This is the second of a several-part series.
As was described in Forecasters agree: 2025 hurricane season to be unusually active, the majority of hurricane forecasters are predicting a busy Atlantic hurricane season (now through November 30). If the predictions materialize, Virginia could suffer flooding and other storm-related damage across the state.
What will Virginia do in the event of a major hurricane? (Part 1) highlights states’ experiences requesting assistance from the federal government. Tl;dr: President Trump took six weeks to respond to Gov. Youngkin’s request for assistance regarding the winter storms which wreaked havoc on western Virginia.
Part 2 takes a look at the challenges, mistakes, and failures which have plagued FEMA over the years.
FEMA’s operational and leadership challenges, problems, and failures are not new. Congressman Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who had worked for Gov. DeSantis as Florida’s emergency management director, recently told the House Rules Committee “the president was right that FEMA needs reform. Let me say this again. The president was right that FEMA needs reform as the chairwoman knows from her experiences in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.”
Years earlier, Leo Bosner, a FEMA disaster specialist from 1979 to 2008 when he retired and, at the time of his retirement, led AFGE Local 4060 which represented workers at FEMA headquarters, wrote Part One: FEMA and Disaster – a Look at What Worked and What Didn’t From a FEMA Insider and Part Two: FEMA and Disaster: A Look at What Worked and What Didn’t From a FEMA Insider (1993 – 2000). In both, Bosner offers example after example of FEMA failures. Here’s one, about the Oklahoma City bombing:
It was soon apparent that the most needed asset from FEMA would be help in looking for possible survivors beneath the concrete rubble of the bombed-out building. The deputy gave the order and FEMA Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Forces from Phoenix, Arizona, and Sacramento, California, were deployed to Oklahoma City. The two task forces mobilized their people, gathered their gear and headed out. By 11:00 that night, both task forces had arrived in Oklahoma City. Eventually, 11 FEMA US&R task forces would be deployed to Oklahoma City to help in the search for survivors.
Total time elapsed since the bombing:
- FEMA Region VI Emergency Operations Center activated – about 30 minutes.
- FEMA staff deployed to Oklahoma City – about 45 minutes.
- First US&R task forces deployed – about two hours.
- First US&R task forces arrive in Oklahoma City – about 14 hours.
North Carolina State University’s Thomas A. Birkland considered the effectiveness of US emergency management using an academic, research-based lens in Disasters, Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era (PDF). The paper’s abstract:
The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy’s emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation’s ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to create a top-down, command and control model of emergency management that never fully accounted for, positively or normatively, the way local emergency management works in practice. The Obama administration will have to address the questions raised by the reorganization of federal emergency management responsibilities. While the context in which these changes have occurred is unique to the U.S. federal system, there are interesting implications for emergency management in nonfederal systems.
While some may argue that such academic work is navel gazing, Birkland also writes,
Mass casualty attacks and disasters generate domestic political pressure to “do something,” and Hurricane Katrina gained worldwide attention to the apparent inability of the most advanced industrialized nation in the world to respond to natural disaster of this scope after having remade much of its emergency management after September 11 (Cooper & Block, 2006).
President George W. Bush’s comment “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” has become a popular, evergreen meme and yet Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sees it as the ultimate example of FEMA’s lack of preparedness. In CNN’s Exclusive: FEMA is ‘not ready’ for hurricane season, internal agency review shows, Sen. Markey says Bush’s statement “was absolutely at odds with what America was looking at with New Orleans in flood conditions.”
And if media reports are any indication, the FEMA of 2025 is in dire straits with current leadership. On May 9, journalist Marisa Kabas shared the news that the acting director threatened staff.
NEW — I’ve obtained audio of new acting FEMA head David Richardson threatening staff in an all hands meeting this morning. As first reported by Reuters, he told those who resisted change in the agency, “Don’t get in my way…I will run right over you.” Listen to the clip here:
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 9, 2025 at 11:06 AM
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To make matters worse, in addition to the layoffs at FEMA, media reports are that the new acting head of FEMA did not know there is a hurricane season in the US. According to CNN’s summary of FEMA head told staff he was previously unaware US has a hurricane season,
Staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were caught off-guard and left bewildered when the disaster relief agency’s new acting head David Richardson told personnel that he was previously unaware the United States has a hurricane season, which started Sunday. Richardson made the comments during a briefing Monday morning, multiple sources told CNN. While some interpreted the remark as a joke, others said it raised concerns about the recently appointed acting administrator, who has no prior experience managing natural disasters.