In a House hear on Tuesday, FEMA Director Deanne Criswell criticized what she believes is the spread of “misinformation” rather than taking responsibility for the sluggish and ostensibly politically motivated reaction to disaster relief after the storms Milton and Helene.
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing to give Criswell an opportunity to explain the social response her company was receiving after reports of former FEMA official Marn’i Washington’s directive to her crisis response team to prevent Trump supporters ‘ homes.
At the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management hear, Criswell stated that the social response was specific to Washington’s Florida group and no “indicative of any common social problems at FEMA,” and that we would keep people responsible if they violated our standards of conduct.
Washington has been making her way around the internet circuit, claiming that her deeds were being down through the chain of command, despite Criswell’s claim that preliminary findings from the research launched after the Washington disclosures have never found any related issues. ( Washington’s position, according to Criswell, is the “lowest level of supervision”. )
Criswell and Democrat friends focused their responses largely on preventing “misinformation,” despite the fact that many people believe the issue is isolated because of the Biden administration’s democratization of various federal agencies.
” False rumours following Hurricane Helene, particularly in North Carolina, were described by Administrator Criswell as … the worst propaganda she’s always heard”, commission Ranking Member Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said. According to the rumors,” some survivors refuse federal help because they increased their distrust of the federal government, leading to military threats against FEMA employees on the ground.”
Criswell noted that poor performers have previously tried to defraud natural disaster victims by acting like they are people of a national agency. These conditions necessitate the preservation of a “rumor power page”, which is” regular training”, she said. According to the FEMA executive, false information has circulated after biological tragedies” throughout FEMA’s story”.
Our workplace withstanded the challenges I just described, as well as the hard security environment created by false information about FEMA’s work spreading through social media. We help all individuals, all people, get all of the support that they are qualified for under the law, and propaganda was making that operate much more hard”, Criswell said.
In the midst of Milton and Helene, Americans may have been the goal of misinformation in the past, but FEMA may have been. According to reports, it was propaganda that the crisis response was slow, that it was socially biased, and that FEMA had spent$ 1 billion on laborers. All of those bits of “misinformation” turned out to be true.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N. C., who represents a part of western North Carolina where 80 out of the 230 lives taken by Helene lived, described FEMA’s delayed response in aspect, explaining that while he knows some workers on the ground were acting in good faith, the general response “left much to be desired”.
In his open remarks, Edwards claimed that it seemed to me and many other local officials in western North Carolina that it would take up to three days before FEMA would actually appear.” That’s just simply not good enough.”
” There were folks in their homes, not only without power, they could n’t flush toilets, they had no drinking water. We were shut off from the rest of the world”, he continued. ” I ca n’t help but think that if this had been an attack on American soil, would it take three days for the federal government to provide any actual assistance?” I would hope not”.
According to Edwards, there were logistical issues, including one instance where state and FEMA were unable to locate pallets of water that appeared to have been delivered, and at least one county was unable to receive FEMA aid until a week after the storm hit.
Five minutes is just not enough time, he said, adding that there were many other FEMA response breakdowns. To avoid further delays and ambiguity in the recovery process,” We must address the flaws in the response of FEMA.”
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered issues of culture and education for Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner. He is a Publius Fellow at the 2022 Claremont Institute and holds a degree from the University of Virginia. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
