How Viable Will FEMA Be?

[gleem]

With the upcoming hurricane season, many are wondering how or if FEMA will respond. With the agency's budget cut, it appears FEMA may now be the Feeble Emergency Management Administration.

A FEMA employee said,

The agency hasn’t seen “huge sweeping changes yet, but it doesn’t take much to completely screw a [disaster] response up,” one employee says. “We are being set up for a really, really bad situation.”

Of all the agencies that you would think Trump might leave alone, it would be FEMA, but with the Republican accusation of FEMA mishandling the Asheville crisis, I guess they had to make like they are making it more effective. Additionally, FEMA has been a center of conspiracy theories alleging it was a front for a federal detention program. But we all know that the Feds do not need a front since you can be picked up anywhere in broad daylight and covertly sent to a detention center.

As I understand it, FEMA is a network of federal and state resources that can be mustered to respond to catastrophic emergencies. With the administration meddling in the agency, it is not clear that it can respond effectively in a timely fashion. The administration has indicated that it wants to put states in charge, but that requires a new structure, which I do not see happening in just a few months. The resources are contracted private companies

Those looking to make cuts at FEMA have an advantage in the structure of the agency itself, as the majority of staff are already on fixed-term or temporary contracts. The agency’s workforce is designed to be flexible, to scale up or down when needed during disasters. Almost 40 percent of FEMA’s workforce is made up of what are known as Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees, who go by the acronym CORE. CORE employees work in two- to four-year full-time contracted stints, but many stay at FEMA for years, renewing their contracts to work a variety of jobs across the agency. Reservists—a temporary workforce called upon as they’re needed—make up more than a third of the agency’s staff. Just under a quarter of FEMA’s overall staff are part-time or full-time salaried employees.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where disasters due to global warming will occur, as seen by Hurricane Helene hitting Asheville, NC (self-proclaimed safe haven from climate change ). With NOAA crippled it is not clear how effectively we can prepare for these events. States cannot handle such events themselves, requiring swift and extensive help from many states, facilitated by FEMA.

My source: Please read for disturbing details.

 

[gleem]

It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where disasters due to global warming will occur, as seen by Hurricane Helene hitting Asheville, NC (self-proclaimed safe haven from climate change ). With NOAA crippled it is not clear how effectively we can prepare for these events. States cannot handle such events themselves, requiring swift and extensive help from many states, facilitated by FEMA.

​

"FEMA isn't ready for disaster season, Workers Say", from a new feed on April 16, They were right, thousands of calls went unanswered from Texas flood survivors this past week. The affected area was relatively small compared to that of a Hurricane. Trump may have to pull some money out of his ICE budget now that he can, since he is de-escalating the detaining of illegal immigrants to imminent threats. Things are getting interesting.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

If MAGA doesn't realize this and hold Trump admin accountable, this will only continue.