As the impact of Hurricane Helene continues to be felt, states are turning to FEMA, the agency responsible for the federal response to hurricanes, to ask whether or not it has what it needs to handle the storm . FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell says yes.
“We absolutely have enough resources from across the federal family,” Criswell told guest host Robert Costa on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “FEMA is part of the team and we have the opportunity to bring in all of our team members from many other federal agencies to support this response.”
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Florida on Thursday evening and quickly expanded, causing extensive damage in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. At least 64 people were killed as of Sunday morning.
“This has been a true multi-state event,” Criswell said. She added that they are hearing “significant infrastructure damage to water systems, communications, roads, critical transportation routes, as well as several homes just destroyed as a result. So this is going to be a very complicated recovery in each of the five states that have had these impacts.”
The geographic extent of Hurricane Helene’s impact has been compared by hurricane specialist Dan Brown to 1972’s Hurricane Agnes, 1989’s Hurricane Hugo and 2004’s Hurricane Ivan.
Flooding from the storms was particularly high in Florida, where a storm surge was 15 feet high in the Big Bend area on Friday and winds reached 140 miles per hour. North Carolina also saw a 10-foot wave; Asheville and other cities have been largely cut off by flooding.
“This is truly a historic flood in North Carolina, especially in this western part of North Carolina. “I don’t know if anyone can be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides they’re experiencing right now, but we’ve had teams there for several days,” Criswell said.
In response, FEMA is sending search and rescue teams and bottled water, and trying to get water systems back online, not only in North Carolina, but also in the other affected states. Starlink satellites have also been deployed to facilitate the lack of communications in that part of the state,” Criswell said.
“We know that many healthcare systems have been impacted, so we also have healthcare assessment teams assessing hospitals and providing the opportunity to support the people impacted by this storm,” she continued.
The storm didn’t appear all at once — it “took a while to develop, but once it did, it developed and intensified very quickly,” Criswell said. The warm water in the Gulf allowed more storms to form and caused “larger storm surges in coastal areas.”
“When we looked at hurricane damage in the past, it was mostly wind damage, with some water damage, but now we’re seeing so much more water damage, and I think that’s a result of the warm water, that’s a result of climate change ” explains Criswell.
She continued, “As we move toward recovery, we can leverage those resources to help support that recovery part. Recovery can be complicated. These five states will undergo very complicated recovery operations, but we will continue to deploy these resources to help them, with technical support, as they try to find the best ways to rebuild.”
