Well, I live in the Augusta, GA area. We were without power for over a week, trees and power lines down everywhere, homes were crushed, buildings destroyed. Compared to the areas in NC that were hit with all of that plus extreme flooding, we were very lucky. I feel like I can speak to the Hurricane Helene response on a realistic level.
I will say that government help has been limited to local government. I'm not sure what FEMA is doing, because they don't seem to be here. Immediately after, the local police were largely tied up with keeping idiots from doing idiot things, like driving through areas that were not safe because of downed trees. Firefighters were busy clearing emergency lanes and in some cases access to neighborhoods that were completely blocked. The biggest issue with all of the power outages was, and still is, a lack of communication. I have an emergency radio that includes AM, FM, WB, and CB. Nobody was putting out any information on the radio. There would be programming interruptions to tell us to go to the FEMA website for information and assistance. This, of course, is completely asinine as with no power, internet, or cell service, nobody can access the internet.
A few days after the storm, with power still out, Richmond County had to shut off the water supply. No information. Go to a webpage to find out where to get water (again, not helpful). What happened instead was locals stepped up to take care of each other. Restaurants, also without power, cooked what they could on gas grills and stoves and handed out food for free. Neighbors with chainsaws and wood chippers helped each other clear paths and get to safety. People chipped in where they could. I am very lucky in that my next door neighbor has a generator and offered to let me plug in my refrigerator, so we had food and cooked on a gas grill. After siphoning pretty much all of the fuel out of my cars to power the generator, we had to drive 120 miles to find gasoline.
Things slowly came online over the last week, and kids are back in school this week. But I think the main point is this.... the federal government isn't going to help, at least not when you really need it. There are still power outages that will take longer to recover, and the gas and water shortages have subsided. But it isn't because of FEMA - it's because people here decided to take care of each other.