By the FMNN Editorial Board | Nov. 2, 2026
This is an opinion piece. For the facts as reported, read our news story: Up to 22 Inches of Rain on Election Eve. DeSantis Finally Declared an Emergency, and Left Out Palm Beach.
Florida is a peninsula. Most of it sits a few feet above the ocean. It rains here like it rains almost nowhere else in America. Floods are not a surprise in Florida. They are the forecast for the rest of our lives.
So how, in a state run by one party for more than a quarter century, can 16 to 22 inches of rain fall on Palm Bay and West Melbourne, water pour into homes in Riviera Beach, and the governor of Florida say nothing all day?
He came to Palm Beach County on Sunday for the jet crash. He did not say a word about the water rising a few miles away. Monday, the National Weather Service issued a Flash Flood Emergency for Palm Bay that morning. Gov. Ron DeSantis finally declared a state of emergency at about 5 p.m., roughly nine hours later, minutes before we published this. Beyond that order, the state had announced nothing else. And Palm Beach County, which asked for it, was left off the list.
Local governments did the state's job
Look at who showed up.
Riviera Beach declared an emergency Monday. "It's been devastation for our community," Mayor Douglas Lawson said. Palm Beach County declared a local emergency and asked the governor to back it. Indian River and St. Lucie counties declared their own. Palm Bay and Melbourne told people to shelter in place. Palm Bay firefighters turned three brush trucks into high-water rescue trucks, then had to ask the state for two more. Brevard's sheriff said 911 was "inundated."
The warnings came from the National Weather Service, a federal agency. The rescues came from city firefighters and sheriff's deputies. The state of Florida showed up at the end of the day, on paper.
Brevard County's own storm page, the one residents are told to check, still said "normal operations" Monday while the county was shut down. It said sandbags were "not needed."
Washington is still waiting on him
Here's what most people don't know: FEMA can't just roll in. Federal law says the governor has to ask for a disaster declaration. No request, no federal help for families: no FEMA individual assistance, no SBA disaster loans. Counties can't apply on their own. A state emergency order is a first step, not a request. And Riviera Beach families, left out of the order entirely, are one more step behind.
He knows how to move fast when he wants to. In June 2024, DeSantis declared "a major state of emergency" for South Florida the day after 10 to 15 inches of rain. This October, he declared an emergency for 25 counties before Hurricane Isaias even reached the Panhandle. This week, with more rain and an election the next morning, he waited until the cities and counties had already done it themselves.
They wrote the climate out of the law
In 2024, DeSantis signed HB 1645, which passed the Republican Legislature largely along party lines. It deleted more than 50 lines of state law, written in 2008 under a Republican governor, about addressing climate change. DeSantis said he was "restoring sanity."
Sea level in Miami has risen about a foot since 1931. Miami just finished an 11-day run of moderate tidal flooding, the longest on record. When tides are that high, rainwater has nowhere to drain; seawater pushes back up through the storm drains. You can remove the words from the statute books. You can't remove the water from Palm Bay.
They're shrinking the fund that's supposed to fix this
Florida's flood-protection grant program, Resilient Florida, got $209 million last year. This year it got $160 million, $10 million less than the Legislature approved, because of a DeSantis veto. Earlier proposals this year sat barely above the legal minimum.
Civil engineers gave Florida's stormwater systems a C in 2025, mediocre, after a C-minus in 2021 and a D in 2016. In 2021 they found only 35% of local governments even had a program to fund and maintain stormwater systems.
Meanwhile, the same party in Washington has been cutting FEMA's disaster workforce and telling states to carry more of the load. One official told CNN the result is simple: "states are on their own." Then the state shows up late, too.
Who pays
Ben Nguyen pays. Water came into his Riviera Beach garage at 7:30 Sunday night and filled his house within an hour. "I just basically just sit in my house and crying all night," he told CBS12. He has no flood insurance. His county isn't in the governor's order.
Thousands of Palm Bay homeowners were taken out of the federal flood zone in 2014, so no one ever required them to buy flood insurance. Standard homeowners policies don't cover floods. For people like them, the only federal lifeline runs through the governor's desk.
What they'll say
Fairness requires the other side. Republicans will point out that Resilient Florida has paid out more than $1.8 billion since 2021, which is real money, signed by this governor. They'll note the same engineers said Florida's infrastructure is improving. They'll say this was a freak storm: forecasters predicted 1 to 3 inches, and radar estimates in places hit 1,000-year levels. They'll say drainage is mostly run by cities and counties, that the governor did declare an emergency the same day, and that more counties can be added.
Some of that is true. None of it explains a full day of silence while 911 was overwhelmed. A freak storm is exactly when a governor speaks first, not last. A 1,000-year flood is exactly when you ask for federal help. And "the locals run the drains" is cold comfort when the state is trimming the fund the locals depend on.
The choice
This is not one bad weekend. It's a pattern: deny the problem, cut the budget to fix it, push the costs down to cities and up to Washington, and show up last when the water comes.
Republicans have controlled the Florida Legislature since the 1990s and the governor's office for most of that time. Every person in charge today chose what to fund, what to cut and when to speak. On Tuesday, voters get to choose too.
If a state at sea level can't prepare for a flood, what exactly are we paying these people to prepare for?
If you were flooded: call 911 if you're trapped. Red Cross: 1-800-RED-CROSS. Statewide help: 2-1-1. Full list of resources in our news story. Check your polling place before you vote: votebrevard.gov, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections site, or voteindianriver.gov.
Sources
Photo: A flooded road in Kissimmee, Fla., after Hurricane Ian, Oct. 2, 2022. File photo, not from this week's flooding. Robert Kaufmann/FEMA (public domain), via DVIDS.