The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency is asking state officials to beef up its operations after another year of deadly weather.
TEMA wants more funding to hire new staff and expand its disaster mitigation and readiness plan. This includes bringing on a meteorologist to help with storm warning coordination across the state.
“We have a mitigation staff of four right now, and it makes it difficult to help communities look ahead,” Patrick Sheehan told Gov. Bill Lee during a recent budget hearing.
Sheehan was appointed as the state’s emergency management chief in 2016. He says the pace of disasters in Tennessee have exceeded his expectations. The severe weather has led to countless floods, tornadoes and power outages.
More: The Tennessee Tornadoes Of 2020, One Year Later
The state, Sheehan says, is still recovering from nine federally declared disasters since 2019 — including the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent flood in Waverly.
Still, not all disasters get a federal declaration. Tennessee has averaged nearly 135 floods each year in the past two decades, leaving TEMA and its disaster teams with little room to breathe.
“For whatever reason, we’re having a lot of disasters,” Sheehan said. “We’re having record rainfall, record heat, record cold, record droughts.”
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