FEMA investigators spent days walking around Westernport and Lonaconing in May, tallying up the damage to hundreds of homes and buildings wrecked by flash flooding.

Starting with local and state estimates, they licked their collective pencil tips and figured that it amounted to $15.8 million across Washington and Allegany counties. They handed that arithmetic back to the state, where Gov. Wes Moore signed off last week on a formal request to FEMA for help.

Now, Maryland waits. Will the money come, or will the Federal Emergency Management Agency expire first? No one knows.

“Knowing that sometimes these don’t get approved initially, we’ve already worked with the state, with the Department of Emergency Management, preparing to appeal,” said Roger Bennett, acting director of Allegany County emergency services.

Appeal where?

President Donald Trump set Nov. 30 as the date he’ll feed the Federal Emergency Management Agency into his government wood chipper.

“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” he told reporters June 10 in the Oval Office. “A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”

That’s the end of the hurricane season and the start of a new era for disaster response, one where this particular government acronym is no longer a synonym for big, bad storms, fires, earthquakes and floods.

“What’s happening to FEMA matters,” said Chas Eby, deputy director of the Maryland Department of Emergency Management. “The details will be key and the timing will be key.”

Lots of things come to mind.

Irony. Texas and Florida, crucial to securing Trump’s second term, get more help from FEMA than any other state.

Hope. Republicans in Congress were OK with slashing food aid for starving kids in Africa, but maybe tearing up recovery programs back home is just too much.

Maybe above all, anxiety. How much is this going to hurt?

Emergency management officials across Maryland are assessing the damage of Trump’s long-telegraphed decision to end FEMA. The hope is that programs will pop up under other names and departments.

Maybe they know a thing or two. Maybe they’re in denial.

“I’m confident that will be worked out,” said Joseph Theobald, emergency services director for Ocean City.

FEMA does not spell federal efficiency.

It prioritizes property over people and procedure over fixes. Trump cut 1,000 jobs and fired his first pick for administrator after the poor schlub told Congress that FEMA plays a vital role.

It was fatally inept in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and not much better when Harvey, Irma and Maria tore through Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida in 2017. Then came COVID.

Trump didn’t seem to notice until he was running again for the White House, when he tied FEMA to his favorite villain — migrants. He made up a story that President Joe Biden’s agency was spending on undocumented immigrants, not Republicans, after Hurricane Helene flooded the Southeast last summer.

Cue Maryland’s leading Trump sycophant:

“FEMA should spend its funds on helping Americans after a disaster, not housing illegal immigrants,” U.S. Rep. Andy Harris told Newsmax in October.

For months, the signs that Trump was serious were clear.

His budget would refill FEMA’s disaster fund with $25 billion — used to reimburse states for the emergency response and recovery — but cut billions in preparedness grants. Future requests would go directly to him.

Hey, remember that $1 billion worth of Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities funds we promised to help you with climate-driven flooding in Crisfield, Baltimore and a dozen other places along the Chesapeake Bay?

Never mind.

And yet, hope floats. Surely Trump can’t be serious?

Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley’s administration remains confident its application for $33 million to help raise City Dock to protect against climate change will be approved by September. Candidates seeking to replace him this fall are talking about a redesign.

FEMA handed out $2 billion in “pre-mitigation” grants last year, money for equipment and personnel. MDEM spread its $6 million share from the mountains to the beach.

You can’t abandon the work that’s been done to get ready for the next big one, right?

“It’s just not feasible,” Theobald said.

There’s legislation to put some of that money back, but that was before Trump’s kill order for FEMA.

We’re in a quiet moment of the American disaster calendar, past peak tornado season and before the summer crush of the Western wildfires and Atlantic hurricanes. Ice storms are a melting memory, but you can hear thunder over the horizon.

It’s a good time to lament the passing of an agency few loved, that often stumbled, but that everyone turned to when things got bad.

In the weeks since a storm rolled in from the Ohio Valley on May 12 and 13, dropping five inches of rain and raising Georges Creek seven feet in just a few hours, the disaster clock has moved on.

The city of Annapolis released its annual reminder that hurricane season started June 1. Tropical storms are rare on the Chesapeake Bay, but when they come, they bring a weather wallop.

There was a 5,000-gallon fuel spill in Baltimore, and an EF-1 tornado packing 110 mph winds damaged homes in Baltimore and Dundalk.

Two days before the governor signed the request for help from FEMA, his office put out a statement summarizing state aid to victims of the flooding in Western Maryland.

Maryland will award Allegany County $459,375 through the Maryland State Disaster Recovery Fund, set up to help pay for recovery and relief.

In the first of Trump’s bifurcated terms as president, Texas, Florida and California got a combined $18 billion in disaster relief, according to FEMA.

By comparison, Maryland got $38.3 million after flooding in Ellicott City and Western Maryland in 2018, then Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020.

If Trump follows through and closes the agency, the future is clear.

We’re going to need a bigger bailout.