The Federal Emergency Management Agency this week canceled employee travel — including some disaster response and recovery work — until a partial government shutdown ends, according to emails sent to staff and reviewed by The New York Times.
But FEMA’s disaster aid programs and staff are funded through a dedicated relief fund, not the federal budget, so they would not normally be affected by the shutdown. The partial closure, which began Saturday, affects funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA.
In response to questions about the order, FEMA officials said travel related to “active disasters” was not canceled.
In an unsigned statement, FEMA said that Homeland Security officials were restricting travel to comply with federal law, while continuing any work to save lives or protect property.
But that statement has confused many staff members, who received emails Tuesday and Wednesday showing that the travel restrictions affected some FEMA workers who were deployed to areas that were recovering from a disaster.
For example, workers currently on routine two-week rotations away from their disaster assignments are not allowed to return to work. The agency told those who were set to travel to such areas to cancel their plans.
The order also affects FEMA staff members who are at a training location and have been told they cannot return to disaster sites and could only travel home.
Staff members currently working in several disaster zones, including areas hit by Hurricane Helene, were told they can remain there.
The edict was Homeland Security’s latest move to constrict FEMA’s spending. Since June, Kristi Noem, the department’s secretary, has required that she approve all FEMA expenditures of $100,000 or more, a process that created a bottleneck that at one point reached $17 billion in disaster aid spending, The Times reported.
CNN and The Washington Post first reported on this week’s travel restrictions.
Scott Dance is a Times reporter who covers how climate change and extreme weather are transforming society.
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