FEMA severely shortstaffed in face of second storm

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

Agency is working on 100 simultaneous disaster declarations

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Personnel from Maryland Task Force One, a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, inspect properties destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, N.C., on Sunday. LOREN ELLIOTT — NEW YORK TIMES

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By Christopher Flavelle

New York Times

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of staff to deal with the potential devastation of Hurricane Milton as it barreled toward Tampa.

As of Monday morning, just 9% of FEMA’s personnel, or 1,217 people, were available to respond to the hurricane or other disasters, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing. To put that into context: Over the previous five years, one-quarter of the agency’s staff was available for deployment at this point in the hurricane season.

Even in 2017 — arguably FEMA’s busiest year in the past decade, after Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, Hurricane Irma plowed through Florida, and Hurricane Maria plunged Puerto Rico into darkness — FEMA’s staffing reserves at this point in October were 19%, more than twice the levels they are at now.

The agency said Monday afternoon that it is well equipped to handle the strains. “FEMA is built for this,” said Leiloni Stainsby, the agency’s deputy associate administrator for response and recovery.

But FEMA is stretched not just by the brutal aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people. Its staff is also responding to flooding and landslides in Vermont, tornadoes in Kansas, the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby in New York and Georgia and the Watch Fire in Arizona.

And those are just the disasters that were declared in the past two weeks.

“The agency is simultaneously supporting over 100 major disaster declarations,” Brock Long, who led FEMA during the Trump administration, said in a statement.

Now FEMA must find staff members to deploy to Florida, where Milton is on track to plow into Tampa.

The relentless string of disasters, which are becoming more frequent and severe because of climate change, is just one challenge.

In a report last year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that 35% of FEMA’s positions were unfilled, partly because of “rising disaster activity during the year, which increased burnout and employee attrition.”

The agency also faces a funding crunch. Congress last week approved FEMA’s request to top up its disaster relief fund. That was before Hurricane Milton, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week said FEMA needed additional funding from Congress to make it through the hurricane season.

Still, the most immediate problem for FEMA is finding enough people.

It’s not just the top-line staff numbers that jump out. According to Monday’s briefing, some of FEMA’s most highly trained personnel, which are grouped into what the agency calls “cadres,” are at particularly low levels.

As of Monday morning, of the 2,579 people who work in the agency’s Individual Assistance cadre, four were available to deploy to Florida. Four of the 94 people who work in the safety cadre were available. And just one of the 1,201 people working in disaster survivor assistance could be dispatched.