February 27, 2025
2 min learn
Authorities Watchdog Points Unprecedented Warning on State of U.S. Catastrophe Response
The supply of catastrophe help is on the Authorities Accountability Workplace’s Excessive-Danger Record for the primary time as climate-related prices soar,Federal Emergency Administration Company staffing lags, and the Trump administration makes additional cuts
Fireplace-affected residents meet with FEMA officers on January 14, 2025 in Pasadena, California, the place a FEMA Catastrophe Restoration Heart opened to assist owners, renters, companies and non-profits with their financial restoration.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
CLIMATEWIRE | Congress’ oversight arm has issued an unprecedented warning in regards to the dangers going through federal catastrophe help.
The Authorities Accountability Workplace stated staffing ranges and different workforce points on the Federal Emergency Administration Company “has restricted its capability to offer efficient catastrophe help.” It added that FEMA “must strengthen its catastrophe workforce by addressing staffing gaps.”
A staffing scarcity that continued from 2019 to 2022 “continues to develop” and left the company with minimal staffing when Hurricane Milton hit Florida in October, days after Hurricane Helene deluged the state and huge elements of the Southeast, GAO discovered.
On supporting science journalism
If you happen to’re having fun with this text, take into account supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By buying a subscription you might be serving to to make sure the way forward for impactful tales in regards to the discoveries and concepts shaping our world as we speak.
The warning coincides with President Donald Trump’s threats to shutter FEMA, and it got here two weeks after his administration fired not less than 200 individuals from the company.
The report marks the primary time GAO put catastrophe help on its annual “Excessive-Danger Record,” which highlights areas of the federal authorities which can be “significantly susceptible” to waste, fraud and abuse or want transformation. Along with FEMA’s staffing issues, the report famous that “pure disasters have change into costlier and extra frequent.”
The GAO didn’t point out Trump or the FEMA firings that had been carried out by his administration.
Trump, who has assailed FEMA’s response to flooding attributable to Helene in western North Carolina, created a council to evaluation whether or not the company ought to be disbanded. It is led by Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth.
FEMA staffing is just one drawback the GAO discovered with catastrophe response. Others embrace the fragmentation of federal catastrophe response throughout greater than 30 entities and a fancy course of for people to get emergency assist after a catastrophe.
“Survivors face quite a few challenges receiving wanted help, together with prolonged and complicated software evaluation processes,” the GAO stated, echoing a priority that has been raised for years. “Reforming the federal authorities’s method to catastrophe restoration and lowering fragmentation might enhance service supply to catastrophe survivors.”
Quite a few federal entities present catastrophe help, together with the departments of Housing and City Improvement, Transportation and the Small Enterprise Administration.
The GAO urged Congress to create an unbiased fee “to advocate reforms to the federal authorities’s method to catastrophe restoration.” It additionally beneficial that Congress strengthen HUD’s catastrophe program so the cash will be distributed extra rapidly.
GAO’s newest Excessive-Danger Record consists of 38 areas together with the federal authorities’s flood insurance coverage program and the potential price to the federal authorities from local weather change. Each areas have been on the record for years.
The White Home and FEMA didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E Information gives important information for vitality and surroundings professionals.
