The US is not ready for the hurricane season due to staff cuts in relevant services - media

In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is "not ready" for the hurricane season in June, as it faces the problem of staff reductions and President Donald Trump's insistence on dissolving the national disaster relief agency. This is reported by UNN with reference to CBS News.

Details

The PowerPoint presentation on this issue was created after the new acting head of FEMA, David Richardson, ordered the agency to review its hurricane preparedness, as the storm season is about two weeks away. In a series of slides dated May 12, FEMA identified obvious problems at the disaster relief agency, including the need to "refocus on its core mission in preparation for the 2025 hurricane season."

As FEMA transforms into a smaller scale, the intentions for this hurricane season are not clear enough, so FEMA is not ready

Elsewhere in the presentation, it says that most of FEMA's hurricane season readiness process "has been disrupted this year by other activities, such as staffing and contracting." This is a fairly clear hint at the dismissal of probationary employees and large-scale changes in the composition of FEMA's contract workforce.

Government response

An official from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, called the story "vulgarity taken out of context" and said that FEMA "is fully activated in preparation for the hurricane season." The DHS official described the comments in the hurricane season review as "one line in a nineteen-page presentation and an unsubstantiated opinion from one official within the agency."

The slide was used during a daily meeting that Acting Administrator David Richardson holds daily called "Solving Complex Hurricane Preparedness Issues." In other words, what exactly the head of the emergency agency should do before the start of the hurricane season

According to several FEMA employees, during a 30-minute meeting with staff on Thursday, FEMA Chief Richardson did not say whether the agency was ready for the hurricane season when asked. Having been in this position for less than a week, he replied that he was still working on it and should have a better idea in a few weeks.

The official start of the Atlantic hurricane season is June 1.

Addition

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the Alan Turing Institute, Microsoft Research and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) presented a new weather forecasting system based on artificial intelligence - Aardvark Weather. The know-how allows to form forecasts much faster and with less resources than traditional weather systems.