ORLANDO, Fla. — According to a new watchdog report, the federal agency that helps communities in crises like hurricanes and COVID-19 doesn’t have enough workers.
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“FEMA currently faces an all-time high in disasters and an unparalleled demand on its workforce,” Chris Currie, Director of Homeland Security and Justice for the Government Accountability Office, wrote.
That workforce is short-staffed.
“It’s important that FEMA have the right amount of people with the right skills all the time because something bad could happen at any point,” Currie said.
Currie added that workers are burnt out and leaving. These people respond to hurricanes and wildfires.
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A chart in the report illustrates the issue. The lighter blue area shows the shortage of FEMA staff. The gap is consistent. In 2022, for example, GAO said the agency was short of more than six thousand disaster workers.
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The efforts to reduce the gap “are essential to meeting the needs of survivors,” Currie wrote.
“We don’t have the resources at the local level nor at the state level,” Russ Strickland, Vice President of the National Emergency Management Association, said. “We need the federal government to be well-resourced.”
Strickland also works with FEMA, the secretary of Maryland’s Department of Emergency Management.
He explained what it means to communities if FEMA is short-staffed.
“It means things will be late to arrive,” Strickland said. “It may mean we would have extended recovery times.”
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FEMA is holding hiring events and using contractors. Leaders also agreed with the GAO recommendations and are working on the solutions.
The report also noted that it is difficult to know if those hiring practices are effective because of how FEMA gathers and keeps data.
“If we face a busy hurricane season, which is very likely, then they’re not going to have the people to respond, and the response is going to suffer,” Currie added.
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