STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump's administration has brought its firings to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency - the people who help local authorities in disasters.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In addition to the firings, people involved tell NPR that FEMA is cutting back on its work to make homes and buildings safer before a disaster. This is also one of the agencies the president has talked of eliminating.
INSKEEP: Lauren Sommer with NPR's climate desk is covering this story. Lauren, good morning.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: How many people were fired?
SOMMER: So it's more than 200 employees. That's what the Department of Homeland Security told me, and they oversee FEMA. These were workers on probationary status, which basically means they were within one year of taking the job. But, you know, I spoke to people that had been at the agency more than a decade, and they were only on probationary status because they accepted a promotion for a new job. You know, one told me the firings were like doing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.
INSKEEP: OK. So 200 firings, but it is an agency with thousands. So how would this affect their response in a disaster?
SOMMER: Right. Yeah. So when disasters happen, it's really all hands on deck at FEMA. They put hundreds of people on the ground to connect disaster victims and, you know, enroll them for financial assistance. You know, that's for things like renting a place to live or rebuilding long-term. Those FEMA staff come from every part of FEMA. And I talked to Michael Coen, who was FEMA's chief of staff under the Biden administration. And he says the agency was already understaffed.
MICHAEL COEN: We've been behind at FEMA as far as our recruiting goals. And now to let go a whole year's worth of people who had been hired is only going to put the agency in jeopardy.
SOMMER: Last year, during Hurricane Helene, FEMA had to use employees from other federal agencies to fill the gap because the need was so great from disaster survivors.
INSKEEP: Although didn't the president suggest that FEMA wasn't necessary when he was talking during the Los Angeles fires?
SOMMER: Yeah, he said disaster recovery is better left to the states, and he's actually creating a council that will review and potentially overhaul FEMA. You know, local and state governments actually already run disaster recovery, and they request that FEMA come in. But aspects of FEMA's work are already changing because, you know, one thing the agency does is help develop building codes. These are the construction standards that help homes survive floods and hurricane winds. FEMA experts had already written recommendations about how to strengthen those codes. They were submitted to the International Code Council, which is an association that updates the codes every three years and then local and state governments adopt them. But FEMA has asked for its name to be taken off those recommendations. According to people who are involved with that work and spoke with me, they want to remain anonymous over concerns about retribution from the Trump administration. And FEMA did not respond to our questions about why they made this request.
INSKEEP: This is really interesting reporting you have here, and I want to talk about this. There is a wider debate over building requirements. There are even liberals and progressives, as well as conservatives, who think we've made it too hard to build stuff and that it's bad for society. But I assume you're talking here about relatively narrow recommendations about how to make your house or your building survive a disaster.
SOMMER: Yeah. Yeah. These are recommendations that come out of actual disasters - you know, seeing what hasn't worked. It's things like maybe raising up a house a little bit so floodwaters don't come in. And research really shows they add about 1-2% of the construction costs, but they've saved billions of dollars in damage that would have happened otherwise.
INSKEEP: NPR's Lauren Sommer from our climate desk. Thanks so much.
SOMMER: Thank you.
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