The funds are being held up partly by laws designed in an earlier age of fewer and less severe disasters. In addition, states and cities already reeling from earlier floods or fires often struggle to meet the federal bureaucratic requirements. As climate change amplifies the disaster risk, the logjam threatens to worsen, with increasingly dire consequences.

“If we had all the money, and everything was flowing, we would be safer,” said Laura Hogshead, chief operating officer for the Office of Recovery and Resiliency in North Carolina, a state now being menaced by Hurricane Dorian. This year , the state created a new office to try to speed up those funds — a model that Dorian could test.

“There’s a lot of suffering while you wait,” she said.

The bulk of the money comes from just two federal offices: the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities recover from disasters by funding everything from clearing debris to rebuilding hospitals, and HUD, which helps repair homes, infrastructure and businesses.

The sluggish spending joins a long list of headaches for federal officials trying to protect Americans against climate change. Among them: The shrinking number of people with flood insurance compared with a decade ago; the growing number of homes being built in floodplains; the refusal of many states to impose mandatory, up-to-date building codes; and the emphasis on rebuilding in the same place, rather than somewhere safer.

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What sets this problem apart is that it’s largely of the government’s own making.