FEMA chief doesn't know what hurricane season is, so good luck
FEMA chief doesn't know what hurricane season is, so good luck | Opinion How is it possible that a fully grown, human American has never heard of hurricane season? There's a Jimmy Buffet song titled 'Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season,' for Pete's sake.
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NOAA, FEMA cuts will impact hurricane season, experts warn
The Trump administration's budget cuts at NOAA and FEMA will have an adverse affect on how the U.S. responds to hurricanes, experts warn.
So David Richardson, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he only recently learned there's such a thing as 'hurricane season.'
That's like the manager of a Red Lobster restaurant saying he only recently learned about 'Lobesterfest,' with the important caveat that a dumb Red Lobster manager's ignorance is less likely to result in widespread death in America's coastal regions.
Welcome to the Trump administration, where a person like Richardson who has no experience in emergency management can ascend to the top job at FEMA by checking President Donald Trump's three key boxes: white, male and radically unqualified.
How has the head of FEMA never heard of hurricane season?
Richardson's apparent lack of basic meteorological knowledge brings into question his ability to do his job, given that hurricane season, which is, in fact, real, started June 1 and lasts through the end of November.
How is it possible that a fully grown, human American has never heard of hurricane season? There's a Jimmy Buffett song titled 'Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season,' for Pete's sake.
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As news of Richardson's comment spread, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement claiming it was 'a joke.' That doesn't help much because: a) If it was a joke, it was a very dumb joke, Dave!; and b) It probably wasn't a joke, since Richardson seems like the type who would proudly conclude, 'Hurricanes can't hurt us if we don't believe in them!'
The truth, I'd posit, is closer to this: The entire Trump administration is a joke and Americans are the punchline.
Hurricane season is here, and FEMA doesn't have a disaster plan
On May 15, the Wall Street Journal reported on video of a FEMA meeting it obtained. The video made it clear then that with two weeks to go before hurricane season started, the new FEMA chief had yet to come up with a disaster-response plan, and the paper reported: 'He also seemed to express surprise at the vast range of FEMA's responsibilities, raising concerns among career officials about his ability to run the nation's disaster-management agency.'
In the video, Richardson said: 'I feel a little bit like Bubba from 'Forrest Gump.' We've got hurricanes, we've got fires, we've got mudslides, we've got flash floods, we've got tornadoes, we've got droughts, we've got heat waves and now we've got volcanoes to worry about.'
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Hoo boy. If you live anywhere near an ocean, I recommend moving to the Midwest for the season.
FEMA is expected to do the same as last year despite massive cuts
So remember, two weeks ago, there was no FEMA disaster plan for hurricane season. How about now?
Per the Wall Street Journal on June 3: 'Richardson told staff Monday that the agency would be returning to the same guidance for hurricane response as last year. Some were confused how that would be possible, given the agency had already eliminated key programs and sharply cut its workforce.'
According to Journal sources, Richardson said: 'Here's the guidance. It's the same as it was last year.'
Cool. So, President Trump, who spends most of his time claiming President Joe Biden was senile and incompetent, will now just allow his FEMA head to use the plan created under the Biden administration. Cool, cool, cool.
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It seems FEMA's best hurricane season advice might be: Pray harder
But there's a catch. Thanks to the Trump administration cuts, according to the New York Times, 'FEMA has lost about a quarter of its full-time staff, including one-fifth of the coordinating officers who manage responses to large-scale disasters.'
So the whole 'Just do what you did last year when hurricanes hit' idea sounds about as smart as telling people who live near the water to just lash themselves to the nearest street lamp and pray really hard.
Which, if we're being honest, sounds about right for an administration that has a U.S. Health and Human Services secretary who guzzles raw milk, an education head who confuses AI with A1 steak sauce and a FEMA chief who wouldn't know a hurricane if it blew him off his wholly undeserved government perch.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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