FEMA at 'high risk' of disrupting 'life-saving' disaster relief, per internal memo

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/fema-high-risk-disaster-relief-internal-memo

Hurricane season in the United States kicks off this Sunday, June 1st, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is not prepared.

In an internal memo obtained by The Handbasket that was sent on Thursday to Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson by Stephanie Dobitsch, Associate Administrator for Policy & Program Analysis, Dobitsch outlined the status of “critical functions” at the agency that a working group determined were at “high risk” of not properly functioning because of “significant personnel losses in advance of the 2025 Hurricane Season.” It offers justifications for certain functions being included in the report, and “corrective action” staff can ostensibly take to fix them. The document paints a picture of an agency in charge of mitigating disasters that’s in the midst of its own.

One slide in the memo, which was also shared with approximately 30 members of FEMA senior leadership, pertains to staffing at Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, a critical high security facility in Virginia. (It contains the nuclear bunker where congressional leaders were stashed on 9/11.) The slide states that “staffing was already at a critical low at the beginning of 2025” and because of departures “the facility is at risk of not being fully mission capable.”

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem visited Mount Weather in early April and posted on X, “This DHS Command Center is crucial to emergency relief and federal coordination in the face of disaster.” But now Acting Administrator Richardson has been made aware that the facility is in astonishing danger.

Another slide in the memo details the high risks facing FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery—what a FEMA staffer told me is “THE disaster response program.” It lists issues with Resource Deployment; Disaster Staffing; Operational Guidance; Planning, Training and Exercising; Interagency Coordination; and Pre-Staging Assets. “Failure to mitigate or eliminate identified risks in critical functions will challenge the Agency's ability to execute response and initial recovery operations and may disrupt life saving and life sustaining program delivery,” the slide reads.

*snip*