Pearl River      Hurricane Isaias is coming through the Gulf of Mexico and expected to make landfall as a category 3 storm somewhere near Pensacola, Florida.  There are storm warnings in a large cone along the Alabama and Florida coasts.  Earlier in the week, New Orleans was part of the prediction as the storm gathered.  We filled up our vehicles and other gas tanks, shuttered windows and generally did hurricane-lite preparations, not really believing this was our time.  There were the usual discussions about evacuation.  Mi companera reported Natchez, Mississippi, one of our shelter points in the past, was already completely booked.  I stayed out of the conversation, saying I would go to Arkansas, which I had to walk back silently after being accused of deserting the family. Near the Pearl River and Bayou where I sit, raised nine-feet, I made sure the canoes on the dock were tied down tightly.  The water was licking the top of the ladder off the pier, higher than usual as wind pushed more out of the Gulf.

Even in these days of climate disasters and confusion, the one thing I can’t get out of my head, as I read the reports of no US landfalls in the last two years, is how wildly lucky Trump has been, once again, in his charmed life.  During these same two years, as he began his term, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was a primary target for elimination, and the twists and turns of the agency’s fate have been wild, but without luck, they could have been tragic, and might be still.  Allowing billionaire car and space dog, Elon Musk, and his DOGE team to first try to eliminate, and then succeed in decimating FEMA’s budget and staffing, any major hurricane would have unleashed a daily drumbeat of criticism even along the dark red states that border the Gulf.

This record is a case study of the administration’s disregard of its people, the lives we lead, and the dangers we face:

• From the AP: About 2,000 full-time staff have left FEMA since Trump took office in January, a loss of roughly one-third of the agency’s full-time workforce, amid Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mandated cuts. Scholars who study emergency management are concerned by both the reduction in capacity and the “brain drain” of experienced staff.
• From the Center for American Progress: A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report warned that the agency faced the 2026 hurricane season underprepared, dealing with a massive project backlog exceeding 300,000 projects and billions in withheld or delayed recovery and mitigation funds.
• From Politico: Many regions of the country including those most susceptible to hurricanes saw 10 percent or more of the staff leave in 2025 and the agency, in total, has lost more than one-fifth of its staff. And because these cuts were broad, even FEMA can’t say what the impact might be should one or more natural disasters hit the United States in the coming months.
• Center for Economic and Policy Research: Management has been fired and rehired from top to bottom, so fingers crossed that someone is on top of FEMA who knows what they are doing.

We’re hoping Trump’s luck holds and our friends, neighbors, and countrymen along the Gulf Coast are spared the pain of the administration’s indifference and ineptness.  It’s worth remembering though a sign on many refrigerators standing sentinel on the streets of New Orleans after Katrina: “hope is not a plan.”  Neither is luck!