Two ringie-dingies
FEMA wasn’t answering the phone.
Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.
The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
So in other words there is no federal emergency management. We’re on our own. Good luck!
The details on the unanswered calls on July 6, which have not been previously reported, come as FEMA faces intense scrutiny over its response to the floods in Texas that have killed more than 120 people. The agency, which President Trump has called for eliminating, has been slow to activate certain teams that coordinate response and search-and-rescue efforts.
Sorry, folks, disaster relief is a luxury we just can’t afford.
After floods, hurricanes and other disasters, survivors can call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance. People who have lost their homes, for instance, can apply for a one-time payment of $750 that can help cover their immediate needs, such as food or other supplies.
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Look, the federal government has more important things to do, like flying Trump back and forth to Mar a Lago every weekend.
“Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
“Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You’ve lost everything, you’re trying to find out what’s insured and what’s not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs,” Mr. Schlegelmilch said. “One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork.”
Most people apply for FEMA aid by calling the disaster assistance line or visiting the agency’s website, said Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA spokesman under the Biden administration who is now at the Century Foundation, a liberal research organization. The Trump administration last month ended FEMA’s longstanding practice of going door-to-door in disaster-battered areas to help survivors apply for aid.
Sure he did, because the Merican People are not babies, they don’t need door-to-door help just because a flood has wiped out their entire neighborhood. What they need is Donald Trump running his mouth when he’s not too busy playing golf at Mar a Lago.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1153554280148908&set=a.460019476169062
Sounds properly DOGEd. Save some money on a call center for FEMA so you can blow trillions on extra tax cuts for the super-rich. This is what we voted for, right? Penny wise and pound foolish.
I won’t be surprised if in the future these problems will be used as arguments to further dismantle FEMA, because it is clear FEMA isn’t doing its job as it is supposed to.
It’s even worse. Noem has spent so much money on her masked ICE agents rounding up brown people, that she was ordered to bring her spending down. And his is how she did it, because getting rid of immigrants is the higher priority.
It’s a contest to see who can get the highest body-count. Noem’s up against a number of contenders in the Cabinet. Bad Kennedy’s got infectious diseases on his side; he’s let them off the leash to run wild across the country. Hegseth is trying out insecure communications channels to hasten deaths amongst military personnel. Gutting NOAA means deadlier weather events will take a higher toll. Cutting consumer protection will bring in more bodies through unsafe products. But they’re all competing against their boss’s massive head start, Trump Term 1’s count of hundreds of thousands of needless COVID deaths. Clearly, they’ve got their work cut out for them, but it looks like they’re all going to give their best shot.
Sounds like a slow descent into Civil War Mk2. It reminds me of that observation by Karl Marx: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. (1852)
Except for the fact that the successive Trump POTUSships ,are farce piled on top of farce, but with Tragedy hovering in the wings, waiting for an entry cue.
Slow???
There were also cuts to NOAA and NWS, with some estimates up to 20% reductions in force. So along with Papito’s penny wise and pound foolish, I would add an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Same with the CDC and HHS. I can’t help but think (actually it seems obvious) that some of the current death, disease and destruction could have been better avoided and mitigated without these wealthy egomaniacs in charge of things — they are unserious, illiterate fools. Trump isn’t the king, he’s a court jester.
YNnB beat me to it, thinking the same thing.
NYT article today by a professional clown, saying that referring to Trump and his cohort as clowns is an insult to actual clowns. He has a point.
That argument was used after Katrina, when Bush had installed the totally incompetent “Brownie” (he of ‘helluva job, Brownie’) and FEMA was unable to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Funny how these disaster agencies seem to fail under Republican administrations. That would suggest rather more for getting rid of Republican administrations than getting rid of FEMA.
axxyaan, iknklast
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. I’m sure the talking points are ready to go (and have been for some time). “FEMA was inefficient but DOGE fixed that. They literally made it the best it could be and it still failed. Clearly it’s not fit for purpose and must go.”
Francis Boyle, I definitely have seen that. Bush screwed up FEMA because he wanted to kill it. Trump screwed up FEMA because he doesn’t know anything about it, and because he wants to kill it. Funny how it worked okay under Democratic presidents.
Same thing with the appointment of DeJoy to the post office and DeVos to the Dept. of Education. They didn’t completely destroy everything, so now Trump has appointed even more unqualified people.