(This was an official editorial of the Advocate/Times-Picayune, Nov. 30)
The official hurricane season ends today, blessedly without a single such storm making landfall in the Gulf region. In future years, though, we may not be so unexpectedly lucky, which means the current aimlessness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is of deep concern.
FEMA merits a well-designed, well-provisioned mission, along with strong leadership. Alas, we have some reservations about President Donald Trump’s newest choice to lead FEMA.
As his administration began, Trump worried many of us in hurricane country by repeatedly suggesting that FEMA should be disbanded entirely, with the states expected to take up emergency responses on their own. The very idea is ludicrous. We’re all for devolving authority to states and localities when practical, but disaster relief ranks almost as high as national defense in terms of being the proper province of the national government.
No matter how well a state prepares for contingencies that a natural disaster might bring, the disaster itself obviously can destroy the very infrastructure and equipment on which states would rely for relief efforts. The national government, operating from outside the disaster zone so that its preparations themselves won’t be affected by the calamity, should be organized and ready to provide emergency assistance for just such eventualities.
To his credit, Trump has somewhat softened his anti-FEMA tone recently. Better yet, a commission he appointed to review FEMA operations actually suggested elevating FEMA’s status by making it a stand-alone, Cabinet-level agency rather than a sometimes-ignored subset of a Department of Homeland Security that’s more obsessed with immigration enforcement rather than paying attention to its other duties.
Still, Trump’s FEMA has lacked strong leadership. Its first acting director, Cameron Hamilton, left the job after only four months, and his replacement, David Richardson, resigned on Nov. 17 after just six months. Richardson’s term was marked by a widely criticized response to deadly floods in Texas and by his admission that he didn’t even know such a thing as “hurricane season” existed.
Trump’s new choice, Karen Evans, is worrisome in her own way. At least she has solid management experience as FEMA’s former chief of staff, but her record indicates she is more interested in slashing personnel and spending than in the actual, positive role with which FEMA is tasked. Indeed, her nickname is “the terminator” for eliminating grants and worker positions.
Free Hurricane, satellite aerial view image, public domain sky CC0 photo.
Granted, FEMA long has been known for waste and inefficiencies and for bureaucratic slowness in times when dispatch is required. If Evans can make a leaner FEMA also work faster and more effectively, more power to her.
Still, FEMA’s focus should be less on saving money than on saving lives and helping survivors recover. We note that this year was the first since 2015 without a hurricane making landfall. Because experience says the next hurricane season is unlikely to spare us, the whole country needs a FEMA that effectively terminates human distress. THE END
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[The original is at this link.]
