TAMPA, Fla. – Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem’s recent comment that she plans to close FEMA sparked debate on Wednesday among Florida leaders.
The backstory:
During a televised cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump a day earlier, Noem told the president, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA,” without going into detail about how that would happen. The statement, however, is in line with President Trump’s executive order in January calling for a “full-scale review” of FEMA.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t comment on Wednesday on Noem’s comments, but last month said he would support closing down the agency.
“You’ve got folks with Milton and Helene who are still battling FEMA,” DeSantis said at the time, adding he wants to see disaster funding provided to states in the form of block grants ahead of a major storm. “Cut the bureaucracy of FEMA out entirely and that money will go further than it currently does at greater amounts going through FEMA’s bureaucracy.”
By the numbers:
Ninety-three percent of counties in the U.S. have had FEMA disasters declared since 2011, and Florida has received $8.5 billion.
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The other side:
Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor, who reprsents Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, said FEMA should be reformed, but she believes a full-scale closure is short-sighted and would leave communities unprepared and under-staffed to recover from storms.
“Congressional District 14, which is Tampa and St. Pete had more requests for emergency FEMA aid than any other district in the country over the past couple of years,” Castor said. “There is no way for local counties or the state of Florida to be able to surge in that kind of relief and expertise. You have to have a flexible national disaster response agency that can go to the areas of disaster, whether it’s wildfires or floods, tornadoes or hurricanes. So this one, it scares me.”
Amy Chester, the director of the non-profit Rebuild by Design, has dealt with FEMA a lot over the years and said transferring its responsibilities entirely to the states would be a complex process.
“We are able to show that 90% of counties across the US and 99.5% of congressional districts have experienced a major disaster declaration for a weather event from 2011 to 2024,” Chester said. “It would be incredibly complex to solely rely on a state to respond. There is so much depth of knowledge that needs to be built, and that’s not going to be built overnight. It’s not going to be built in a year, and we’d be lucky if it was built in ten years.”
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Chester believes it’ll be more difficult for states unaccustomed to natural disasters to take on recovery responsibilities.
“I think is going to be very different from a place like Iowa that has a smaller government than a place like Florida or New York or California,” she said. “What we really need is to be shifting our resources pre-disaster and our funding pre-disaster so communities aren’t suffering in the first place.”
The Source: The information in this story contains statements made by Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem and Governor Ron DeSantis. It also includes interviews with U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor and Rebuild by Design Director Amy Chester.
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