FEMA staff fear they aren't ready for 2025 hurricane season
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A flooded street after Hurricane Milton in Siesta Key, Florida. Photo: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images
With a little more than a month to go before the start of hurricane season, FEMA employees are warning of disaster inside the nation's primary disaster-response agency.
Why it matters: The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to have "above-normal" activity, with 17 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes.
Driving the news: FEMA employees told Wired they're facing the "rapid erosion of tools, partnerships and practices," along with staff cuts.
- "We are being set up," one employee told the outlet, "for a really, really bad situation."
Flashback: Right after taking office, President Trump said he'd consider "getting rid of" FEMA, claiming that its work had been biased against Republicans.
- He then signed an executive order aimed at revamping the agency.
Zoom in: In February, around 200 probationary FEMA employees — about 1% of the agency's total employees — were laid off, Wired reported.
- In March, supervisors were required to submit extension requests for other employee positions. If those are denied, the agency could make additional cuts, per the outlet.
Meanwhile, funding for basic emergency management needs is in limbo. The Trump administration is in the process of reviewing whether that funding aligns with its priorities.
- The money being scrutinized supports offseason tasks, such as planning for future events and recovery from previous ones.
- It also funds tools that help predict where evacuations may be more difficult, among other things, Wired reported.
What they're saying: "Unlike the previous administration's unprepared [responses], the Trump administration is committed to ensuring Americans effected [sic] by emergencies will get the help they need in a quick and efficient manner," Geoff Harbaugh, FEMA's associate administrator of the Office of External Affairs, told Wired.
- All operations will be managed without interruption and in close coordination with local and state officials, he wrote.
What we're watching: Last month, Florida U.S. Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Byron Donalds introduced legislation that would break the agency out of the Department of Homeland Security and instead make it a cabinet-level agency, Axios Pro's Nick Sobczyk reported.
- The U.S. disaster-response system is fundamentally broken, and climate change is only worsening the problems, Sobczyk wrote.