Editorial: Hurricane season is no joke to Floridians, Mr. FEMA director

The Miami Herald Editorial Board, Miami Herald on Jun 6, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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The 2025 hurricane season is under way, but its start became a cringe-inducing moment for Floridians.

Acting FEMA Director David Richardson, named in early May to run the crucial national disaster management agency, reportedly said he was surprised to learn that the U.S. has a hurricane season. That’s according to news reports based on staffers present at a briefing on Monday to discuss the hurricane season, which runs from June 1-Nov. 30.

A Homeland Security spokesperson quickly tried to clean up the situation, saying Richardson was just joking. Maybe so, but that’s one clunker of a joke down here in the hurricane zone.

Floridians live nervously every year through an increasingly scary hurricane season. We know there’s nothing to laugh about, especially considering the most recent batch of more intense and wetter hurricanes.

So as Florida prepares for yet another active hurricane season, Richardson, head of the top emergency rescue agency, thinks it’s amusing to feign ignorance about the season’s very existence.

This year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we have reason to worry. This hurricane season activity is expected to be above normal, with 13 to 19 named storms and three to five major hurricanes predicted.

Blame a confluence of factors, including warmer than average ocean temperatures, forecasts for weak wind shear and the potential for higher activity from the West African Monsoon, a primary starting point for Atlantic hurricanes.

All of these elements tend to favor tropical storm formation, the agency said in a news release.

Back to Richardson’s disturbing “joke.” He’s a former Marine and Homeland Security official with no experience in emergency management and who is stepping into a battered FEMA.

The agency has lost a quarter of its workforce. Richardson’s predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, was forced out after expressing public support for FEMA’s mission — an apparent contradiction to President Donald Trump’s stance on reducing the size of the agency.

Under the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” there are plans to cut $646 million from FEMA and reduce its long-term disaster recovery programs, with responsibility shifting to states. And yet Richardson reportedly told employees FEMA should handle this year’s hurricanes the same way it did last year.

“The FEMA system is a broken system that, when fixed, will return power to state emergency management directors and make America safe again,” Homeland Security head, Kristi Noem, recently told a Congressional panel. Noem runs FEMA. However, critics on the panel warned that the cuts would weaken disaster readiness and shift an unsustainable burden to local governments.

Also, Floridians know there can be drawbacks to a local response: When an entire area is hit hard by a hurricane, we are all incapacitated, including the local government. At those times, we need federal aid via FEMA, parachuted in and self-sustaining.

Richardson may have been joking, but who will the joke be on if “the Big One” strikes Florida?

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