The Trump administration is contemplating moving the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters to Texas – even though the move would create “huge challenges” for the agency, according to a report.
Texas’s top emergency official, Nim Kidd, who heads the Texas Division of Emergency Management, is being eyed to lead the nation’s disaster agency, two former senior FEMA officials told POLITICO’s E&E News.
Moving FEMA’s headquarters away from Washington, D.C., would create “huge challenges” as the agency is managed by the Department of Homeland Security, which is also in D.C., one of the former officials said.
Soon after President Donald Trump returned to office in January, White House officials interviewed Kidd in February for the top FEMA role. Kidd acknowledged the interview but declined the position, writing on LinkedIn that he was “committed to serving Texas first.”
The report comes as FEMA Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned after just six months on the job. Starting next month, FEMA chief of staff Karen Evans will assume the role of acting administrator. It was not immediately clear how long a possible move of the headquarters would take, or when Kidd would potentially start in the position if selected.
Kidd sits on a 13-person panel appointed by Trump that is expected to recommend the agency’s move to Texas to accommodate the Texas official, one of the officials said.
“The admin wanted him, but he refused to leave Texas,” the source said.
It was unclear which city or cities were being considered for the possible relocation. The Independent has reached out to Kidd and the White House for comment.
Kidd made headlines in July after catastrophic flash floods inundated central Texas, killing at least 130 people, including at least 25 children and camp counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas.
During a press conference after the deadly floods, Kidd told reporters that the National Weather Service didn’t accurately predict how much rain Texas received.
“The original forecast that we received Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches in the Hill Country,” he said at the time. “The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”
Other officials echoed similar concerns, though the weather agency defended its “life-threatening flash flood warning,” which it told The Independent in July came over three hours before the first reports of flooding.
“Flash Flood Warnings were issued on the night of July 3 and in the early morning of July 4, giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before warning criteria were met,” NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said.
Richardson, who just left FEMA, largely took the blame for the agency’s slow response to the flooding, as he had been on vacation and unreachable. His appointment followed Trump’s declaration in January that he might “get rid” of the disaster relief agency altogether.
Kidd would be the first permanent administrator in the role since Trump started his second term. Before Richardson ran the agency, former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton was acting administrator.
Hamilton was fired in May for disagreeing with the Trump administration about dismantling FEMA, the Associated Press reported at the time.
