Can FEMA Handle Another Busy Season?

FEMA building with flags outside and blue sky

A government watchdog found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) entered the 2025 hurricane season with only 12% of its field disaster workforce ready to deploy — and the situation has only gotten worse heading into 2026.

Story Snapshot

FEMA lost nearly 20% of its staff since early 2025, dropping from about 26,000 workers to roughly 23,300.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found just 12% of FEMA’s field incident managers were available for deployment at the start of hurricane season.
Half of FEMA’s top leadership positions sat empty when hurricane season began in 2025.
A strengthening El Niño pattern is expected to drive more wildfires, hurricanes, and floods — right as FEMA is at its weakest in years.

FEMA’s Workforce Has Shrunk Dramatically

FEMA’s active workforce fell from about 25,800 employees in January 2025 to roughly 23,350 by June 2025 — a drop of 9.5% in just six months. Some estimates put the total loss even higher. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reported FEMA’s overall headcount fell from nearly 29,000 to about 23,000 during the same period due to federal layoffs. That is a significant reduction in the people responsible for helping Americans survive the worst days of their lives.

The GAO — a nonpartisan federal watchdog — found that FEMA has had to pull workers off ongoing disaster recovery jobs just to respond to new emergencies. That means communities still rebuilding from one disaster get left behind when the next storm hits. It is a cycle that hurts real people, and the numbers show it is getting worse, not better.

Leadership Gaps Make a Bad Problem Worse

At the start of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, 18 out of 38 top FEMA leadership positions were empty. An agency running without half its leadership cannot make fast decisions when a Category 4 storm is bearing down on a coastline. Good disaster response depends on clear chains of command, and right now those chains have too many missing links.

On a single Sunday during the 2025 season, FEMA had only 1,587 disaster workers available for deployment. That same day in 2024, the number was 2,365. In June 2022, it was nearly 4,700. The trend is moving in exactly the wrong direction as the country faces a more active storm season and the growing threat of El Niño-driven disasters across the West and Gulf Coast.

El Niño Adds Pressure to an Already Strained Agency

El Niño is not just a weather pattern — it is a force multiplier for disasters. Forecasters expect it to increase the intensity of wildfires in the West, hurricanes along the Gulf, and flooding across multiple regions. FEMA was already stretched thin handling back-to-back disasters. Adding an El Niño cycle on top of a depleted workforce is a serious concern for anyone who depends on federal help when disaster strikes.

FEMA has said it has about 8,100 personnel ready for deployment, pushing back on the “unprepared” label. That number deserves scrutiny, though, since the GAO’s own data showed only 12% of field incident managers were available — a far cry from full readiness. Americans in disaster zones do not care about competing statistics. They care about whether help arrives. Right now, the honest answer is that FEMA has fewer people, fewer leaders, and fewer resources than it did just a few years ago — heading into one of the most dangerous storm seasons in recent memory.