More than 180 current and former employees of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have published a letter warning that debilitating cuts to the agency charged with handling the federal disaster response risk a catastrophe like the one seen after Hurricane Katrina.

The letter, sent on Monday and signed by 35 named FEMA employees and 146 unnamed signatories, was a rare airing of internal dissent at the agency.

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It said the agency’s current leaders, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, and acting FEMA director David Richardson, lacked the qualifications to manage natural disasters and were eroding its ability to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies.

“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the letter notes.

A condition recently instituted by Noem, requiring that her office personally review and approve all all contracts and grants over $100,000, “reduces FEMA’s authorities and capabilities to swiftly deliver our mission”, the letter states.

It also critiques a DHS decision to reassign some FEMA employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator as stipulated by law, and cuts to mitigation programmes, preparedness training and the agency’s workforce.

About 140 staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency were placed on administrative leave last month for signing a similar statement.

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The FEMA letter points to the recent flooding in Texas, in which at least 135 people died amid a chaotic response, as evidence of the “inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and dangers of the processes and decisions put forth by the current administration”.

President Donald Trump and his administration have denied that cuts to government agencies affected the disaster response, and accused Democrats of politicising a tragedy.

The letter calls on Congress to make FEMA an independent cabinet-level agency, free from interference from the DHS, and to protect employees from politically motivated firings “to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself”.

Daniel Llargues, the acting FEMA press secretary, said the agency is “committed to ensuring FEMA delivers for the American people”. He added that FEMA has been bogged down by red tape and inefficiencies, and that the Trump administration “has made accountability and reform a priority”.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the criticisms of Noem.

Roughly 2,000 FEMA employees, or a third of its workforce, have left the agency this year through firings, buyouts or early retirements. The Trump administration also plans to cut about $1bn in grant funding, affecting its emergency management programmes.

The protest letter was sent days before the 20th anniversary of Katrina, which caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans and devastating destruction along the Gulf Coast in August 2005, claiming the lives of more than 1,800 people.

It was also delivered two months into the US hurricane season and at a time when Trump had said he wanted to drastically cut FEMA’s size and mandate, leaving much more of the burden of responding to natural disasters to individual states.

Richardson, the current acting administrator, is a former US Marine and DHS official without any previous experience in emergency management.

Richardson left many FEMA staff baffled when he said in June that he was not aware that the US had a hurricane season, which begins in June and lasts through November.