By Eric Cote, Founder and Project Director, Powered for Patients
From the early days of the current Trump administration, the future of FEMA has been in serious question. President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have talked about eliminating the agency. In January, when visiting Los Angeles County following the devastating wildfires, President Trump criticized FEMA’s recent performance in other disasters, saying, “I say, you don’t need FEMA, you need a good state government.”
In the ensuing months, thousands of FEMA employees have been terminated and major programs, such as the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program, have been eliminated. In a Washington Post article published earlier this week, state and local emergency managers have made it clear that they’re no longer counting on FEMA to help their jurisdictions recover from disaster.
“We have heard him loud and clear,” said Alan Harris, the emergency manager for Seminole County, Florida, referring to the President’s comments. The Washington Post reports that Harris is considering hiring more temporary staffers, solidifying mutual aid agreements with other governments and locking down contracts for vendors who can provide heavy equipment, temporary traffic signals and other post-storm necessities.
These are prudent moves amid the uncertainty but there are particular disaster response activities that are best led by the federal government, including the large-scale deployment of temporary generators to impacted states. Following a Presidential Emergency Declaration, the governors of impacted states can request deployment of temporary federal generators to restore power to facilities whose generators have failed, or to bring power to essential facilities without backup power, such as disaster shelters.
The federal fleet, comprised of generators owned by FEMA, and augmented by large privately owned rental fleets, is the largest in the nation. Large packs of generators of varying sizes, including some large enough to power hospitals, are pre-positioned around the country to accelerate deployment. This mission is carried out jointly by FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), with assistance from the U.S. Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion and private contractors.
This federal fleet has been called upon many times following disasters that trigger prolonged power outages. In the massive federal response to Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, even the vaunted federal fleet ran out of smaller generators needed to run health clinics and gas stations.
States have effectively supported each other in disaster responses for years, thanks to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), a national disaster–relief compact among the states and territories ratified by the U.S. Congress. But large-scale deployment of temporary generators is not something states could effectively manage, primarily because few states have the temporary power assets often needed during extended outages. Even if neighboring states were to combine their temporary emergency power assets, this collective resource would still pale in comparison to the federal fleet. Further, a large-scale regional disaster, such as a major hurricane, would likely deplete limited state temporary power assets, leaving few if any generators available for deployment to neighboring states.
There’s plenty of room to debate which federal agencies should lead the temporary power mission, but the Trump administration should make it clear that the large-scale deployment of temporary generators to hospitals, wastewater treatment plants, and other critical facilities impacted by prolonged power outages is a mission best led by the federal government.
Eric Cote is the Founder and Project Director of Powered for Patients (P4P), a 501c3 non-profit that works to safeguard backup power and expedite power restoration for critical healthcare facilities. P4P accomplishes its mission by facilitating increased collaboration between public health preparedness leaders, emergency managers, healthcare facility managers, and utilities.