For staffers who remain at FEMA, the frustration builds by the day. “FEMA employees want to be ready for hurricane season and meet the needs of the mission, but the staffing cuts and uncertainty have removed or driven away loads of talent and institutional knowledge,” one staffer told me. They described an environment with extremely low morale where employees feel like they could be fired at any moment.
I left my deployment mid April. My availability opened back up on June 11th but still haven’t heard anything. It’s only been 6 days , but hopefully I get a request soon. My SOR says that it goes by who’s been home the longest and your proficiency in your position.
Step 1. Decimate the government so it can’t accomplish its basic mission and functions
Step 2. Award all your wealthy friends non-compete contracts to fill the void left by the government
Step 3. Purchase stock in those companies.
Step 4. Let the next administration(s) repair the carnage you left behind
Step 5. After everything is on the path to repair, convince your racist, xenophobic, and ignorant followers that things are a “mess” and only you can fix it.
As a former FEMA employee(full time) I hear from friends how sad it is. The amount of friends I see leaving the agency is mind blowing. People who said that it was the greatest job they've ever had, are now looking elsewhere.
High probability of a 1 -2 punch this summer. I work with FEMA every day and the ranks are decimated, the moral
Is abysmal, and leadership lacks understanding and the programatic experience to do anything but fail.
Best case is that it dominates the news cycle for a few weeks and dominates the news cycle.
FEMA always had room for improvement, and Bidens decision to make funding decisions based on things the Stafford Act prohibited was terrible policy. But whats to come is going to be an absolute national embarrassment.
FEMA employee here, can re-emphasize the “abysmal moral” by adding that every week, our call with our chief ends in “Brush up those resumes and look for other opportunities, I can’t guarantee any of us will still have a job in the coming months.”
Deployed to FL?
Sounds like our lead every week at the end of our meeting. I will personally be fine if I were to get fired, but it’s still stressful & morale is abysmal at best.
We often used HM in conjunction with HUD funding, there were questions asked specifically by HUD that we were told (by FEMA) conflicted with the Stafford Act. Specifically criteria that would have put a person in LMI status were problematic. We had to make very sure that any HUD LMI questions were asked after HM selection and were not to be seen a HM selection criteria.
Section 308 of the Stafford Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and other applicable civil rights laws prohibit discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), disability, English proficiency, or economic status.......
The social vulnerability criteria that were used for things like BRIC scoring were clearly steering federal funds to groups based on economic status. Well intentioned, but it was highly dis-advantageous to communities just above the thresholds that would have made them "socially vulnerable" as defined by the CDC.
FEMA defines social vulnerability as the susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts of natural hazards, leading to disproportionate death, injury, loss, or disruption of livelihood. This vulnerability is measured through factors like poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing, which can exacerbate the impact of hazards and other stressors like disasters or disease outbreaks.
CDC's SVI (above) was used for scoring and selection, these groups gained a competitive funding advantage, if you're were not in these groups, say a low unemployment, non-minority group at 148 % poverty level with mostly English speakers you were at a huge disadvantage in BRIC. Using SVI as a selection criteria or to determine cost shares. Why? especially if your census block had say 100% in the SFHA vs say 50 or even 10%.
SVI is a metric in risk but BRIC scoring ignored a lot of other factors that looked at the physical rather then social aspects and prioritized SVI. The biggest losers were communities with significant physical risk who did not score well on the SVI. I hate to say it, but it was discriminatory against working poor whites in wealthy States. Worst place to be was just above one of the SVI index lines. HM and disaster recovery funding should be blind to things like Age, Minority status, English proficiency, Housing type, educational status & family structure. Poverty levels I think I can see, but once you start picking ethnic status you open the door to some racists policies.
Let me get this straight: the “Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities” program that funded projects to build better capacity and strengthen infrastructure was “terrible policy” but the alternative of paying for continued repetitive losses is ‘good policy’? I’m confused.
Also what other things? Someone listed 1 thing and not even the author of that original post so I’m waiting
100 % agree on "The things happening about the Trump administration are just truly ridiculous" but feel moving away from pure risk based metrics in the HM world toward social vulnerability conflicted with the Stafford Act, especially in things like the BRIC scoring.
And why does senior leadership keep acting like it’s business as usual and no big deal? It’s exhausting to listen to them lie about the numbers and the capacity.
Been saying this since day one. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, & Texas all voted for this mess. They all have the highest % in getting knocked out by a CAT 5.
Not really sure why you're getting down voted for pointing out that deadly disease running rampant in a shelter would be a bad thing. COVID is still with us and still capable of killing people, and more than that, it continues to disable people via long COVID. Even people who are perfectly healthy prior to getting infected. The virus remains a threat despite most folks ignoring this fact nowadays.
Fired at any moment. Thats the environment Republicans want for federal workers and even all.workers in general. Fear to keep in line with what the boss man wants.
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u/IDKDU2 Jun 08 '25
Per my boss stay deployed as long as you can! (HQ employee here)