ICYMI: E&E News: ‘Holding Our Breath’: Hurricane Season Is Here, and FEMA Is Shorthanded

Washington, DC – Atlantic hurricane season starts Monday, and today, E&E News reported that the Trump administration has the smallest disaster workforce since 2021. Trump has gutted FEMA, weakening our disaster response capabilities, and he’s politicizing and delaying critical aid. With hurricane season coming and an ongoing historically bad wildfire season, FEMA will be stretched thin, and communities could be left without the help they need when disaster strikes.  

E&E News: ‘Holding our breath’: Hurricane season is here, and FEMA is shorthanded

The Trump administration is approaching hurricane season with the smallest disaster workforce since 2021, a huge backlog of state aid requests and 15 vacancies in top emergency management jobs.

President Donald Trump’s cuts to agencies that help with everything from clearing roads to finding emergency lodging are raising fears that a catastrophic hurricane could overwhelm the government’s ability to help desperate people and demolished communities.

Overall, that could mean the U.S. is less prepared for this hurricane season, beginning Monday, than it was at the start of last year’s unusually quiet summer and fall, said several emergency managers.

“There is a feeling of holding our breath, hoping for an easy season again,” said Judson Freed, a past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers.

NOAA recently predicted three to six hurricanes this summer, which is below the annual average of seven hurricanes.

The highest levels of concern are directed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which leads the government’s disaster response and has lost nearly 20 percent of its staff since Trump took office, federal records show. The top echelon of career FEMA employees is down 35 percent.

“FEMA has lost a lot of higher level people with a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge over the past year and a half,” said Josh Morton, emergency management director in Saluda County, South Carolina, and current president of the emergency managers’ group. “FEMA staffing all the way around has dropped drastically.”…

Agency staffing was down to 21,100 in March, according to the latest Office of Personnel Management figures.

“As bad as it was, there were a lot of bodies to throw against the problem. Now there are fewer bodies, and a lot of those bodies don’t know how to do the job,” Freed said.

Jonathan Lord, head of emergency management in Flagler County, Florida, said he can no longer count on FEMA workers to canvass neighborhoods and help survivors after a disaster.

“The writing is on the wall that workforce may not be available to us based on the current footprint for FEMA,” said Lord, who is president of the Florida Emergency Preparedness Association. “It’s local managers’ responsibility to have an alternative ready to go.”

Nine out of 18 FEMA leadership positions are vacant, according to the agency’s website, which also shows that six of FEMA’s 10 regional offices have no permanent administrator.