That is an exceedingly cynical way of looking at it. People usually volunteer to do this kind of thing and have no small amount of personal pride that they are able to help their neighbors in a disaster. It is a very positive experience for the people that do it, and they are often some of the first people on the ground. This is a manifestation of the self-reliance bias of American culture, they want to fix things themselves when disasters happen.

Disaster response in the US is completely driven by these kinds of community-oriented actions by private individuals and companies, and it has a long history of being highly effective.