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Nearly 200 existent and erstwhile employees of the exigency effect bureau impulse Congress to support FEMA.
Published On 25 Aug 2025
More than 180 existent and erstwhile employees of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) person published a missive informing that debilitating cuts to the bureau charged with handling the national catastrophe effect hazard a catastrophe similar the 1 seen aft Hurricane Katrina.
The letter, sent connected Monday and signed by 35 named FEMA employees and 146 unnamed signatories, was a uncommon airing of interior dissent astatine the agency.
It said the agency’s existent leaders, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, and acting FEMA manager David Richardson, lacked the qualifications to negociate earthy disasters and were eroding its quality to respond to hurricanes and different emergencies.
“Our shared committedness to our country, our oaths of office, and our ngo of helping radical before, during, and aft disasters compel america to pass Congress and the American radical of the cascading effects of decisions made by the existent administration,” the missive notes.
A information precocious instituted by Noem, requiring that her bureau personally reappraisal and o.k. each all contracts and grants implicit $100,000, “reduces FEMA’s authorities and capabilities to swiftly present our mission”, the missive states.
It besides critiques a DHS determination to reassign immoderate FEMA employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the nonaccomplishment to name a qualified FEMA head arsenic stipulated by law, and cuts to mitigation programmes, preparedness grooming and the agency’s workforce.
About 140 unit members astatine the Environmental Protection Agency were placed connected administrative permission past period for signing a akin statement.
The FEMA missive points to the caller flooding successful Texas, successful which astatine slightest 135 radical died amid a chaotic response, arsenic grounds of the “inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and dangers of the processes and decisions enactment distant by the existent administration”.
President Donald Trump and his medication person denied that cuts to authorities agencies affected the catastrophe response, and accused Democrats of politicising a tragedy.
The missive calls connected Congress to marque FEMA an autarkic cabinet-level agency, escaped from interference from the DHS, and to support employees from politically motivated firings “to forestall not lone different nationalist catastrophe similar Hurricane Katrina, but the effectual dissolution of FEMA itself”.
Daniel Llargues, the acting FEMA property secretary, said the bureau is “committed to ensuring FEMA delivers for the American people”. He added that FEMA has been bogged down by reddish portion and inefficiencies, and that the Trump medication “has made accountability and betterment a priority”.
DHS did not instantly respond to a petition for remark astir the criticisms of Noem.
Roughly 2,000 FEMA employees, oregon a 3rd of its workforce, person near the bureau this twelvemonth done firings, buyouts oregon aboriginal retirements. The Trump medication besides plans to chopped astir $1bn successful assistance funding, affecting its exigency absorption programmes.
The protestation missive was sent days earlier the 20th day of Katrina, which caused catastrophic flooding successful New Orleans and devastating demolition on the Gulf Coast successful August 2005, claiming the lives of much than 1,800 people.
It was besides delivered 2 months into the US hurricane play and astatine a clip erstwhile Trump had said helium wanted to drastically chopped FEMA’s size and mandate, leaving overmuch much of the load of responding to earthy disasters to idiosyncratic states.
Richardson, the existent acting administrator, is simply a erstwhile US Marine and DHS authoritative without immoderate erstwhile acquisition successful exigency management.
Richardson near galore FEMA unit baffled erstwhile helium said successful June that helium was not alert that the US had a hurricane season, which begins successful June and lasts done November.
Source:
Al Jazeera and quality agencies
English (US) ·