Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, disaster officials see a Federal Emergency Management Agency that’s even weaker and less prepared than it was when a catastrophic storm tested its limits in New Orleans.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to shift emergency response duties to states upended the federal disaster workforce, with voices inside and outside the agency saying it could test the country’s ability to withstand future catastrophes.
FEMA workers, former disaster officials, and watchdogs warn Trump’s downsizing decimated institutional knowledge, cut off the talent pipeline, and hobbled morale among those left.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, killing nearly 1,400 people and spurring a frenzied overhaul of the dysfunctional agency. The storm was the costliest in US history, inflicting $201 billion in damages.
“FEMA is a lot less capable today to respond to a challenge than it was then,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group focused on federal workers. “To unlearn that fundamental lesson in such a profound way should be incredibly disturbing to everybody.”
Trump targeted employees at nearly every agency in his quest to reduce government bureaucracy. The toll is especially high at FEMA, which he’s considered dismantling to shift responsibility to states. Since January, FEMA has moved to terminate hundreds of employees, fired senior career officials, offered early retirement to others, and sidelined the employee union.
Departures represent about 10% of FEMA’s workforce, according to Chris Currie, a director for the Government Accountability Office, which is studying Trump’s downsizing efforts. FEMA was already below staffing targets before the reductions.
A report by the congressional watchdog previously raised concerns over lack of personnel at the agency, and identified an overall staffing gap of about 6,200 employees across different positions at the start of fiscal 2022 during the Biden administration.
Trump launched a FEMA Review Council to explore overhauling the agency. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses FEMA, defended the changes as a way to cut through red tape in a disaster.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo.”
‘Not Left With Much’
FEMA will face challenges in rebuilding its workforce if a future administration wants to restore the agency’s scope — or if the Trump administration changes course.
“I don’t think anything’s irreversible, but the first thing that’s going to have to happen is rebuilding trust and confidence within the workforce,” Deanne Criswell, who led FEMA during President Joe Biden’s administration, said in an interview.
Two current FEMA employees, granted anonymity because they lacked permission to speak publicly, described a sense of dejection among remaining workers and colleagues who left.
The administration’s termination of their union contract was a final nail in the coffin, one of the employees said, calling it a move that will prompt even more staff departures and strain future recruitment.
The other employee said the administration’s dismissals — including the February termination of 200 workers new to the agency — were abrupt and callous. David Richardson, the top political official at FEMA, earlier this year told employees he would sideline anyone who got in his way.
Juliette Kayyem, a former state and federal emergency official who now teaches disaster management at Harvard University, said she would typically see six to eight of her students placed at FEMA for jobs each year.
“That’s not happening anymore,” she said. “People are trying to figure out, ‘How can I do this but not go to FEMA?’”
FEMA has also bled senior leaders since Trump took office, with top career officials across the country departing after decades of service.
“If you cut off the head and the tail, you’re not left with much except a bunch of people who are too young to retire or just hoping for the next deferred resignation option,” said Pete Barlow, an emergency manager who left FEMA this year and is running for Congress as a Democrat in Virginia.
It’ll take years for Trump’s top FEMA officials and employees who’ve stepped up to fill the gap to build the experience and relationships to manage disasters effectively, said one former FEMA official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, and worked in Republican administrations.
Winning Back Staff
Former FEMA officials and advocates for a strong federal hand in disaster response are already gaming out how to restore the agency’s footprint and win back experienced staff. Many ex-FEMA staffers landed in state and federal agencies or disaster management organizations in the private sector.
“The question is can we get them to trust or to want to be part of FEMA again?” Kayyem said.
Criswell likened the job of a future FEMA administrator to that of David Paulison, who inherited the battered agency when Michael Brown resigned after Hurricane Katrina.
“People were afraid to wear FEMA T-shirts out in public,” Criswell said, adding Paulison “had a lot of work to do to move things in the right direction.”
A FEMA leader charged with rebuilding will benefit from agency experience, relationships with state partners, and a willingness to trust career staff, she said. Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service, said a future leader can win back ex-FEMA employees by appealing to their sense of government service and the mission.
‘Dire Straits’ Ahead?
Emergency professionals watched anxiously as tsunami warnings sounded on the West Coast in July and Hurricane Erin gathered strength in the Atlantic this month.
Both threats diminished but raised questions about whether FEMA could respond effectively.
“They’re not in dire straits right now because we haven’t had a catastrophic hurricane or simultaneous catastrophic hurricanes,” Currie, of GAO, said. “That’s when they typically get into a bad situation.”
A group of FEMA employees and supporters this week said workforce cuts and other changes would cost lives when a big disaster hits.
FEMA’s effort to reimagine its role in disaster response is worthwhile, but it needs to maintain capacity in the meantime, the former Republican agency official said.
The problem is, the official said, it’s rare to go four years without some kind of devastating disaster.
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