Louisiana Concerns: Internal Review Says FEMA is Not Ready For Hurricane Season

Louisiana residents are very familiar with the dates for hurricane season. Especially compared to most other states. Afterall, hurricane season doesn't matter much to people in Michigan or North Dakota. But for gulf coast residents, hurricane season starting in June is pretty common knowledge.

Hurricane Season Looms: Is FEMA Ready This Time?

In addition to gulf state residents, the other big group of people who should be very familiar with the timing of hurricane season is FEMA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been tied to hurricane response for a long time. Even though the agency first started by responding to toxic waste spills, it morphed over decades into an agency that was able to swiftly respond to natural disasters like earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes.

Political Shifts and Red Tape: FEMA's Ability to Respond Under Scrutiny

As their role has evolved, so has their place in the US Government. In the early 1990s, President Bill Clinton moved the FEMA Director position into the Presidential Cabinet. Making his appointee to the role, James Lee Witt, the first FEMA director to be a Cabinet level director. Witt would spend years streamlining the agency to be better prepared for natural disasters. However, when George W. Bush was elected President, he decided to remove the FEMA Director position from being a Cabinet level position. This would turn out to be a huge mistake, and a bigger one was on the horizon.

After the September 11th attacks, Congress established the Department of Homeland Security. The leader of this agency would be a Cabinet level position, Secretary of Homeland Security. By 2003, President George W. Bush had decided to move FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security, which came with massive warnings.

President Bush's own FEMA Director, Michael D. Brown, warned the President that moving the agency under the Department of Homeland Security would cause huge issues, and would leave FEMA unprepared to respond to terrorist attacks or natural disasters.

Déjà Vu? FEMA's Hurricane Preparedness Questioned, Echoes of Katrina

Those warnings would be proven correct during the 2005 hurricane season, as Hurricane Katrina slammed into the US coast, and devastated New Orleans, and large chunks of southern Louisiana. FEMA's response was slow, sluggish, ill fitted, mismanaged, and very unprepared. That word, 'unprepared' is echoing through FEMA once again, 20 years later.

FEMA "Not Ready" for Hurricane Season, Internal Report Warns

This week, a CNN exclusive report has uncovered that the Director acting Administrator for FEMA, David Richardson, was given an internal report that says FEMA is "not ready" for hurricane season. The hurricane season they're "not ready" for, starts in a few weeks (June 1). Inside the CNN report, it says:

"President Donald Trump and his allies have criticized FEMA for months as ineffective and unnecessary. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, has vowed to “eliminate” the agency. FEMA’s previous acting administrator, former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton, was fired last week after telling Congress he did not believe the agency should be eliminated."

Louisiana on Edge as FEMA Faces Familiar Preparedness Challenges

Some of the concerns raised include the shrinking footprint of FEMA, lack of coordination, low morale, and red tape increases. Which are the EXACT issues raised 20 years ago by President Bush's FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, right before Hurricane Katrina proved him correct. The reason Brown raised those issues 20 years ago were because of FEMA's existence under the Department of Homeland Security, which is exactly what's causing the issues today.

Learning from the Past? FEMA's Hurricane Response Under a Cloud of Doubt

Sadly, when FEMA is slow to respond to a devastating hurricane this year, we're going to just replay the tape from 20 years ago, and watch people ask "how could this happen" even though all the warnings are there.