FEMA has resources to respond to Hurricane Milton, Mayorkas says

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said late Monday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the necessary resources to respond effectively to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida late Wednesday.

“Yes, it does, quite clearly,” Mayorkas told MSNBC's Jen Psaki, when asked whether FEMA has what it needs to respond to Milton.

“And everybody should rest confident that FEMA has the resources,” he said in the Monday interview on “Inside with Jen Psaki."

The former White House press secretary-turned-cable TV host asked Mayorkas to respond to The New York Times’s reporting that FEMA is facing a “severe staffing shortage,” with just 9 percent of the agency’s workforce available to respond to the hurricane or other disasters.

The Times compared that to the past five years, when one-quarter of the agency’s staff was available for deployment at this point in hurricane season.

But Mayorkas said FEMA’s staff can handle multiple crises at once, telling Psaki, "We have the personnel."

“We already have 900 personnel deployed, pre-positioned in Florida, who were responding to Hurricane Helene, people who were responding previously to Hurricanes Idalia and Debby," he said. "We are there. We have search and rescue teams; the Army Corps of Engineers are there. We are ready."

“FEMA likes to say it is FEMA flexible. We can respond to multiple events at a single time,” Mayorkas added.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall in Tampa, Fla., late Wednesday, marking the first time in more than a century that a major hurricane has directly hit Tampa.

The hurricane comes as the area is still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic damage across the southeast, including Florida.