TALLAHASSEE, Florida — With hurricane season just days away, Florida’s emergency management chief Kevin Guthrie said the state is ready — and he expects the state to receive critical federal recovery funding faster than they have in recent years.
Guthrie, executive director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, said Florida has the experience and resources to manage the 2026 hurricane season, even after this year’s historic wildfire season left tens of thousands of acres burned. The only thing holding back the state’s recovery from previous storms over the past two years, Guthrie said, has been the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which made changes two years ago that significantly slowed down the process used by states to request billions in federal funding.
Fights in Congress over the federal budget that led FEMA and other parts of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to shut down for several weeks made things even worse.
“Nobody in the emergency management arena, Republican or Democrat, ever expected DHS to enact some of the policy regulations that were enacted,” Guthrie said. “That did slow the process down.”
