HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina – Mike Toomey called a federal hotline last week to get disaster relief after Hurricane Helene flooded his home in western North Carolina.
Instead he got a recording.
“They said I was ranked 675th,” Toomey, a painter in a splattered shirt, recalled as he waited outside a federal recovery center in Hendersonville.
Hundreds of thousands of people trying to recover from disasters across the country have been unable to reach federal call centers or have been on hold for inordinately long periods of time in the weeks since Helene swept into southern Appalachia last month.
Overwhelmed by Helene and Hurricane Milton, centers failed to answer nearly half of incoming calls last week. Calls answered took an average of more than an hour for federal workers to answer.
The disaster agency’s ability to provide financial assistance has become a burning issue in the presidential election. Former President Donald Trump recently campaigned in two badly damaged swing states — Georgia and North Carolina — and made misleading statements about the Biden administration’s response. But as federal calls data shows, the hurricane response has encountered real problems amid a steady toll of disasters.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which released the call data Tuesday, also announced it is struggling with staffing levels a month after hurricanes heavily damaged states from Florida to Tennessee.
FEMA data shows the agency has virtually no capacity to deal with another major disaster — two weeks after the Small Business Administration ran out of money to provide low-interest disaster loans to small businesses and households.
The agency said Wednesday it has provided more than $1.2 billion in emergency aid to survivors in the six damaged states. It came as Deputy Administrator Erik Hooks met with state and local officials in North Carolina.
After a speaker at a Trump rally on Sunday made racist and hateful comments, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign aired ads criticizing Trump for his response to Hurricane Maria after it devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.
FEMA has struggled to deal with catastrophic disasters like Helene and Milton since at least 2005, when Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people in the Louisiana area.
When Hurricane Sandy devastated New York and New Jersey in 2012, FEMA’s call centers “did not have the staff or technology necessary to keep up with survivors’ requests for information,” according to the company’s own analysis. the desk.
In 2017, FEMA’s workforce was “overwhelmed” when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico in quick succession, the Government Accountability Office found. Agency call centers, plagued by “low morale and inadequate training,” failed to answer 2.3 million calls over an eight-week period.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell complained about the agency’s workload when she spoke to reporters shortly after Helene made landfall in Florida last month.
“I have over a hundred open disasters,” Criswell said. “We are seeing more disasters that are beyond the state’s capacity” to respond.
Former FEMA Administrator Brock Long said the agency has been swamped with more disasters and new responsibilities, such as taking a leadership role in the government’s pandemic response.
“We’ve been redlining since Harvey and never recovered,” said Long, who led FEMA from 2017 to 2019 and lives in Hickory, North Carolina, where his home lost power for four days.
“You see hundreds, if not thousands, of FEMA employees deployed in the field to handle essentially all aspects of disaster recovery. That needs to change,” added Long, executive chairman of Hagerty Consulting, which specializes in disasters.
US disaster response ‘in trouble’
FEMA saw a surge in calls as people began seeking help after Helene and Milton, agency spokesman Daniel Llargués said.
“We will not rush disaster survivors to pick up the phone. We stay on the phone with them for as long as they need to stay on the phone to get all their answers,” Llargués said.
Employees connect callers to appropriate FEMA programs, such as payments for hotels and minor home repairs and providing emergency cash.
“We want to make sure you understand the programs so you can see which program you are best suited for,” says Llargués.
FEMA’s published telephone data shows that 900,000 calls were made to agency call centers during the week of October 14 to 20. Forty-seven percent of calls were not answered.
For those who were answered, callers waited an average of an hour and five minutes before being able to speak to someone.
The situation improved the following week, which began on October 21, when FEMA received 500,000 calls and 68.5 percent responded. FEMA took an average of 25 minutes to respond to calls.
The call data covers 19 disasters nationwide, including Helene-affected counties in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, and Hurricane Milton in Florida.
FEMA’s Daily Operations Briefing also showed that it responded to 110 major disasters on Tuesday and had only 530 employees available for reassignment. (On Wednesday, the number was 504.) All 55 of FEMA’s federal coordinating officers, who directly oversee disasters, were either “assigned” or “unavailable.”
On FEMA’s busiest day after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria – September 23, 2017 – the agency had 1,752 employees available.
“They have very little capacity left to handle another multibillion-dollar event,” said Long, the former FEMA administrator.
Even before Helene and Milton removed FEMA from workers, lawmakers complained about the agency’s response times. Vermont’s all-Democratic congressional delegation told FEMA in a Sept. 13 letter that people dealing with recent flooding “continue to face delays, confusing and conflicting guidance, and inefficiencies in getting clear answers and timely responses from FEMA .”
In recent days, the Biden administration has increased its presence in the six hurricane-damaged states, particularly North Carolina. FEMA now has 21 disaster recovery centers across 39 North Carolina counties serving 1.7 million households.
Florida has the same number of centers. But they are spread across 52 counties with 6.1 million residents, according to an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News.
When Long was FEMA administrator, he questioned whether the agency should raise the financial threshold for states to receive federal disaster assistance in an effort to reduce the number of disasters handled by FEMA. Now members of Congress are trying to expand FEMA’s responsibility.
“There are 10 to 12 bills to tie new programs to the rusty old bike,” Long said. “The business model of emergency management in this country is in trouble. It’s overloaded.”
At a town meeting last week in a hotel conference room in Lake Lure, one of the hardest-hit cities in North Carolina, a FEMA official told an overflow crowd of survivors that the organization would continue to help.
“We will stay here with all of you until the state kicks us out,” the official said.
