Extreme Weather Survivors Push to Become a Political Force

A group of disaster survivors met in Kerrville, Texas, this month to organize around one goal: making their numbers count in Washington, according to The Guardian. Kerrville sits near where floods killed 136 people last year, and the gathering drew people who lived through wildfires, storms and floods in different states.

How many people have been hit by extreme weather in the US?

About half of all people in the United States have been touched by a severe wildfire, flood, storm or other weather disaster, by one estimate cited in the Guardian report. That scale is what organizers say gives the movement its size and its bipartisan reach. Survivors come from red states and blue states alike, and the group behind the push, Extreme Weather Survivors, says the shared experience of disaster cuts across usual political lines.

Who started the survivor movement and why?

Sierra Kos, a film-maker, co-founded Extreme Weather Survivors after she was caught in a cloud of toxic wildfire smoke in rural Oregon in 2020 while trying to get her son to medical care. "The group has grown, sadly, quite rapidly," Kos told the Guardian. She said survivors have already made multiple trips to Washington as politically mixed delegations to lobby lawmakers directly.

"I am positive though that survivors of extreme weather will not just shape political outcomes and policies moving forward but also look to run for office," Kos said. "This is going to be a constituency that policymakers and politicians need to listen to."

What do survivors want from FEMA?

According to the Guardian, survivors overwhelmingly want the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond faster and more consistently, and they want disaster aid kept out of partisan politics. That demand lands at a tense moment. President Donald Trump has made deep cuts to FEMA and argued that states should carry more of the load for disaster relief. The Guardian reports Trump has also been accused of withholding resources from states that did not vote for him, a charge that sharpens the stakes for survivors who say aid should not depend on how a county voted.

Why does the Kerrville location matter?

Organizers chose to meet near the site of last year's floods, which killed 136 people in the area, according to the Guardian. The location puts the human cost in plain view and reinforces the group's argument that disaster response has become a shared experience, not a regional one, as fires in Oregon, floods in Texas and other events keep adding new members to a club nobody wants to join.

What to watch

• Whether Extreme Weather Survivors expands its trips to Congress ahead of the 2026 midterms.
• Whether any survivors follow through on talk of running for local or state office.
• How FEMA's funding and state-level disaster response play out after the cuts Trump has enacted.
• Whether the group's bipartisan framing holds as climate policy debates intensify in Washington.

Read the full report at The Guardian.