FEMA employees warn that Trump’s administration has ignored Hurricane Katrina lessons

Washington – Dozens of employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned on Monday to Congress that the Trump administration has betrayed the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

In an unusual request to legislators, more than 181 FEMA employees, including 35 who publicly signed their names, said the administration has not been able to install serious leadership in the agency and maintained funds incorrectly.

“Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of people who lack legal qualifications, the approval of the Senate and the demonstrated history required of a FEMA administrator,” the FEMA employees wrote.

“Our shared commitment to our country, our office oaths and our mission of helping people before, during and after disasters force us to warn Congress and the US people of the cascade effects of the decisions taken by the current administration.”

Twenty years ago, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina touched Earth, flooding New Orleans and resulted in up to 1,836 deaths, with inexperience and bad planning in fema blamed for much of the chaos after the storm. The Reform Congress promulgated the following year included a requirement that the FEMA administrator has “demonstrated the capacity and knowledge of emergency management and national security” and at least five years of executive experience.

The current interim chief of Fema, David Richardson, has no experience in emergency management. He was used to direct the agency after his predecessor was fired for saying during an audience that he did not believe it was the best for the country to eliminate the agency. President Donald Trump had previously said that Fema should be eliminated and his responsibilities granted to state governments,

“I feel a bit like Bubba of ‘Forrest Gump’,” Richardson joked during an internal meeting shortly after his appointment in May, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We have hurricanes, we have fires, we have landslides, we have sudden floods, we have tornadoes, we have droughts, we have heat waves and now we have volcanoes to worry about.”

AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool, Archive

A spokesman for the National Security Department, who supervises FEMA, suggested that agency’s employees were actually part of the problem.

“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objtaining the reform,” said the spokesman in a statement sent by email. “The change is always difficult. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is for survivors, not to protect broken systems.”

Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) He recommended FEMA employees to speak.

“The brave FEMA employees are playing alarm, and Fema leadership, the National Security Department and the White House must be to solve the problem,” Welch said in a statement.

Like other federal agencies, Fema fired the staff in the direction of the so -called efficiency department of Elon Musk’s government. And, according to the reports, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, has insisted that she personally sign with subsidies from the agency, a policy that could have hindered the federal response to a flood disaster in Texas last month that killed more than 100 people. (Richardson described the federal “outstanding” response in testimony in Capitol Hill).

Welch said DHS is on the way to repeat Katrina’s failures: “Due to the mismanagement of Lege and Secretary Noem, Fema will be even more tense and little prepared.”