When disaster strikes, FEMA is there. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has led America’s response to storms, wildfires and other catastrophes for decades, but that is changing under President Donald Trump. As a result, coastal states may struggle as hurricane season arrives.
Trump is moving to “weaken FEMA and shift disaster response to the states,” said the Los Angeles Times. The president made his preferences clear after January’s devastating California wildfires. “You don’t need FEMA,” Trump said then. “You need a good state government.” Under that approach, the agency is undergoing “layoffs, budget cuts, grant cancellations and other challenges” while leaving states to fend for themselves. But California and other states are “struggling to keep pace” with more frequent and more intense disasters brought on by climate change.
The president’s philosophy is “on the verge of a high-stakes stress test,” said Axios. FEMA appears to be “understaffed, underfunded and underprepared” for the Atlantic hurricane season. Agency officials seem to agree with that gloomy assessment. “FEMA is not ready” to respond to a big storm, they said in an internal review obtained by CNN.
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The United States is “becoming less ready for natural disasters,” said The Washington Post editorial board. It’s not just FEMA. The White House is “gutting” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which “monitors weather, conducts climate research and maintains intricate forecast models” that help communities prepare for severe weather. The Trump administration has also “repeatedly denied federal aid to disaster-stricken regions” like Arkansas after it experienced tornadoes. Republicans in Congress must push back. “Americans need a government that cares about their safety,” the outlet added.
It is “appealing” to say that FEMA’s work should be “left to states and localities,” said Donald F. Kettl at Governing. But those levels of government “aren’t up to the job” of disaster response. The creation of FEMA in 1979 was the result of a “long historical process” during which federal officials decided that “preserving local communities was too important a job to be left to them alone.” Trump administration officials will likely realize that lesson anew when the next big storm strikes and they find it “politically impossible” to “shrug off local calls for help because of some notion that it’s simply a local problem.”
What next?
Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress on Tuesday that FEMA should be reformed to “increase the burden on states to respond to natural disasters,” Reuters said. The aim is to have states “manage their emergencies and we come in and support them,” she said.
But state and local governments are “already in charge of disasters,” said NPR. FEMA only comes in to help when requested by a state government. Without federal support, states would have to hire “thousands of additional personnel” and “face billions of dollars in recovery costs” when disaster strikes. As hurricane season arrives, “states aren’t prepared” for that responsibility.
