Sarena Bonora, 50, was recently fired from her job working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Denver, one of thousands of government workers who have been fired by the Trump administration.
Bonora managed grant programs that focused on preventing damage from natural disasters. She worked for the agency for more than four years, and last summer she was promoted — putting her back in the trial period, without full protections. She worked on projects across several states — including Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas — to lessen damage from floods, wildfires and droughts. From her interview with NBC News:
“We work on these projects, which may not directly impact you right now, or currently, but could directly impact you at any point in the future. As these projects are not funded anymore and are not done in the future, the public will feel the effects from the increase of natural disasters, and the disasters can impact them in worse ways because of the removal of mitigation efforts. …
I just left all these balls in the air because I was terminated on Monday [Feb. 17], and then told that I was finished with my job on Tuesday, so I didn’t get a chance to really tie up loose ends, to pass my work off to other people, to explain things that I did not complete to other people. …
You have personal ties to what these people are trying to do to help their communities, and it’s not just a project on paper that you’re trying to send money to. We had visited a lot of these projects. We met with the local representatives and heard about why they really need certain projects … You do become personally involved with the work and the people who are really fighting to get the work done.”
Read more profiles of federal workers who have been fired by the Trump administration here.
