(Washington) More than 180 employees of FEMA, the American agency for the response to natural disasters, warned on Monday of disastrous consequences “in cascade” that the policies carried out by the Trump administration will have according to the capacity of the agency to come to the aid of the affected populations.
In an open letter to the congress, they denounce in particular the budget cuts undertaken by the administration of the Republican President.
Since his return to the White House in January, Donald Trump has repeatedly said that she wanted to delete FEMA, saying that he would prefer to see American states “take care of their own problems”.
He accuses the agency of ineffectiveness, but also – without evidence – of political bias against the states led by Republicans.
The letter of the employees of the FEMA is entitled “Declaration of Katrina », By the name of the hurricane which had devastated the south of the United States-and particularly Louisiana-in August 2005, killing more than 1800.
Photo Scott Saltzman, Bloomberg News archives
A subcontractor of FEMA worked on the demolition of a house which broke away from its foundations and floated in the streets of New Orleans, in Louisiana, in March 2006.
The response of the federal authorities in the immediate future of this disaster caused a lively controversy in the United States, in particular due to confused communication and delays taken in the supply of aid to the populations moved by floods.
The following year, the Congress had adopted a law, called “Pkemra”, to improve the management of natural disasters.
But for the signatories of the letter, “twenty years later, the FEMA implements procedures and governance that echo the conditions that Pkemra was supposed to prevent”.
Photo Rodolfo Gonzalez, Associated Press archives
The first stakeholders of the College Station fire service carried out research along the Guadalupe river after extreme floods on July 6, 2025, in Ingram, Texas.
They thus denounce “the reduction of the capacities of FEMA to carry out its missions” with the freezing decided by the guardianship secretary, Kristi Noem, on the main expenses of the agency.
The review of these expenses had “dramatically clear” consequences, argue the signatories, during the deadly floods in early July in Texas, where the allocation of FEMA’s missions was delayed from “up to 72 hours”.
They also emphasize that a third of FEMA staff have left the agency this year, in particular due to the budget cuts ordered under the aegis of the Doge of Elon Musk commission.
At the elected officials of the congress, the signatories ask that the independence of FEMA be reinforced.
They say they hope that their letter “arrives in time to prevent not only another national disaster like the hurricane Katrinabut also the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of American populations that such an event would represent ”.
