Anniston, wing. – It is the disaster that did not see coming.
Aileen Reneau, 30, had worked at the Federal Emergency Management Agency for less than a year, helping to train lifeguards at the National FEMA Preparation Center, the only installation of this type in the country. He was also deployed in North Carolina for six weeks after Hurricane Helene.
The veteran of the Air Force and mother of two was fired on the Day of the Presidents.
“It hurts,” he said. “It was a stab in the back.”
Since the day of the inauguration, more than 200 FEMA employees have been reduced, only 1% of the approximately 20,000 employees of the agency. Even so, a report from the United States Government Responsibility Office found that FEMA had a 35% gap in the necessary personnel in 2022, and a large workload led to problems of exhaustion and retention.
“We all know that these disasters will increase in frequency and gravity,” Reneau said. “Climate change is real, and unfortunately, we already had little personal, and now we are absolutely detailed.”
A senior White House official said that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order soon that aims to empower state and local governments to handle disaster relief. Trump has previously said that he wanted to give at least a federal money percentage reserved for FEMA to the states.
Reneau said he was careless when he knew they were letting him go. He had brilliant performance criticism, he said, but his termination letter cited low performance. She is appealing the decision.
“I believed that the reduction of force could be something to take into account, but I was not worried about losing my job in what is, frankly, an unusual and illegal issue,” he said. “I thought, well, they will use care and attention, they will take a scalpel for fraud, waste and abuse, not only hack the entire limb.”
The cuts of the so -called Efficiency Department of the Trump administration are both large and small. About 80% of the Federal Work Force is outside the Washington area, DC.
Reneau said he loved his work. The same did one of his coworkers, John Wippler, a veteran of the 31 -year -old Marines and the father of three children who also appealed his termination.
“I am sure there are some things that need to be cut and eliminated, but should everything be?” Wippler said. “I think that stability and security was really exciting. To have good medical attention for the first time for my family. Feeling that I was really providing in a really important way and finding a different way to serve my country, where I was not in the Marines.”
The Trump administration has fired tens of thousands of workers throughout the federal government. The White House has repeatedly said that cutting the waste, fraud and abuse was a key reason why voters chose Trump, who has repeatedly criticized FEMA, especially after Hurricane Helene last year.
“Very bureaucratic and is very slow,” Trump said about the agency in January.
In an interview on Monday at Fox Business, Dege leader Elon Musk, defended the cuts.
“FEMA is an agency aimed at caring for Americans in trouble, and a lot of their money was sent to pay luxury hotels in New York for illegal immigrants,” Musk said.
Reneau said that she feels betrayed, and the states of concern will not have the resources to effectively treat natural disasters.
She said Trump should “really look at what is doing to families and individuals throughout the United States in small villages, counties and states that voted for you and realize that the swamp is not draining.
“Just hurting their daily collar and white collar workers who tried to be public servants and help him make the United States again.”
