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Quick Take
President Joe Biden said victims of the California fires are eligible for a $770 payment for necessities like food and fuel. Social media posts misleadingly suggested the payment would be the only federal aid for those affected by the fires. Federal aid available to the fire victims includes help with home repair or replacement, medical expenses and other assistance.
Full Story
The wildfires burning in Southern California since Jan. 7 have killed at least 24 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other buildings, displacing about 180,000 people.
Among the federal assistance programs available to victims of the California wildfires is a $770 emergency payment to cover the cost of immediate necessities like food, fuel and baby formula.
Those payments are available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new Serious Needs Assistance program, which President Joe Biden referenced during a briefing with federal officials on Jan. 13.
Later that evening, an X account managed by President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee posted a clip from the briefing and highlighted the portion of Biden’s comments that said, “People impacted by these fires are gonna receive one-time payment of $770. One-time payment.”
That clip was reposted by some widely followed conservative accounts that misleadingly compared the emergency payments of $770 for California’s wildfire victims to either millions or billions in U.S. aid for Ukraine. Those posts leave the misleading impression that the emergency payments would be the only aid available to those affected by the fires, implying that U.S. aid to people in another country unfairly outpaced domestic aid. The clip of Biden racked up about 7 million views between two of these posts and the RNC’s alone.
The suggestive claim that victims of the fires would receive only $770 from the federal government soon migrated to other platforms, where users compared the emergency relief payments to funding for the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza.
But, as we said, the $770 emergency payment is just one of the federal aid programs available to victims in California.
The emergency payment is available through the Serious Needs Assistance program that was introduced in January 2024.
“Serious Needs Assistance is a flexible, upfront payment that can be used to pay for emergency supplies like water, food, first aid, breast-feeding supplies, infant formula, diapers, personal hygiene items, or fuel for transportation,” according to a fact sheet published by FEMA in October.
“This is only one form of assistance the Federal Emergency Management Agency offers,” Jayce Genco, a spokesperson for FEMA, told us in a phone interview. “It’s not the only assistance that folks could be eligible for.”
Genco provided a list of other programs available to California fire victims, including rental assistance, home repair or replacement, and medical expense assistance.
And, for those interested in the full context of Biden’s remarks, he first specified that federal agencies would help pay for general costs associated with fighting the fires and addressing their destruction.
“The federal government is going to cover 100% of the cost, for the next 180 days, for things like firefighter overtime pay, debris removal, temporary shelters,” he said. “It’s going to cost tens of billions of dollars to get Los Angeles back to where it was, so we’re going to need Congress to step up to provide funding.”
The president then mentioned the emergency program available to individuals who are affected.
“I want to be clear — we’re not waiting until those fires are over to start helping the victims. We’re getting them help right now, as you all know,” he said. “People impacted by these fires are going to receive a one-time payment of $770 — one-time payment — so they can quickly purchase things like water, baby formula and prescriptions. So far, nearly 6,000 survivors have registered to do just that and $5.1 million has gone out.”
This isn’t the first time that political influencers have suggested that the federal government was providing only one form of assistance to disaster victims. We wrote about similar claims that circulated in October following the devastation from Hurricane Helene. The claims aren’t correct this time around either.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Meta to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Meta has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Los Angeles Times. Fires. Accessed 14 Jan 2025.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. Press release. “Biden-Harris Administration Reforms Disaster Assistance Program to Help Survivors Recover Faster.” 19 Jan 2024.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fact sheet. Serious Needs Assistance. Oct 2024.
C-SPAN. “President Biden Hosts Briefing on California Wildfires.” 13 Jan 2025.
Genco, Jayce. Spokesman, Federal Emergency Management Agency. Telephone interview with FactCheck.org. 14 Jan 2025.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fact sheet. FEMA Individual Assistance (California, 2025). Accessed 14 Jan 2025.
Keefe, Eliza. “Posts Misrepresent Federal Response, Funding for Hurricane Helene Victims.” FactCheck.org. 8 Oct 2024.