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Amid signs of turmoil at the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the Atlantic hurricane season is about to begin, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he isn’t concerned because FEMA isn’t really that important at all.
Affected individuals and government officials have often called for, and relied on, help from FEMA before, during and after natural disasters. In DeSantis’ view, Florida state and local governments are muscular enough to handle what comes.
And, DeSantis said, that the things that people care about most, such as power restoration, have nothing to do with the federal disaster agency.
“On the core prep, response and then stabilize and get people back to normal, just know that we’ve never relied on FEMA for any of that here in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Tampa.
The Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1, with President Donald Trump’s plans for FEMA still unclear. The president has said states, not the federal government, should handle disaster response.
At the same time, FEMA has been engulfed in widely reported turmoil:
— Trump has talked about abolishing FEMA and said that responding to emergencies should be much more of a state rather than federal responsibility. “Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen,” he said in January. He established a review council tasked with “reforming and streamlining the nation’s emergency management and disaster response system.”
— CNN reported it had obtained an internal agency review that concluded “FEMA is not ready” for the start of hurricane season.
— About 2,000 full-time staff have left the agency since Trump took office in January, a loss of roughly one-third of the agency’s full-time workforce.
— Earlier this month, the Trump administration fired the acting FEMA administrator — a day after he appeared before a House subcommittee and said he did not believe the agency should be eliminated.
— The current acting administrator, David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who had been the assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction at the Department of Homeland Security, warned the FEMA staff not to try to impede upcoming changes.
“Obfuscation. Delay. Undermining. If you’re one of those 20% of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not because I will run right over you,” he said. “I will achieve the president’s intent. I am as bent on achieving the president’s intent as I was on making sure that I did my duty when I took my Marines to Iraq.”
DeSantis suggested news about what’s going on at FEMA is much ado about nothing. “You hear these different things and know the media is trying to make an issue of FEMA this or that,” he said. “Just know in Florida, our preparations and our immediate response always assumed FEMA wouldn’t be there for us, OK?”
Separately U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Broward-Palm Beach county Democrat, has been trying to develop bipartisan support for streamlining FEMA by getting rid of some of its non-emergency functions, and strengthening it by making it a stand-alone agency with an administrator reporting directly to the president.
Though he’s a Democrat, Moskowitz was DeSantis’ first state emergency management director, and they worked closely together responding to disasters and the COVID pandemic during much of the governor’s first term.
“FEMA can’t be eliminated. Period! But we can save it by reforming it,” Moskowitz said in a statement earlier this month in which he said he wants to advance reforms to “ensure FEMA and the critical assistance it provides are there when our communities need it.”
In a campaign email to supporters, Moskowitz was even more direct, and faulted Trump.
“To him, FEMA might be just another agency. But for us, in the hurricane capital of the country, it’s a lifeline after disaster strikes,” he said.
Moskowitz and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds have introduced legislation to reform federal emergency management and improve the efficiency of federal emergency response efforts.
Republican Donalds is Trump’s endorsed candidate for Florida governor next year. DeSantis’ wife, Casey DeSantis, might also run.
The Moskowitz-Donalds legislation would remove the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, and make it an independent agency with cabinet rank reporting directly to the president.
DeSantis says anyone running for Florida governor as a Democrat is ‘dead meat’
DeSantis acknowledged in his comments Tuesday that there are FEMA programs that help individuals get assistance after disasters and can help reimburse governments for things like debris cleanup. He said those are likely to remain in some form. “Those statutes are still on the books. I assume that people will still qualify, but who knows how generous and all that. So we’re working through that.”
DeSantis touted what Florida can do without FEMA. He said investor-owned utilities, rural electric co-ops and “some” municipal power systems have had a “very good culture to restore services,” something he said “has nothing to do with FEMA.”
And, the governor said, urban search and rescue teams are “technically” mobilized by the federal government, “but these are all Florida people.” And he said a range of assistance is available in disasters from the state Highway Patrol, Department of Law Enforcement, Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, National Guard, State Guard and Department of Transportation.
Hurricane researchers at Colorado State University have predicted an above-average hurricane season, with 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, including four major hurricanes. By comparison, the average from 1991–2020 was 14.4 named storms and 7.2 hurricanes, including 3.2 major hurricanes.
Although hurricane season lasts for six months, it’s typically not busy during the entire period, DeSantis said.
“And you know, June, July is not usually very high for it anyways. You can get them. As you get into August, particularly mid-August, the frequency of it happening, and then September and early October, probably mid-August to mid-October is kind of the peak with September, probably late September is the absolute peak,” he said. “So we’ll see what happens in terms of this year.”
This report was supplemented with information from The Associated Press.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
