The devastating flood of Texas which killed nearly 120 people is the first high -level disaster that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was confronted during the current Trump administration. But although the loss of life was catastrophic, the former and current FEMA officials told NBC News that the relatively small geographic area affected means that it is not a real test of what the agency, whose full -time staff has been reduced by a third party, is able to do following a disaster.
The real test could come later this summer, they say, when there is always the threat that a hurricane could strike several states.
As the future of the agency is debated – President Donald Trump spoke of the “end of computer science”, Kristi Noem, the secretary of domestic security, Kristi Noem, who supervises him, has tightened his grip.
Noem now demands that all spending of more than $ 100,000 will be personally approved by it, according to current and former officials of FEMA. To avoid delays in the field, FEMA officials on Monday created a working group to accelerate the process of obtaining Noem approval, according to two people familiar with this unit.
While Noem has exercised more direct control on the agency, there is a void created by the largely voluntary exodus of the leaders of FEMA. In May, the agency announced in an internal email the departures of 16 senior officials who took with them combined expertise in the event of a disaster of over 200 years.
“The DHS and its components have adopted an approach to all hands on the Desk to respond to recovery efforts in Kerrville,” said DHS spokesperson in a statement to NBC News.
“Under secretary Noem and interim administrator [David] Richardson, Fema goes from an swollen dead weight and centered on DC to a lean and deployable disaster force which allows the actors of the State to relieve their citizens. The old processes are replaced because they failed the Americans in real emergencies for decades. … Secretary Noem is responsible for the American taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades to the detriment of American citizens. »»
On Wednesday afternoon, officials met for the second meeting of the FEMA Review Council, which the president set up to determine the future role of the agency. Trump told journalists in early June: “We want to wean FEMA, and we want to bring it back to the state level.”
From now on, FEMA has the same mandate and manages more than 700 open disasters, according to Chris Currie, which follows and checks the government for the government of the government.
“They don’t do anything different. They do it with fewer people,” he said in an interview.
While the push to bring states to do more to supporters, even to FEMA, certain republican members of the congress took care to defend the agency in the light of the disastrous floods.
“The role of FEMA is extremely important,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said this week at Capitol Hill. “I think everyone also accepts reforms that make FEMA more agile, capable of responding more quickly to a disaster, these reforms are beneficial, but whatever the structure precise, the role is critical.”
Paperwork
A key theme of the first meeting of the FEMA examination board was how the federal government could reduce administrative formalities. But the current and former officials of FEMA claim that Noem’s request to personally sign the expenses creates a layer of bureaucracy that could delay assistance on the ground in Texas and during future hurricanes.
A current FEMA official said that the new requirement is contrary to the idea of reducing administrative and costs formalities. “They add a bureaucracy … and they add costs,” said the official.
A former senior FEMA official said that the agency often had to buy supplies and services in disaster areas and regularly sign contracts that exceed $ 100,000 to do this.
“FEMA does not exempt without spending this amount of money,” the former official, who asked for anonymity, told NBC News because they work in a related industry.
Beyond the rule concerning Noem approving certain expenses, current and former officials said that the staff were confused as to FEMA on a daily basis: Noem or Richardson, who has been an active administrator since early May. One of the former officials said that the agency’s culture has gone proactive to be more careful because people are afraid of losing their jobs.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News that any question about who is in charge was “silly”, saying: “Kristi Noem is the interior security secretary, who oversees the federal emergency management – everyone knows.”
More changes are underway. Last week, the agency officially put an end to its practice to send staff to knock at the doors of disaster areas to connect victims to the services. The change occurred after FEMA’s requests were examined last fall when an agency employee told a team of survivors to avoid houses with Trump panels. The actual administrator at the time described the actions of the FEMA staff as “reprehensible”. The staff member, who has been dismissed, has since declared to Newsnation that she followed the orders of a supervisor and that this decision was intended to help employees avoid “hostile meetings”.
While many people access FEMA services by other means, including its website and hotline, two former senior officials said that the stroke was always an essential way that disaster victims connect to the services. It is not known if the agency sends or send staff to strike at the doors of Texas.
This week, a Democratic senator also complained of not yet seeing the plan of Hurricane 2025 that Noem said during a May hearing that she would share.
Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, the best democrat of the disaster management subcommittee, will send a letter on Wednesday to Noem on Wednesday asking the plan again.
“The reports of the incomplete season of FEMA in 2025 provide at the forefront of the start of the hurricane season and the slowness of the DHS by providing the plan to this committee are just as disturbing,” wrote Kim in the letter.
Fema or states?
The key question in the future for FEMA remains what role, if necessary, he will play in the resumption after claim and what part of his previous mission will be delegated to the States to manage by themselves.
Experts who have been maintained with NBC News say that it is clear that the Federal Agency should always have a role in managing disaster on several large -scale states. What is less clear is whether states should be encouraged to do more to manage smaller disasters instead of counting on the federal government to bail them out.
“We must encourage states to spend more before requiring federal assistance,” said Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Natalie Simpson, professor at the University of Buffalo who is an expert in emergency services and the response to disasters, said that major states can assume more responsibilities in the event of a disaster.
“I think that major states like California, New York and Florida have enough economies of scale so that they can create a mini-fema, but I think that other states will not be as effective,” she said in an interview.
The current and former officials of FEMA underlined the comments of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, made at the first meeting of the FEMA examination council, in which he qualified the FEMA as “clumsy and” slow “and that” the states have proven that we can move more agile, more quickly and more efficiently “. They noted that the governor had asked for a declaration of disaster of FEMA in the days following the floods.
On Sunday, the president dodged a question of knowing if he would always eliminate the agency, telling journalists: “Well, FEMA is something we can talk about later. But at the moment, they are busy working, so we will leave that.”
On Monday, the White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the agency’s broader discussions were continuing. “The president wants to ensure that American citizens always have what they need if this assistance comes from states or from the federal government, it is a political discussion that will continue,” said Leavitt.
