Instead of taking responsibility for the slow and apparently politically motivated response to disaster relief after hurricanes Milton and Helene, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Deanne Criswell criticized what she deems to be the spread of “misinformation” in a House hearing on Tuesday.
Following reports of former FEMA official Marn’i Washington directing her disaster response team to avoid the homes of Trump supporters, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing giving Criswell an opportunity to answer for the political response from her agency.
“This type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA, and we will hold people accountable if they violate our standards of conduct,” Criswell said at the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management hearing, indicating that the political response was isolated to Washington’s Florida team, and not “indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA.”
While Criswell also said that preliminary findings in the investigation launched after the Washington revelations have not found similar issues, Washington herself has been making her way around the media circuit claiming that her actions were being passed down through the chain of command. (Washington’s position, according to Criswell, is the “lowest level of supervision.”)
While many are skeptical that the issue is isolated given the Biden administration’s politicization of other federal agencies, Criswell and Democrat allies focused their responses heavily on combatting “misinformation” as being at the root of the issue.
“False rumors following Hurricane Helene, especially in North Carolina, were described by Administrator Criswell as … the worst misinformation she’s ever heard,” committee Ranking Member Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said. “These rumors increased distrust in the federal government, resulting in armed threats against FEMA workers in the field, and cause some survivors to refuse federal assistance.”
Criswell noted that bad actors have tried to take advantage of natural disaster victims in the past, defrauding them by acting like they are members of a federal agency. These situations necessitate the maintenance of a “rumor control page,” which is “standard practice,” she said. According to the FEMA administrator, false information has circulated after natural disasters “throughout FEMA’s history.”
“Our workforce persevered through all of the challenges I’ve just described, and they also persevered through a difficult security environment generated by misinformation about FEMA’s work spread through social media. We help all survivors, all people, obtain all of the assistance that they are qualified for under the law, and misinformation was making that work much more difficult,” Criswell said.
FEMA may have been the target of misinformation at times in its history, but in the wake of Milton and Helene, Americans were the target. There were told that it was misinformation that the disaster response was slow; it was misinformation that the response was politically biased; it was misinformation that FEMA had spent $1 billion on illegals. All of those pieces of “misinformation” turned out to be true.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., who represents a portion of western North Carolina where 80 out of the 230 lives taken by Helene lived, described FEMA’s slow response in detail, explaining that while he knows many workers on the ground were acting in good faith, the overall response “left much to be desired.”
“It seemed to me and many local officials in western North Carolina that it took up to three days before there was any real visibility from FEMA, and that’s just simply not good enough,” Edwards said in his open remarks.
“There were folks in their homes, not only without power, they couldn’t flush toilets, they had no drinking water. We were shut off from the rest of the world,” he continued. “I can’t help but think, had this been an attack on American soil, would it take — should it take — three days to see any real evidence of help from our federal government? I would hope not.”
Edwards went on to describe logistical issues, including one instance in which FEMA and state officials were unable to track down pallets of water that had apparently been delivered, adding that at least one county did not see FEMA aid until a week after the storm hit.
“I could share with you many other breakdowns in the FEMA response, but five minutes is just not enough time,” he said. “We must address the flaws in FEMA’s response to prevent further delays and confusion in the recovery process.”
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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