Hurricane Isaias is expected to make landfall in Florida and Alabama late Friday or early Saturday, and emergency management experts say it could be the first major test of how well FEMA can respond after the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the agency.
More than 4,300 employees left FEMA in fiscal year 2025, about 17 percent of its workforce, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, and Chris Currie, that office's director of homeland security and justice, told The Guardian the cuts weren’t carried out in a way that ensured the agency could still meet its legal obligations.
“It’s not whether FEMA is going to respond – they’re going to respond," Currie said. "It’s more about the depth."
Many of the departures came through early retirement, which drained the agency of experience. From January 2025 to January 2026, 58 senior executives left FEMA. In the three years before that, the average was about 13 a year. One of them was the region four administrator, who oversees eight states, including Florida and Alabama.
“My biggest concerns are always the loss of institutional knowledge,” said Deanne Criswell, who led FEMA under President Joe Biden. “You lose the people who had been through these big disasters in the past.”
Currie warned that the bigger danger is a second disaster hitting soon after. In 2024, Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida less than two weeks apart, and FEMA had to deploy 13,500 employees.
“FEMA has struggled to have the right number of people with the right qualifications, even before these cuts,” Currie said.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the administration’s plan to cut FEMA’s staff by 50 percent was unlawful. A Texas Tribune analysis found that most major disaster declarations this year came about a month after states requested them, roughly three times the usual wait.
Survivors of this summer’s Texas Hill Country floods still haven’t received FEMA individual assistance, said Ginny Goldman, founder of Rebuild: the National Disaster Survivors Association. Trump promised $50 million for recovery on Truth Social.
“Where is it at? What about the folks struggling to get back on their feet?” Goldman asked.
FEMA said it is deploying incident management teams to Alabama and Florida and prepositioning supplies at Maxwell Air Force Base.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin’s leadership, the safety of the American people is DHS’s top priority,” the agency said.