Since the start of the disastrous Palisades wildfire, thousands of FEMA employees have been working 12-hour days, seven days a week, helping my constituents all while facing threats of dismantlement by President Trump and a full-scale assault by Elon Musk making the U.S. less – not more – ready to respond to the next historic emergency.
FEMA has more than 5,000 permanent full-time staff and thousands of additional reservists and temporary employees. Incident management teams supplement and provide technical support to local authorities’ disaster response efforts.
Smaller states need FEMA’s technical assistance and immediate emergency response resources even more than California does. Embedding FEMA experts into the local government’s emergency response command, FEMA can deploy response teams to disaster areas quickly – which states simply do not have the capacity to do on their own.
Not even a huge state like California can obtain the quantity of people with the quality of expertise on the payroll waiting for the next disaster. And, most of our states are much smaller. Should Rhode Island maintain an enormous staff on their payroll year in and year out? Should every state have 28 search and rescue teams waiting in case there’s a North Carolina level disaster?
During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history, FEMA sent millions of meals, cots, blankets, and bottles of water to northeastern states ahead of the storm.
The Los Angeles Fires are estimated to cost upwards of $275 billion in property damage and lost economic activity, making it the second costliest disaster in U.S. history – second to only Hurricane Katrina, which cost $320 billion after adjusting for inflation according to AccuWeather.
At the Palisades Fire Roundtable in January, President Trump claimed that FEMA was very well-run during his first term. Americans affected by disasters across the country – in red states and blue states – are counting on the President to make sure FEMA is well-run during his second term.
It’s true that FEMA is a large federal bureaucracy and could be made more efficient. Trump’s Executive Order establishing a commission to review federal disaster response may lead to improvements. The President’s job is to ensure that the agencies that make up the executive branch are managed effectively, rather than give up and abolish them.
Brad Sherman is the U.S. representative for California’s 32nd congressional district, which includes city of Malibu and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades, Beverly Glen, Bel Air, Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Woodland Hills, West Hills, Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda, Tarzana, Encino, Chatsworth, Northridge, Brentwood, North Hills, as well as the south side of Granada Hills.
