FEMA Has Canceled Its Hurricane Strategic Plan – CleanTechnica

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Federal forecasters have predicted there will be a 60% chance of an above average hurricane season this year. A typical year averages about 14 tropical storms, and seven of them build into hurricanes. Of the named storms that NOAA has anticipated, six to ten are forecast to become hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or higher. Three to five of those will evolve into major hurricanes designated as Category 3, 4, or 5 with accompanying winds of 111 mph or higher.

The realization that the upcoming summer season will be rife with extreme weather is quite upsetting. And now we have to add a whole new stress level due to one more in a long line of ridiculous Trump administration decisions. With the beginning of hurricane season hardly a week away, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has invalidated its strategic plan, which guides hurricane response efforts.

Acting FEMA administrator David Richardson made the announcement in a memo sent to FEMA employees last week.

 “The 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan is hereby rescinded. The Strategic Plan contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission. This summer, a new 2026-2030 strategy will be developed. The strategy will tie directly to FEMA executing its Mission Essential Tasks.”

“Voldemort” is reportedly one of several FEMA workers’ nicknames for Richardson.

What’s to come now that the 2022-2026 FEMA strategic plan has been rescinded? It’s hard to tell, as the FEMA website “is being updated to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

As a partial explanation, Geoff Harbaugh, associate administrator of external affairs at FEMA, issued a statement to Wired saying that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and Richardson are “shifting from bloated, D.C.-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.”

Jen Rubin wrote on her Substack today that “Donald Trump, like all autocrats, has twisted and distorted language to such a degree that, as we have noted week after week, some words have lost all meaning or now signify the opposite of their real meaning.”

So “bloated” now replaces “prepared.” “Dead weight” substitutes for “emergency management.”

It makes no logical sense that the current hurricane strategic plan has been rescinded without another in place. The former strategic plan listed goals and objectives for the agency** to “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,” to “lead whole of community in climate resilience,” and to “promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation.”

Benjamin Franklin, who helped draft the US Declaration of Independence, said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” The Trump administration clearly wasn’t listening during high school US History class.

In contrast, earlier this year the Pew Charitable Trusts supported a National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) workshop to highlight “the urgency of policymakers’ work building community resilience.” It was clear that even for policymakers from states that haven’t endured recent catastrophes, disasters are a primary concern for their constituents. Workshop participants identified five disaster mitigation themes that are likely to frame state policy discussions during ongoing legislative sessions:

• maximizing federal funding opportunities;
• stabilizing insurance markets;
• using data and modeling to inform resilience actions;
• anticipating growing public health threats from extreme weather; and,
• using state plans to inform resilience investments.

Damn. Each of those themes takes planning, right? Don’t look to the federal government for planning, as the appointees there are too busy using Orwellian language to describe their motivations.

One FEMA worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was baffled. “We are huge planners. Things like the strategic plan have big downstream effects, even if it’s not immediate operationally.”

“It’s our guiding star,” another worker admitted. “We use this to decide agency priorities and pathways to achieve them. Without it, we’re adrift. It’s clear that the person steering the agency, Richardson, is here to take it apart, one piece at a time.”

Historically, the FEMA Hurricane Strategic plan had goals to reduce the complexity of the agency, ready the nation for catastrophic disaster, and build a culture of preparedness. FEMA noted in its 2018 plan** that “the most effective form of emergency management is one in which every member of the community understands his or her important and indispensable role,” and “the ability of the Nation to be truly ready depends on everyone knowing and understanding the part they play in our collective resilience.”

At that time pre-disaster mitigation was at the top of the list of importance, as a National Institute of Building Sciences report** had found that every $1 in federal government agency hazard mitigation spending saved the nation $6 in future disaster costs.

A website at the URL ready.gov/hurricanes continues to list ways for individuals to prepare for hurricanes, including “Know your hurricane risk,” “Make an emergency plan,” “Know your evacuation zone,” “Recognize warnings and alerts,” “Strengthen your home,” and “Get tech ready.”

What’s the difference between 2018 and 2025? Today individual homeowners are on their own to solve the devastation that often accompanies hurricanes. FEMA used to empower constituent groups so they would know and understand “the part they play in our collective resilience.” Deleting the strategic hurricane plan means that entire levels of preparedness, training, exercises, and interactions with state and local government have been erased.

Why is Planning Crucial for Hurricane Season?

The start of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season runs Sunday, June 1, to Sunday, Nov. 30, with the most active months between August and October. Early forecasts say the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season will bring months of danger for millions of people in the US.

The most deadly storms can quickly explode in intensity. A rapid strengthening of a hurricane occurs when wind speeds increase by at least 35 mph in 24 hours. Storm surge — that enormous buildup of water that pushes in height and intensity to the shore during a hurricane — often brings the most damage. Caused by winds moving around the storm that push water toward the shore, a storm surge often takes communities by surprise. It has been responsible for about half of all past hurricane damage.

Last year, 18 storms formed, including devastating Hurricanes Helene and Milton. FEMA helped thousands of people to adjust to life without basic necessities and then later to rebuild.

Final Thoughts

The National Hurricane Program (NHP), one of the subsets of FEMA, has supported emergency managers through three goals:

• Provide operational tools, information, and technical assistance to emergency managers to support their hurricane evacuation and response decisions during hurricane threats;
• Provide data, resources, and technical assistance to support hurricane evacuation and response planning; and,
• Deliver comprehensive hurricane preparedness training to emergency managers and partners.

Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, asked us all in a Memorial Day editorial in the New York Times to stand up for our Constitutional rights.

“We are being asked not to charge into a hail of Minié balls and artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?”

FEMA Hurricane Strategic plan (screenshot)

We all need to write our representatives in Congress, fill out petitions, call out the Supreme Court for their complicity, and discuss calmly and rationally explain the upheaval to our democracy whenever we have the opportunity. After all, it’s our way of life at stake — and probably there’s no more concrete example of democracy in action than FEMA damage assistance after a hurricane.

(** Sorry, those links are broken under the Trump administration, so citing these primary sources isn’t possible.)