As Hurricane Milton pushes toward Florida, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of staff members to deploy.
As of Monday morning, just 9 percent of FEMA’s personnel, or 1,217 people, were available to respond to the hurricane or other disasters, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing. To put that into context: Over the previous five years, one-quarter of the agency’s staff was available for deployment at this point in the hurricane season.
Even in 2017 — arguably FEMA’s busiest year in the past decade, after Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, Hurricane Irma plowed through Florida, and Hurricane Maria plunged Puerto Rico into darkness — FEMA’s staffing reserves at this point in October were 19 percent, more than twice the levels they are at now.
The agency’s leadership stressed that it is well equipped to handle the strains. “FEMA is built for this,” said Leiloni Stainsby, the agency’s deputy associate administrator for response and recovery.
The agency is stretched not just by the brutal aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people and destroyed sections of western North Carolina. Its staff is also responding to flooding and landslides in Vermont, tornadoes in Kansas, the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby in New York and Georgia and the Watch Fire in Arizona.
And those are just the disasters that were declared in the past two weeks.
“The agency is simultaneously supporting over 100 major disaster declarations,” Brock Long, who led FEMA during the Trump administration said in a statement. “The scale of staffing required for these operations is immense.”
Now FEMA must find staff members to deploy to Florida, where Milton is on track to plow into Tampa, prompting officials to prepare for what could be the largest evacuation since 2017.
The relentless string of disasters, which are becoming more frequent and severe because of climate change, is just one challenge.
In a report last year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that 35 percent of FEMA’s positions were unfilled, partly because of “rising disaster activity during the year, which increased burnout and employee attrition.”
The agency also faces a funding crunch. Congress last week approved FEMA’s request to top up its disaster relief fund. That was before Hurricane Milton, and Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary, last week said FEMA needed additional funding from Congress to make it through the hurricane season. Speaker Mike Johnson has declined to call House lawmakers back from the campaign trail for an emergency session to fund hurricane relief and rebuilding.
Still, the most immediate problem for FEMA is finding enough people.
It’s not just the top-line staff numbers that jump out. According to Monday’s briefing, some of FEMA’s most highly trained personnel, which are grouped into what the agency calls “cadres,” are at particularly low levels.
As of Monday morning, of the 2,579 people who work in the agency’s Individual Assistance cadre, four were available to deploy to Florida. Four of the 94 people who work in the safety cadre were available. And just one of the 1,201 people working in disaster survivor assistance could be dispatched.
The shortage extends to FEMA’s highest ranks. Of the 50 people who are assigned to act as federal coordinating officers — essentially the director of a disaster operation — just one was available as of Monday.
As disaster responses drain down FEMA’s staff, the agency has a number of options. One of the initial steps is to pull people off leave, Ms. Stainsby said.
“The mission really drives anybody who joins FEMA,” she said.
It can also pull staff away from long-term recovery operations, such as helping communities rebuild infrastructure with federal money, according to Beth Zimmerman, who led disaster operations for FEMA during the Obama administration.
“The No. 1 priority is lifesaving, life-sustaining action,” said Ms. Zimmerman, who is now a senior executive adviser with IEM, a private contractor that works with FEMA. “It’s not, how do I write a project worksheet to fix a road.”
FEMA has surge capacity, allowing it to use volunteers from other parts of the Homeland Security Department. If that is not enough, FEMA can also call in people from across the federal government.
Those staff members from other federal agencies are trained for the roles they’re assigned, Ms. Zimmerman said. “They’re not just going to be sent out cold,” she said.
The agency also has staffing agreements with private contractors, Ms. Zimmerman said, and it often supplements its work force further by hiring people who live in areas affected by disasters. “Because a lot of them have lost jobs,” she said.
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