GAO Report on Staff Reductions and Lack of Planning May Impact Mission
Readiness

“What GAO Found:

The increasing number and complexity of disasters demonstrates the need to
ensure that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) workforce
can meet its core mission to help people before, during, and after disasters. In
response to 2025 presidential directives, many federal agencies have taken
steps to reduce the size of their workforces. In fiscal year 2025, FEMA employed
about 25,134 employees, on average. However, over 4,300 employees
separated from FEMA in fiscal year 2025—a 55 percent increase in separations
from fiscal year 2024 (see figure). These separations have resulted in a loss of
institutional knowledge and experienced personnel, according to FEMA officials,
and have exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges.

In 2025, FEMA rescinded its strategic plan. As a result, the agency has no
overall strategic direction on which to base workforce planning—a systematic
and continuous process for identifying the size and composition of a workforce
needed to achieve an agency’s mission. Without a strategic plan that outlines
clear goals and objectives, FEMA cannot effectively determine its future
workforce needs, potentially putting its mission at risk.

In addition, GAO found that FEMA did not base its 2025 and 2026 workforce
reduction decisions, proposed future workforce actions, or workforce policy
changes on the results of a workforce analysis—an assessment of the current
state of the workforce and a forecast of future organizational requirements.
FEMA took these actions without assessing whether it had the necessary staffing
capacity to meet its mission, including its statutory requirements. Without
workforce planning, FEMA is not positioned to determine whether it has the right
number of people with the right skills in the right positions at the right time to
meet its mission. “

New Report on Use of AI in Emergency Management

From hstoday: Emergency Preparedness Report Examines AI Adoption Pathways for Emergency Management.

https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/emergency-preparedness/report-examines-ai-adoption-pathways-for-emergency-management

“A new report from RAND’s Homeland Security Research Division examines the availability of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled products for emergency management (EM) and the challenges organizations face in adopting and scaling these technologies.

RAND researchers identified 1,179 AI-enabled products with potential relevance to emergency management and assessed how those products align with EM needs.

The report notes that while many publications discuss the potential of AI in emergency management, limited information exists on what AI-enabled products are available and what organizations need to adopt them effectively.”

From EENews:: GAO says FEMA Faces Critically Low Staffing After Trump Cuts

“President Donald Trump’s hiring freeze last year and other steps have left the nation’s disaster agency at risk of “having critically low staffing levels” to handle a major disaster, a government report Tuesday says.

The Government Accountability Office’s scathing analysis of the Federal Emergency Management Agency quotes unnamed FEMA officials saying they were “wandering around in the dark” as they awaited administration direction on staffing.

“Officials told us they have been operating in uncertainty and confusion while still trying to meet the mission with the staff they have,” the nonpartisan GAO found.”

From HSToday: Twenty One Years After Hurricane Katrina: The Lessons That Still Matter
“On August 29, 2026, our nation will mark the twenty first anniversary of Katrina’s landfall along the Gulf Coast. Last year, many thoughtful articles reflected on its twentieth anniversary. But emergency management should never reserve its lessons for milestone anniversaries. Hurricanes don’t wait for round numbers, and neither should we. Every hurricane season is another opportunity to remember what experience has already taught us.

Most people remember Katrina as the defining disaster of a generation. What many forget is that Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane. The category described the wind speed. It did not capture the catastrophic flooding, the breakdown of critical infrastructure, the human suffering, or the communications challenges that followed.”

From NACO: Counties make the case for FEMA reform on Capitol Hill

“When disaster strikes, counties are first on the scene – deploying emergency personnel, coordinating evacuations and beginning the long work of rebuilding communities, often before federal help has even arrived. But under the current federal disaster recovery system, counties are also left holding the bill, sometimes for years.

That was the message Jefferson Parish, La. President Cynthia Lee Sheng brought to Capitol Hill on July 15, testifying on behalf of NACo before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at a hearing titled “Reforming FEMA: Ensuring the Nation’s Disaster Readiness Works for Americans.”

“Disaster response, recovery and mitigation start local, and they end local,” Sheng told lawmakers. “However, these efforts would not be possible without continued support from federal programs through FEMA.”

From: AP News: More than 24 states sue Trump administration after it put conditions on receiving disaster funding

“More than two dozen states on Thursday sued the Trump administration for requiring them to comply with election and immigration conditions to receive billions of dollars in federal funding for disasters.

The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island and challenging Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security policies, argued that the administration is requiring states to change their elections systems and help DHS with immigration enforcement. The conditions would also allow DHS to terminate grants at any time and for any reason.”

An Update on FEMA’s Disaster Declaration Activity

“Earlier this year I wrote extensively about disaster declaration activity, finding that the 2nd Trump Administration was denying many more requests than was typical, was taking longer to make those decisions, and was approving more requests from Republican-voting states than Democratic-voting ones. On that last point, I said that we need to be cautious because of small sample sizes and correlation =/ causation, but the pattern was certainly striking.”

Editors Note: Be sure to read down to the bottom of the article to see the useful charts of declaration data.

Thanks to Chris Jones for the citation.

Government of Canada Provides Updates on Devastating 2026 Wildfire Season

https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/emergency-preparedness/government-of-canada-provides-updates-on-devastating-2026-wildfire-season

he Honourable Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, joined by Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and Ginette Lavack, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services, have provided an update on the worsening wildfire situation in Canada.

As of July 9, there were 796 active wildfires nationally including 60 with full response, that are out of control. In total this season, there have been 3,137 fires and 1.4 million hectares burned. Last year we saw fewer fires at this time, 2,913, but a more significant area burned, 4,614,713 hectares.

From HStoday: Lawmakers Renew Calls to Fix “Broken” Disaster Response System

https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/emergency-preparedness/lawmakers-renew-calls-to-fix-broken-disaster-response-system

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee renewed its push for sweeping reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) this week, with lawmakers and emergency management leaders examining proposals they say would fundamentally reshape how the federal government prepares for, responds to, and recovers from disasters.

The hearing brought together former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, local government officials, utility and insurance industry leaders, and business representatives to discuss long-term changes to the nation’s disaster response framework.

In his opening remarks, Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) argued that years of incremental reforms have failed to address systemic problems within the agency.

From CNN: ‘Large and deadly’ flood waves threaten Texas Hill Country. Water rescues are underway as relentless rain hits the same area of last year’s Camp Mystic flooding./

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/weather/live-news/texas-flash-flooding-camp-mystic-climate