This is the predictable result of Donald Trump and his flunkeys in Congress putting unqualified lickspittles in charge of life-and-death departments. We already knew that it took the shockingly unqualified DHS Secretary Kristi Noem three days to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams to the central Texas flood area. Now we have learned that she let call center contracts expire for five days while thousands of flood victims were calling for emergency assistance.
The New York Times has the scoop:
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.
That’s right, the floods happened in the early morning hours of Friday, July 4th. Yet Noem allowed hundreds of call center contractors to be let go the next day when she knew or should have known they were desperately needed. She didn’t get around to renewing the contracts until Thursday, July 10. As The Times pointed out, after floods and other disasters, survivors call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance, including a $750 payment for immediate needs.
In case you’re wondering where the head of FEMA has been in all of this – well, so are we. The “acting administrator” is David Richardson. He’s the unqualified lackey who replaced a Trump appointee who was fired one day after daring to testify to Congress that he did not support dismantling FEMA. “Mr. Richardson, who has no background in emergency management, has not made any public appearances since his appointment on May 8, breaking with a long tradition of FEMA leaders meeting with local officials in the wake of disasters,” The Times noted.
Whether it’s because Noem and Richardson are jaw-droppingly inept or because they are all in on the Trump plan to kill Americans, or both, doesn’t much matter. A natural or other disaster could happen to any of us at any time. Any president with a shred of decency would have fired the two already rather than patting himself on the back for an obviously botched job.
