The Government Accountability Office released a new report on June 9, 2026, identifying significant gaps in how FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manage advance contracts for disaster debris removal. The report, GAO-26-108121, "Disaster Contracting: Actions Needed to Encourage Advance Contract Use and Improve Information Sharing and Oversight," found that FEMA offices are confused about their roles in helping state, local, and tribal governments use pre-positioned contracts before disasters strike, and that the Army Corps has process gaps that undermine its own reporting on advance contract debris removal activities. GAO issued six recommendations to both agencies.
What GAO Investigated and What It Found
Auditors reviewed FEMA and Army Corps advance contracting practices with particular attention to two recent, high-profile disasters: the Los Angeles wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. Both events generated massive debris removal requirements under intense time pressure and public scrutiny — conditions that expose every weakness in a government's pre-disaster contracting posture.
An advance contract — sometimes called a pre-positioned or standby contract — is a competitively solicited agreement established before a disaster occurs. Rather than scrambling to issue emergency solicitations in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane or wildfire, a government entity with an advance contract in place can issue a task order the moment disaster strikes, mobilizing crews and equipment within days rather than weeks. The difference in community recovery speed can be measured in months.
FEMA's role in promoting advance contracts extends beyond its own acquisitions. The agency is responsible for encouraging and assisting state, local, and tribal governments — the entities that typically own the debris problem and bear the primary responsibility for removal — to have their own advance contracts in place before they need them. FEMA can provide technical assistance, training, and in some cases reimbursement guidance that makes advance contracts more attractive for local governments operating on tight budgets.
GAO found that FEMA offices were confused about who specifically within the agency is responsible for encouraging subnational governments to establish advance contracts, what guidance and tools should be provided, and how progress should be tracked. That role confusion means that FEMA's advance contract promotion function operates inconsistently across regions and disasters — some areas receive strong pre-event support, while others do not, with outcomes that reflect those differences when catastrophe arrives.
The Army Corps finding is distinct but equally consequential. The Corps operates its own advance contract program for debris removal and deploys under mission assignments from FEMA when federal assistance is triggered. GAO found that the Army Corps has gaps in its process for reporting what advance contract debris removal activities were actually conducted after disasters. Without accurate and complete reporting, neither FEMA nor Congress can assess whether the advance contracting approach is working, where gaps exist, and how resources should be allocated to close them.
Why the LA Fires and Hurricane Helene Made This Urgent
The GAO site visits to Los Angeles and North Carolina were not chosen arbitrarily. The LA wildfires that began in January 2025 generated one of the largest urban debris removal operations in California history, with billions of dollars in federal contracting flowing to removal firms under extraordinary time and political pressure. Hurricane Helene's impact on western North Carolina — an inland region that rarely receives hurricane-force winds and flooding — overwhelmed local capacity and highlighted how quickly the absence of pre-positioned contracts becomes a community-level catastrophe.
Together, these two events put the federal disaster contracting system under a microscope that revealed exactly the deficiencies GAO documented: unclear federal roles in pre-event preparation, inconsistent use of advance contracts at the state and local level, and reporting systems that cannot tell federal officials whether the pre-positioned approach is actually delivering faster recovery outcomes.
What It Means for Contractors
Federal disaster contracting represents a market that consistently exceeds $20 billion in annual federal spending when major events occur, and the trajectory of climate-driven disasters suggests that spending will not decrease. For contractors, the GAO report matters because it will drive structural changes to how advance contracts are solicited, managed, and reported — changes that create new entry points into the market and new requirements for firms already operating in it.
Advance contracts for debris removal are typically structured as indefinite-delivery contracts with pre-negotiated unit rates for specific debris types and removal activities: cubic yards of vegetative debris, tons of hazardous household material, linear feet of waterway clearance. They are competed before the disaster, meaning firms can win work through a rational procurement process rather than fighting for emergency contracts in the chaotic days after a major event. For contractors with heavy equipment, experienced crews, and the financial capacity to mobilize rapidly, these vehicles are the most reliable path to disaster response work.
The GAO recommendations to FEMA create a specific opportunity. As the agency clarifies roles for promoting advance contracts to state and local governments, it will need to help those governments identify qualified contractors, understand how to structure solicitations, and navigate reimbursement rules. Firms that invest in educating local emergency managers about advance contracting options — before the next disaster — will be positioned to win the resulting procurements. Local emergency management agencies in high-risk areas are often receptive to contractor outreach that comes with genuine technical knowledge rather than a pure sales pitch.
The Army Corps reporting improvements will also matter to contractors. Better data on what advance contract work was actually performed means better insight into where coverage gaps exist geographically and what types of debris removal capacity are undersupplied. Contractors who monitor FEMA and Army Corps data releases following this report's implementation will gain a competitive intelligence advantage in identifying where the next solicitation is likely to emerge.
Firms new to disaster contracting should begin by reviewing FEMA's Advance Contract Initiative materials and the Army Corps' Advance Contracts database, and should ensure they are registered under the relevant NAICS codes for debris removal and emergency cleanup services. The window between disaster declaration and contract award is measured in hours for firms that are already pre-qualified and measured in months for those that are not.
