Among the thousands of federal workers terminated in the first month of President Donald Trump's second term are at least 200 employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. One of them, a Shenandoah Valley resident, spoke to WMRA's Randi B. Hagi about his experience.
Travis Pettit most recently worked for the National Fire Academy, a FEMA institution that offers free technical courses –
TRAVIS PETTIT: … for firefighters, for first responders, people responding to hazardous materials incidents, wildfires, potential terrorist incidents, you name it.
Pettit was an instructional systems specialist. In that role, he worked with subject matter experts and trainers to design online and in-person classes. On February 17, he received a letter from the interim head of FEMA informing him that he had not demonstrated his further employment would be in the public interest. He was three weeks from the end of his probationary period, and had just earned the highest possible rating in his annual review in January. One reviewer wrote, "you are rocking it."
PETTIT: If you want to perform a reduction in force, if you want to reorganize the agency, shift priorities, downsize, that is within the purview of the administration. But there are legal ways to go about doing it, and making false statements, flat-out lying about employees' performances, in order to accomplish that goal is not legitimate.
Pettit said that, in addition to the immediate holes left at the fire academy, the FEMA layoffs affect the agency's capacity to respond quickly to disasters.
PETTIT: In an emergency, we can be called up and deployed. … I was actually deployed twice, in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
In Savannah, Georgia, he was part of a service center where people could file or check on a claim for FEMA assistance.
PETTIT: We were working 11-hour shifts six and seven days a week. … Every person that I worked with in that disaster recovery center got up every day and did what they did because they cared.
Pettit has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from actions like political discrimination and whistleblower retaliation. However, as The Washington Post reported, a federal appeals court has ruled President Donald Trump can temporarily remove the office's head while judges decide whether Trump has the right to fire him without cause.
