By Tim Reid
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nearly three dozen staff at the U.S. agency that responds to natural disasters warned Congress in a letter on Monday that the inexperience of the Trump administration’s top appointees could lead to a catastrophe on the level of Hurricane Katrina.
The letter signed by 35 named employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the agency’s current leaders, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting FEMA director David Richardson, lack the qualifications to manage natural disasters and are eroding its ability to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies.
Noem’s requirement that she review all contracts and grants over $100,000 “reduces FEMA’s authorities and capabilities to swiftly deliver our mission,” the letter states.
It asks Congress to make FEMA an independent cabinet-level agency free from interference from DHS and to protect FEMA employees from politically-motivated firings “to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself.”
DHS and FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the criticisms of Noem and Richardson. The Trump administration has said FEMA is well prepared to respond to hurricanes this year.
The protest letter was sent days before the 20th anniversary of Katrina, which caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans and devastating destruction along the Gulf Coast in August 2005, claiming the lives of more than 1,800 people.
It was also delivered two months into the U.S. hurricane season and at a time when President Donald Trump has said he wants to drastically cut the size and mandate of FEMA, leaving much more of the burden of responding to natural disasters to individual states.
Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, in part because of a breakdown of leadership and response at the city, state and federal level. Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act in 2006 to give FEMA more responsibility and to put in place safeguards to mitigate against another failed response.
The letter warns that the Trump administration is undoing those reforms and sending FEMA back to pre-Katrina levels by cutting funding, reducing disaster recovery and training programs, and by hampering its ability to act quickly because of stringent new oversight policies.
The letter urges the Republican-controlled Congress to defend FEMA from cuts in funding and staff, and that it be led by an administrator with the qualifications and experience to manage disaster response.
Richardson, the current acting administrator, is a former U.S. Marine and DHS official without any previous experience in emergency management.
Richardson left many FEMA staff baffled when he said in June that he was not aware the U.S. has a hurricane season, which begins in June and lasts through November.
(Reporting by Tim Reid; editing by Ross Colvin and Paul Simao)
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