President Donald Trump has convened a board to review the agency's utility, considering eliminating or regulating it just when Los Angeles needs it most.
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Los Angeles, devastated by wildfires and facing its worst natural disaster in decades, will never need the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) again.
As new wildfires threaten homes in the second-largest city in the United States, FEMA has deployed about 550 experts to help displaced residents find shelter, access aid and coordinate the removal of debris in neighborhoods that have been turned into homes. They staff relief centers and work with fire survivors, while more than 2,600 of their colleagues are still helping with recovery efforts after last year's hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida.
A resident whose home was destroyed speaks with a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) worker after the Eaton Fire:
Now, President Donald Trump is questioning whether the agency the United States turns to whenever it is hit by major disasters should continue to play that role while installing a former Navy SEAL with no prior FEMA experience as its head.
"FEMA has not done its job in the last four years," Trump told Fox News, criticizing its performance in North Carolina in particular. "FEMA is going to have a big debate very soon, because I prefer that the states deal with their own problems." "Over the weekend, the president issued an executive order creating a board to conduct a "comprehensive review" of the agency. Trump's actions echo the vision for the agency contained in Project 2025, the conservative roadmap for reinventing the federal government, which called for shifting more disaster recovery costs to states and cities. That means "we need to take even more seriously what's written in the 2025 bill," because the proposed changes "would disrupt America's emergency management system — not just at the federal level, but at the state and national levels." . "local because of the way our system is currently interconnected," said Samantha Montano, a disaster researcher at the Massachusetts Naval Academy. (Trump consistently distanced himself from the 2025 bill during the campaign, and a White House spokesman repeated Thursday that the president "had nothing to do" with it.)
It's unclear who Trump will entrust with managing and perhaps overhauling FEMA. For now, the president has chosen Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, to temporarily lead the agency, along with Mary Comans, who has held several key positions at FEMA. Hamilton has some experience in emergency management, but he has never overseen the response to large-scale disasters like the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles for weeks, destroying more than 15,000 structures and killing at least 28 people. Contrary to popular belief, FEMA does not automatically assume disaster response when fires, earthquakes, or storms strike. Local and state governments mobilize first, then turn to FEMA for federal assistance and expertise.
"All disasters begin and end at the local level," said Zach Stanford, an emergency management consultant. "However, in disasters of the magnitude of the Los Angeles fires, state and federal assistance is needed quickly to respond and support recovery — both short-term and long-term — to get communities back on their feet."
Trump inherits an agency strained by a growing number of overlapping disasters. By FEMA's own count, its agents are currently responding to more than 100 major disasters, as the agency's work typically continues long after the initial emergency has passed.
"We're always working on something, and it seems like it's getting more destructive," said Carrie Speranza, chair emeritus of FEMA's National Advisory Council, a think tank for the agency. The status of the board remains unclear under the new administration. Hope's first emergency management mandate was in response to Hurricane Charley in 2004. "I can tell you that since then, I don't think the situation has improved much," he said. "In fact, the situation has gotten worse."
The number of disaster declarations under the federal Stafford Act has increased from an average of 39 per fiscal year in the first 10 years after the law was passed in 1988 to an average of 63 over the past decade, a 62 percent increase reported this month by the Congressional Research Service.
Climate change has increased the agency's workload, leading to more frequent and intense disasters. Trump has sometimes denied the reality of global warming, but he can't escape the fact that "FEMA is on the front lines of dealing with the impacts of climate change," Montano said.
Although the fires that broke out in Los Angeles County on Jan. 7 came in the wake of last year's devastating hurricanes, FEMA insisted in a statement this month that it has the resources to handle them all without harming any of the communities involved. Congress recently approved $29 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund, the agency noted, adding that its staff "will continue to support the recovery of these communities for as long as necessary."
As of Wednesday, FEMA has provided more than $36 million in assistance to California wildfire survivors, Robert Fenton Jr., the agency's administrator for Region 9, said at a news conference with nearly 10,000 people registered to receive assistance, about $12.7 million of the funds went to "severe needs assistance," he said, while the rest covers personal property and travel assistance. A FEMA relief center serving residents affected by the Eaton Fire in Pasadena on Jan. 17. Photo: Jill Connelly/Bloomberg
Staffing has long been a concern. At the start of FY 2022, "FEMA had approximately 11,400 disaster workers and a staffing goal of 17,670, creating an overall staffing deficit of approximately 6,200 people (35%) across all positions," according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued in May 2023. FEMA officials attributed some of the staffing shortages to "managing the surge in disaster activity during the year, which increased employee burnout and attrition," the report said Staffing levels are generally not a concern, with one exception, Speranza said. There is currently no federal coordinating officer on standby to lead federal efforts at a particular incident site. That means each new disaster would require the agency to reassign a coordinator from an ongoing operation, said Craig Fugate, who led FEMA under former President Barack Obama. But "reassigning an experienced FEMA officer from an older disaster to a new incident ensures that FEMA can use their expertise where it is most needed," he said. Trump has taken a negative view of the agency's recent work, at least in his public comments. "Our country is no longer able to provide basic services in times of emergency, as the wonderful people of North Carolina have recently demonstrated," she said in her inaugural address, referring to Hurricane Helene. "Or more recently in Los Angeles, where we see tragic fires that continue to burn." Ms. Speranza said the agency was fully capable of doing its job. But she wants the country to do a better job of preparing for emergencies like floods and fires, rather than focusing primarily on response. She said rushing from crisis to crisis leads to burnout, no matter how dedicated FEMA staff are. "A lot of their staff," she said, "literally work disaster after disaster."
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