With the approaching anniversary of last year’s devastating July 4 floods in the Texas Hill Country, a national watchdog group warns that the Trump White House has gutted the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s ability to respond to disasters.
Texas state Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D-Plano, joined a group of lawmakers, advocates and former FEMA officials known as the Sabotaging Our Safety (SOS) coalition on a Tuesday press call to voice her concerns about the agency’s ability to handle the upcoming hurricane season. The lawmaker said she’s particularly concerned with the scale of staff and aid cuts under the Trump administration.
“If experienced disaster personnel are leaving FEMA, if leadership positions remain vacant, if preparedness contracts have been cancelled, then that … can mean the difference between a family getting help in days versus weeks or months,” she said. “Texas learned this firsthand with Hurricane Harvey … . The cost of being unprepared is measured in lives, disrupted homes, damaged businesses and communities left struggling to recover.”
During the call, SOS presented its FEMA Readiness Scorecard, which graded the organization an “F” grade for its leadership, workforce, hurricane preparedness and structure and planning.
Plesa said the agency’s downward spiral is especially dangerous as Texas flood season begins. Last summer’s Guadalupe River flood killed at least 139 people, including 27 young campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. In the wake of the disaster, some local residents complained of a sluggish response from and FEMA and other federal officials.
“We’re about to hit the July 4 anniversary, and people remember, especially around FEMA,” Plesa said. “It was the local authorities who showed up, who banded together and did the work.”
As part of Trump’s commitment to shrink bureaucracy in his second term, FEMA has been a target of severe cuts, including billions withheld in state disaster reimbursements, a drastic reduction in agency staff and the cancellation of $3.6 billion in community resilience and hazard mitigation grants.
Amid the cuts, FEMA desperately needs experienced personnel and better coordination with local and state organizations, SOS member Rafael Lemaitre, a former public affairs director at FEMA, said on the call.
“I’ve been really concerned with [FEMA’s] lack of engagement with state and local officials,” he said. “Part of planning for a disaster is knowing who your people are on the ground.”
Although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting a below-normal hurricane season this year, officials on the SOS press call repeatedly emphasized that just one disaster can mean weeks of power outages, billions in property damage and avoidable civilian deaths. SOS is one of many organizations calling on FEMA to reverse staff and budget cuts and reform its disaster preparedness standards.
Lemaitre said he’s also worried that increased politicization of FEMA under Trump’s watch could erode citizens’ confidence in the organization and its capabilities. The agency’s social media accounts, which share critical information and alerts during and after disasters, have been flooded by political memes criticizing Trump’s enemies, he added.
“What we’ve seen over the past year and a half is the Trump administration turning FEMA into a political weapon. We’ve seen them withhold aid to blue states while fast-tracking aid to red states,” Lemaitre said. “And we’ve seen them also propagate this lie, frankly, that somehow states are more able, better able to respond to disasters in the federal government.”
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