By Trimmel Gomes, Florida News Connection
As Florida emergency response officials conduct their annual statewide hurricane preparedness exercise this week, emergency managers are grappling with shifting federal disaster recovery policies and uncertainty about the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
David Richardson, FEMA’s acting chief, said he intends to move more disaster-recovery responsibilities to the states, while President Donald Trump has floated “getting rid of” FEMA altogether.
David Merrick, emergency management program director at Florida State University, said it leaves a lot of uncertainty around support and rapid response.
“We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like,” Merrick acknowledged. “In places like Florida that has such a well-developed emergency management enterprise at all levels of government, I think we’re going to be in a better shape than maybe some other states or territories, maybe. That’s the only silver lining for us at this point.”
This week’s tabletop exercises and drills, which run ahead of the June 1 start of hurricane season, bring together state and local agencies to practice response coordination. This year, discussions are shadowed by federal proposals to overhaul disaster recovery, leaving officials focused on shoring up state and local resources.
Merrick takes comfort in a quote he often hears: FEMA has long held disaster response is “locally executed, state managed and federally supported.”
“Which means the responsibility is at the local and then the state level to do everything and the federal role is really just support that with funding and grants and resources that we can’t get access to,” Merrick outlined. “No one believes that the federal support is going to vanish overnight. “
Florida still depends heavily on FEMA resources, from disaster declarations unlocking federal funds to covering 75% of recovery project costs. The timing is critical, with forecasters predicting 17 or more named storms this season.
Florida News Connection is a bureau of the Public News Service. Banner photo: FEMA staffers canvass Lake County to help residents after Hurricane Milton. (Chief Petty Officer Daniel M. Young/U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, via Defense Visual Information Distribution Service)
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