasters.

In June 2025, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem required all grants over $100,000 to be reviewed by her office for waste, fraud and abuse, including those from FEMA. A report by Senate Democrats found that the grant review policy slowed disaster aid. Noem was fired by President Trump in March 2026, and her successor, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, revoked the grant review policy earlier in April 2026, according to a statement from the agency.

Andrew Rumbach, a disaster policy researcher at the Urban Institute, said in a podcast interview that the funding delays have consequences beyond individual projects. "That creates all kinds of challenges for state and local governments. In some states, you're finding where they're having to really take emergency measures to pay those bills, which means potentially cutting other programs that people care about," he said.