The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has put more than 30 staffers on leave after they signed a letter warning that the Trump administration was setting up the country for another disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.
Almost 200 staffers signed the letter, called the Katrina Declaration, but only 35 publicly signed their names.
“The signatories of this letter are FEMA employees from across the United States who are dedicated to helping people before, during, and after disasters, and who are members of the communities we seek to support,” they wrote. “In addition to named signatories, we include anonymous signatories who share our concerns but choose not to identify themselves due to the culture of fear and suppression cultivated by this administration.”
The New York Times reports that 36 people signed their names (although only 35 are displayed on the letter published on the Stand Up for Science website) and those 36 were placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to copies of the emails reviewed by the publication.
Colette Delawalla, executive director of the advocacy group Stand Up for Science, said in a statement that FEMA is retaliating “against our civil servants for whistle-blowing — which is both illegal and a deep betrayal of the most dedicated among us.”
The letter was named for Hurricane Katrina, the category 3 hurricane that devastated New Orleans 20 years ago, killing more than 1,800 people, leaving millions homeless, and causing more than $160 billion in property damage. The catastrophe prompted Congress to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA).
“Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one: the inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves for days, and highlighted how Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by disasters,” the staffers wrote.
The Trump administration, they warned, is “enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent.”
The administration has gutted FEMA, which was established more than 45 years ago, and Trump has said he plans to eliminate it entirely.
“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said in June. “A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”
Since January, FEMA has terminated funding for disaster preparedness and prevention programs; removed climate change related information from both public-facing and internal documents; and reassigned approximately 100 staffers to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or risk losing their jobs.
The agency has also lacked an administrator with the qualifications required by PKEMRA, and one-third of the full-time workforce has left the agency.
“FEMA’s current capacities have been significantly limited due to a loss of personnel through programs designed to incentivize our workforce to leave federal service, ongoing hiring freezes, and the cancellation of critical support contracts,” the staffers wrote.
In violation of PKEMRA, the staffers continued, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem directed all expenditures over $100,000 to be personally reviewed and approved by her, which led to delays in search and rescue missions during the deadly flash floods that hit Texas in July.
The signatories called on Congress to establish FEMA, which is housed in the Department of Homeland Security, as a cabinet-level independent agency; to “defend the agency from further interference from DHS”; and to “protect FEMA employees from politically motivated firings.”
In closing, they wrote: “We dedicate this Katrina Declaration and Petition to 1) every life lost from disasters, 2) to the survivors who endured and rebuilt, 3) to every first responder and public servant who places service above self, and 4) to all the federal partners who serve alongside us to deliver our mission. Their sacrifices and courage strengthen our commitment to speak the truth, sound the alarm, and defend our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters.”
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