A preview of what will happen when it's Charlestown's turn to deal with a disaster
Stephen
Prager for Common Dreams
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone
calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went
unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5,
just a day after the nightmare storm.
According to The Times, this dramatically
hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the
following days:
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, 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.
Calling is one of the primary ways that
flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would
wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who
took those phone calls.
"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.
"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," he added. "One of the most
important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk
through these processes and paperwork."
The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem
last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be
directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to
eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting "waste, fraud,
and abuse."
Under this policy, Noem allowed other
critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier
this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she
waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue
teams and aerial imaging.
Following The Times' piece, DHS
put out a statement claiming that "NO ONE was left without
assistance, and every call was responded to urgently."
"When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge,
and wait times can subsequently increase," DHS said. "Despite this
expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly
and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center
operators were laid off or fired."
This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained
by The Times, which showed FEMA officials becoming
frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One
official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: "We still do not have a
decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary."
Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations
into Noem's response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into
how the Trump administration's mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as
employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.
Following The Times' revelations, outrage has reached a
greater fever pitch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it
"unforgivable and unforgettable" and an "inexcusable lapse in
top leadership."
"Sec. Noem shows that dismantling FEMA impacts real
people in real time," he said. "It hurts countless survivors &
increases recovery costs."
In response to the news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
simply wrote that "Kristi Noem must resign now."
Others pointed out that Noem has often sought to justify
abolishing FEMA by characterizing it as slow and ineffectual. They suggested
her dithering response was deliberate.
"She broke it on purpose," said Rep. Jared
Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in an interview on MSNBC. "So that when it fails this
summer, she can say, 'Oh, see, we told you—FEMA doesn't work.'"
"It's not really incompetence because they know what they are doing," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis."
