As dozens of tornadoes tore through the Midwest and Plains from Texas to Michigan in the days before March 13, 2026, part of a wave of severe storms that killed at least 11 people, state and local search-and-rescue crews deployed without a tornado-tracking mapping tool that FEMA normally provides, CNN reported on March 13, citing two sources and internal documents.
FEMA's roughly $200,000 contract with the company that supplies the data expired in February, and the request to renew it was still moving through Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's spending-approval process, which requires her personal sign-off on spending over $100,000. FEMA staff had written to DHS in January asking for the renewal ahead of spring tornado season, according to CNN's sources.
The tool pinpoints a tornado's path of destruction within minutes of touchdown, helping responders reach the hardest-hit neighborhoods first. Without it, one source told CNN, “Rescuers were flying blind, having to drive around or use news reports to figure out where the impacts were.” Officials from several states contacted FEMA, and by early that week were urging acting FEMA chief Karen Evans to approve the contract; FEMA's own leaders pressed Evans and DHS as well. WCCB reported on March 16 that the tool was back up and running.
The lapse fit a broader pattern. CNN reported that the same approval rules slowed the pre-positioning of rescue teams and data sharing with states during the deadly July 2025 Texas floods, and a March 4 report by Senate Homeland Security Committee Democrats, based on a whistleblower-provided tracker, identified at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants and awards delayed or pending under Noem's $100,000 rule, according to the Washington Post. DHS disputed that report; assistant secretary Lauren Bis said “there are no systemic delays” and that the review process was designed to “break through bureaucratic red tape.”
Correction (October 2, 2026): An earlier version said the tornadoes alone killed at least 11 people during March 8 to 13 and that Noem's process “blocked” the renewal. CNN attributes the 11 deaths to the wider wave of storms, reports tornadoes beginning the prior weekend, and describes the renewal as still pending in the approval process rather than rejected. The title and summary were adjusted accordingly.