President Trump: “You don’t need FEMA. You need a good state government… When you have a problem even in the state of California, you have your own, essentially FEMA, you fix it yourself.”
Congressman Sherman: “Mr. President, if I can just defend FEMA a little bit… They brought thousands of people in. They’re doing a good job for us here… When you have a disaster this size, you need to be able to deploy thousands of people, which they’ve been able to do.”
An Open Letter to President Trump:
For over three weeks, thousands of FEMA employees have been working 12-hour days, seven days a week, helping my constituents. They were, of course, disheartened when on Friday, Mr. President, you proposed abolishing FEMA and leaving disaster response to the states.
No one individual state is capable of deploying thousands of experts and other personnel to a disaster zone in the aftermath of a major disaster. Therefore, the Executive Order you issued establishing a commission that seeks to diminish the role of FEMA and transfer the significant burden of disaster response to the states will only make 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.
For example, almost all of FEMA’s 28 search and rescue teams were sent to North Carolina to assist after Hurricane Helene last year. These search and rescue personnel were also deployed to search over 1,000 structures in Hawaii’s 2023 wildfires that killed more than 100.
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, you claimed that FEMA was very well-run during your first term. Americans affected by disasters across the country – in red states and blue states – are counting on you to make sure FEMA is well-run during your second term.
It’s true that FEMA is a large federal bureaucracy and could be made more efficient. Your recent Executive Order establishing a commission to review federal disaster response may lead to improvements. Your 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 represents the Pacific Palisades, surrounding communities, and the San Fernando Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives.