Several officials within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are now accusing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem of hampering the agency's ability to save lives in the wake of deadly floods in Kerr County, Texas.
CNN reported Thursday that four unnamed sources within FEMA say that a new policy Noem instituted after being confirmed to lead DHS effectively made her a bottleneck that prevented federal first responders from doing their jobs in the most critical hours after the floods. Those officials say that Noem insists on personally signing off on any expenditure of funds in excess of $100,000, which ultimately "slowed down the FEMA response" to conduct search-and-rescue operations in Kerr County.
According to CNN correspondent Brian Todd, FEMA officials ran into "bureaucratic obstacles" almost immediately after the floods began last weekend. While FEMA was previously able to scramble urban search-and-rescue teams from across the country in anticipation of requests from state governments following a disaster, Noem's cost-cutting policy prevented them from doing the same in Kerr County.
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"These are teams that are specifically trained for situations, including catastrophic floods," Todd said. "But this time, as those areas in Texas were getting submerged, FEMA officials realized they could not pre-position those teams."
Todd further reported that CNN's sources said Noem didn't sign off on the deployment of those search-and-rescue teams until "more than 72 hours after the flooding began." And he added that while there were other federal first responders like the U.S. Coast Guard on site responding to the disaster, the potential impact that FEMA's teams would have had in the initial aftermath remains unknown.
"There was also a delay in approving a request from Texas for aerial imagery and a delay in approving more people to staff a phone bank at a disaster call center, according to CNN sources, which meant longer wait times," Todd said.
Noem pushed back on the reports, saying that while FEMA wasn't immediately deployed, U.S. Border Patrol personnel were on site, helping Texas' first responders look for survivors. And a DHS spokesperson said that as need for FEMA resources arose over time, Noem signed off on those particular expenditures.
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