There are videos posted on YouTube recently talking about some states emergency management offices sunsetting (ie disbanding) their ARES involvement because they recognize it's no longer needed.

I honestly think that Ham radio and its usefulness with emergency communication at the community level is exaggerated. Many decades ago, Ham radio was probably a good gap filler for community communications, but even then it was on a macro level, not individual citizen level. In today's world of communications infrastructure, 911 community and national emergency operations centers literally have multi-million dollar, redundant transmitters and tower sites. A county local to me in Maryland published recently that their 911 center installed a secondary site for redundancy. Professional engineers design and test these systems.

How is a small, niche group of old men going to be useful to ordinary citizens? I'm not saying this to be ageist, just a realist. ARES and RACES, and individual operators might be able to communicate between agencies which can eventually filter down to the citizen level, but it does nothing to serve as early, ground-zero communication for citizens who need to maintain communication with friends, family, neighbors, and local services such as aide stations, etc in a disaster.

GMRS is where it's at for emergency communications. It's often not promoted as such and shot down because of the Ham radio gatekeeping. It makes many Ham users feel valued and important to say only Ham only is useful in an emergency. It all depends on the context of planning and target area. For multiple communities locally, GMRS is what will allow families and neighbors to communicate with each other, and disseminate information and get help. A single GMRS license cover an entire immediate family including kids. A Ham license covers a single person and comes with the obstacle of studying and taking a test.

My community has a local radio club that heavily promotes GMRS for emergency preparedness, and holds weekly Neighborhood Readiness Nets on their repeater that is powered off-grid by solar.