As the White River rose to alarming levels not experienced since the epic floods of 1913, water rescue teams fanned out across Ravenswood just across Keystone Avenue from where I write.
I witnessed scenes like this unfold across central Indiana, from Rocky Ripple in Indy to Cambridge City, Anderson, Muncie, Carmel, Fishers and Noblesville. I watched rescue crews from Brownsburg join the Indianapolis Fire Department to deliver stranded folks to safety. Not a single instance did one of our first responders ask these folks whether they were a Republican or Democrat before stepping onto the boat.
I heard this sentiment over and over again: “I’ve lived here 30 years (or 40 or a half century) and I’ve never seen water this high before.”
The state saw more than 350 water rescues and 300,000 Hoosiers without power over the past week, according to data from the governor’s office.
That is because our climate is changing. Whether you believe it is due to cyclical patterns on our planet or to manufactured carbon output since the Industrial Revolution began in 1800 is your choice.
Our climate patterns are in flux. Indiana has recorded 107 tornadoes this year, nearly five times its annual average of 22. Illinois has had a record 275 tornadoes, so far surpassing the numbers in the traditional “Tornado Alley” states: 41 in Texas, 55 in Oklahoma and 62 in Kansas.
Some 95 uncontained large fires are actively burning across the United States, with 46,000 wildfires burning more than 6.4 million acres nationwide this year, twice as much as two decades ago.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, 403 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each affected the United States from 1980-2024. The 1980-2024 annual average is nine events; the annual average for the past five years, 2020-2024, is 23 events.
Gov. Mike Braun and an array of mayors and town managers, from Hammond, Munster, Kouts and Hebron in The Region to communities along the White River, are grappling with how to rescue citizens, manage utilities and widespread power outages from the Aug. 11 derecho and seek assistance when Mother Nature overwhelms their systems, infrastructure and workforces.
This is where the Federal Emergency Management Agency comes in. On Saturday, Braun received a Presidential Emergency Declaration, making $5 million in federal assistance available.
“I spoke with President Trump today about the devastation we’re seeing across Indiana, and I’m grateful to the president for quickly addressing my request and providing additional resources to help Hoosiers,” Braun said.
Whether you are the Democratic mayor of Hammond, like Thomas McDermott Jr., or the Republican mayor of Noblesville, like Chris Jensen, our governor has your back. If such assistance were denied on political grounds, Hoosiers would respond with fury.
Former Fort Wayne Mayor Win Moses, a Democrat, told me in 2025 how important the fledgling FEMA was to his city during the severe floods of 1982.
“They essentially gave us a handbook at the beginning,” he said of the agency. “They said, ‘You’re gonna need pumps.’ We bought every pump east of the Mississippi over the next couple of days. ‘You’re gonna need volunteers …,’” so the mayor closed the schools, and 10,000 students helped fill sandbags for levees, joined at one point by then-President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.
Democratic former Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight, who dealt with two tornadoes during his 12 years in office, added, “We got a lot of information from FEMA. You never need FEMA until you need them.
“You can pretend climate change doesn’t exist, but heat waves are getting longer and hotter. Storms are more catastrophic and unpredictable. I cannot think of a worse time to discuss the elimination of FEMA.”
Trump and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to end FEMA. In March 2025, Noem said, as Trump looked on, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency eliminated 2,000 of FEMA’s 6,100 full-time workforce.
Following the catastrophic flooding in the Texas hill country July 4, 2025, Noem softened her stance, saying FEMA would be “remade” rather than dismantled.
This past May 7, the FEMA Review Council released a 74-page final report. The word “climate” appears once.
“It is time to close the chapter on FEMA,” the 12-member council, which includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, wrote in its report. The report includes 150 recommendations aimed at putting FEMA into “more of a supporting role.”
“The Trump administration spent over a year dismantling FEMA piece by piece, and now their own handpicked council is endorsing the wreckage,” Rafael Lemaitre, a former director of public affairs at FEMA, told The Guardian. “You cannot cut your way to a capable disaster response agency.”
The other crucial change is that Trump is now making disaster declarations based on politics. According to POLITICO, he has approved just 23% of disaster funding requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic U.S. senators during his second term. For states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, like Indiana, it’s the opposite — Trump has approved 89% of those requests.
Our nation’s motto is “E pluribus unum,” a Latin phrase meaning “Out of many, one.” That’s why first responders from Brownsburg could not care less whether a flood victim from Ravenswood or Carmel is a Republican, Democrat or independent.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
