The grueling budget machinations necessary to avoid a government shutdown have left a slew of underfunded programs, including those that keep our food edible, our children educated, and our water drinkable. Less apparent but perhaps farther reaching are series of cuts that affect local emergency staffing, training, and equipment.

The $786 million in cuts will affect Federal Emergency Management Agency grants, according to a ProPublica report. According to the New York Times, the cuts will stunt a program that helped hire police officers and change the face of Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants. Those grants, which were previously used to pay fire personnel for up to two years, will now be capped to the point where local agencies will have to pitch in on salaries or pass on the grants.

“It is money appropriated in a bill that municipalities will not be able to access,” International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger told the Times. “They’re going to be doing it shorthanded, short-staffed.”

Staffing isn't the only problem. Often, when agencies are forced to decide between the cold comfort of well-trained warm bodies or public outreach, preparedness efforts take the hit.

“States have very little resources for this of their own—they have relied on the federal government from the beginning,” William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, told ProPublica. “They have essentially been able to stand up their preparedness activities in the last decade on the shoulders of federal support.”

The hit to preparedness is especially bitter for emergency managers who have long tried to convince the public and policy makers that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In addition to the grant program cuts, now it looks like FEMA will lose $50 million from its National Predisaster Mitigation Fund and $38 million from its effort to bring flood maps up to date, according to ProPublica. An anonymous FEMA staffer was cited as the source of the information. About $1 billion was set aside for responding to future disasters, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

Perhaps more disturbing than the lack of staffing and preparedness dollars is the dangerous precedent set by carving up emergency programs, Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told ProPublica.

“The cuts undermine the security of the country, as far as disaster preparedness is concerned,” he said. “If this is the direction we’re going in, I think the country is in for a lot more trouble.”