The Trump administration insists its ready for hurricane season .... despite the FEMA chief saying he wasn’t even aware such a season exists

The Trump administration is claiming it’s fully prepared for this year’s hurricane season, even as the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says he had no idea the United States even had a hurricane season, and local weathermen complain that they are unequipped to forecast the natural disaster because of government cuts. 

On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the National Weather Service was fully staffed, and prepared for the annual storm cycle. “There are no [job] openings at the National Hurricane Center, zero, it is fully staffed. We are fully ready for hurricane season,” he said. 

The declaration came just a day after Reuters and The New York Times reported that acting FEMA Director David Richardson — who joined the disaster response agency in late May — told staffers he wasn’t aware that the United States had a defined hurricane season. It does, of course, every year from early June to late November. The comment — which the White House attempted to dismiss as an attempt at a joke by Richardson — reportedly raised alarm among staffers, who were already concerned about the acting director’s lack of experience in disaster preparedness and response management. 

Combine Richardson’s apparent cluelessness with the Trump administration’s deep cuts to FEMA’s employee base, interest in doing away with the agency entirely, generally sloppy handling of disaster management, and mass layoffs at the National Weather Service and other publicly funded meteorological organizations, and it’s no wonder people, including those working in government, are nervous about how hurricane season will unfold. 

On Tuesday, video of an NBC6 South Florida weatherman John Morales went viral on social media after he warned that he was “not sure” he could confidently advise the public of the predicted movements of hurricanes this season as he had done in the past. “Because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general … what we’re starting to see is that the quality of the forecast is becoming degraded,” he said, citing how federal cuts to national weather programs and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were leaving local and regional meteorological offices understaffed, causing a reduction in atmospheric monitoring — such as weather balloon launches.

“There’s also a chance, because of some of these cuts, that NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft will not be able to fly this year, and with less reconnaissance missions, we may be flying blind, and we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline,” Morales said. 

Inaccurate weather forecasts will make it all the more difficult for federal, state, and local entities to issue preparedness guidelines, evacuation orders, and a myriad of other directives required for natural disaster management. In addition, the Trump administration has made clear that they intend to eliminate FEMA in its current form, and attempt to return disaster management to individual states. States cannot handle disaster relief on their own, though. Even in his first months in office, several prominent Republican elected officials from deep red states impacted by various natural disasters have complained publicly that the president and his staff have slowwalked — or outright denied — recovery aid. Natural disasters don’t care about the political desires of elected officials, and as hurricane season begins, the states most at risk are being set up for failure.