West Palm Beach says local emergency funds and trained staff will help as FEMA-led training is cut

Assistant Fire Chief Brent Bloomfield, West Palm Beach's emergency manager, said city administrators and first responders are already preparing for the upcoming hurricane season and relying on local emergency funds and trained personnel after some FEMA-led training was canceled.

Bloomfield said the city has set aside emergency funds that "would be able to, you know, get through a certain amount of, response until the county or the state would be able to come in." The assistant fire chief warned that potential federal funding cuts could increase the importance of local preparations.

The comments came as Bloomfield described a trend of FEMA-led classes being removed from statewide and national training events. "We're starting to see at these, conferences and we're starting to see at these, events where, and at the National Fire Academy and the Emergency Management Academy where they're stopping the classes, they're not having the, you know, not funding the training as of right now," he said. He added that, despite those cancellations, "the good news is there's a lot of people that have been trained. Myself, people that I use for training in the city, that can fill those gaps."

Bloomfield noted the city is "in a good position to withstand and recover from hurricanes with experienced leaders and a healthy emergency fund available," but that federal funding uncertainty could have an impact on longer-term or larger-scale recovery efforts. Those comments were given as part of local preparedness messaging ahead of the hurricane season.

For more information on hurricane preparation, Bloomfield pointed listeners to the city's preparedness page: wpb.org/hurricane. This report was produced by Cheryl Kahn for WPB TV.