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The Guy Responsible for Fixing Damage During Hurricane Season Doesn't Know About Hurricane Season [1]
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Date: 2025-06-02
It was only to be expected that a president who thinks he can alter a hurricane’s path with a sharpie or stop a hurricane with a nuclear bomb would pick someone to to head FEMA — the agency that is supposed to help Americans recover from hurricane damage — who knows nothing about hurricanes. But at least you’d think he’d pick someone smart enough not to admit it, right?
Wrong.
FEMA staff baffled after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say:
Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year's season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.
Just about everybody who lives east of Missouri or south of the Ohio rivers knows about hurricane season. While it was no surprise to learn that the new head of FEMA, David Richardson, “has no disaster response experience” you would at least think he’s had the experience that every schoolchild in the southeastern United States has — there is a hurricane season!
The Reuters article did add:
It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context.
but even if it was a joke, Richardson was serious about what he said next:
Richardson said during the briefing that there would be no changes to the agency's disaster response plans despite having told staff to expect a new plan in May, the sources told Reuters. Richardson's comments come amid widespread concern that the departures of a raft of top FEMA officials, staff cuts and reductions in hurricane preparations will leave the agency ill-prepared for a storm season forecast to be above normal.
Apparently, this is because “he does not want to make changes that might counter the FEMA Review Council, the sources said.” That council includes Kristi Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA — though, as Reuters points out, “she approved Richardson's request to retain more than 2,600 short-term disaster response and recovery employees whose terms were set to expire this year. . . .”
This is in line with Trump’s dislike of hurricanes — or at least dislike of people talking about them, warning about them, doing something about them. Back in February, we learned that Donald Trump's NOAA Purge Sparks Alarm Before Hurricane Season.
I am the last person to say that there is any bottom to Trump’s depravity and pettiness, but even so, I have trouble believing that he would so completely dismantle our ability to plot hurricanes, predict hurricanes, and recover from hurricanes just because a couple of hurricanes — one that hit Puerto Rico and one that didn’t hit Alabama — made him look bad. But maybe he is.
[Update] I was reminded by a comment that this isn’t the only case of Trump picking a complete ignoramus for a job. ‘I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast’: New head of Social Security had to look up his job when offered. There is a pattern emerging here.
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