‘Hadn’t been aware’: FEMA staff terrified after Trump appointed head said he’d never heard of hurricane season

As of Sunday, hurricane season has rolled around once again, leaving millions of Americans nervously bracing themselves for the inevitable chaos it brings. Increasingly deadly hurricanes have become a sad fact of life over the last decade, with their frequency intensity cranked up by steadily rising ocean temperatures.

This has meant FEMA has been critical in providing aid to those affected, most notably during 2024’s Hurricane Milton, which devastated Florida in Oct. 2024. All of which means you’d expect the head of FEMA to make hurricane season his number one priority, have contingency plans ready to go, and ensure the organization has everything it needs.

Oh, what’s that? The Trump-appointed Head of FEMA, David Richardson, wasn’t even aware that the United States even has a hurricane season? Well, that’s not good.

BREAKING: This post is not a joke.

THE HEAD OF FEMA under Trump, David Richardson, left staff shocked yesterday when he told them he didn’t know that the US had a hurricane season.

Note: Hurricane season started yesterday.

WTF!!! pic.twitter.com/VfOwGedNqh

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) June 2, 2025

Reuters is reporting that four separate sources within FEMA have told them the same story. During a briefing, Richardson expressed surprise and confusion when someone mentioned “hurricane season”, saying he’d never heard of this concept before. FEMA employees were left baffled and terrified as they came to the inevitable conclusion that their new boss is dangerously incompetent.

Grossly incompetent

Senior Democrats are now demanding Richardson be fired immediately, arguing that he will soon have people’s lives in his hands. Representative Bennie Thompson, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee with oversight of FEMA, told Reuters: “Suffice to say, disaster response is no joke. If you don’t know what or when hurricane season is, you’re not qualified to run FEMA. Get someone knowledgeable in there.”

Republicans immediately launched into damage control mode, insisting that this was just some kind of unexplained joke. Trump’s appointees said that the old FEMA was “bloated, DC-centric dead weight” and that they’re transforming it into a “lean, deployable disaster force”. To be fair, it’s looking increasingly accurate that Trump-era FEMA will be a “disaster force” rather than a “disaster relief force”.

All of which means that those in states likely to be hit by hurricanes better take extreme precautions this year, as this new “lean” FEMA that doesn’t know what hurricane season is can’t be relied upon. The sad upshot of this will be more chaos in the wake of hurricanes: with affected regions likely to be without power for extended periods, and food and potable water scarce. For the sake of people’s lives, we hope Richardson is up to the job, but the evidence suggests he doesn’t have a clue.