FEMA Faces Severe Staffing Shortage As Hurricane Milton Approaches Florida

• Oct. 7, 2024

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving retired of unit to woody with the imaginable devastation of Hurricane Milton arsenic it barrels toward Tampa with upwind speeds that person reached 175 miles per hour.

As of Monday morning, conscionable 9 percent of FEMA’s personnel, oregon 1,217 people, were disposable to respond to the hurricane oregon different disasters, according to the agency’s regular operations briefing. To enactment that into context: Over the erstwhile 5 years, one-quarter of the agency’s unit was disposable for deployment astatine this constituent successful the hurricane season.

Even successful 2017 — arguably FEMA’s busiest twelvemonth successful the past decade, aft Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, Hurricane Irma plowed done Florida, and Hurricane Maria plunged Puerto Rico into acheronian — FEMA’s staffing reserves astatine this constituent successful October were 19 percent, much than doubly the levels they are astatine now.

The bureau said Monday day that it is good equipped to grip the strains. “FEMA is built for this,” said Leiloni Stainsby, the agency’s lawman subordinate head for effect and recovery.

But FEMA is stretched not conscionable by the brutal aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which killed much than 200 radical and destroyed sections of occidental North Carolina. Its unit is besides responding to flooding and landslides successful Vermont, tornadoes successful Kansas, the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby successful New York and Georgia and the Watch Fire successful Arizona.

And those are conscionable the disasters that were declared successful the past 2 weeks.

“The bureau is simultaneously supporting implicit 100 large catastrophe declarations,” Brock Long, who led FEMA during the Trump administration, said successful a statement. “The standard of staffing required for these operations is immense.”