Three weeks into the hurricane season, desks once belonging to FEMA’s seasoned disaster responders remain empty and morale is at an all-time low, a union chief said.
FEMA has been trying to replace an exodus of workers who left after the end of hurricane season last winter and Department of Homeland Security officials had promised to have the agency 95 percent staffed by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, June 1.
FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said the staffing level is nearly 87 percent, with 257 hires ready to come on board.
Leo Bosner, a union head and FEMA’s manager of emergency operations in D.C., said he has been told by a high-level director within the agency that a third of the jobs remain unfilled.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen morale,” said Bosner, a 27-year FEMA veteran.
Chairs and desks at D.C. headquarters remain vacant, he said, and outgoing staff with years of working through hurricanes are being replaced with workers who, while intelligent and eager, are green.
Many of upper-level employees were unhappy, and some left, because their expertise had been devalued since DHS took over the agency, Bosner said.
The Bush administration has had difficulty finding someone to permanently take the agency’s top job after Michael Brown resigned amid criticism of his response to Hurricane Katrina.
Many of the most senior jobs have been filled on an acting basis.
In his senateconfirmation hearing last month, FEMA director R. David Paulison conceded that times were tough, people were tired from working seven-days-a-week since Katrina.
Increasing staff levels was one of his biggest priorities, he said.
“What I don’t want to do is just put bodies in there,” Paulison said. “We have to recruit good people, but we must work expeditiously.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he was not happy to learn that the agency still wasn’t fully staffed.
“Here we are at the beginning of hurricane season,” Thompson said, “God forbid something like Katrina; we would not be able to respond the way we should.”
A look into FEMA
» At least seven of the top FEMA positions are vacant or filled on an acting basis.
» About 700 of the agency’s 2,400 employees work in Washington
» Weather experts say it is unlikely the county will see a repeat of year’s record number of 28 named storms including 15 hurricanes — six of which struck the United States.
» Forecasters predict 16 named storms and 10 hurricanes in 2006, with the possibility of four hurricanes hitting the United States.
