The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is short on resources after spending hundreds of millions on migrant services and “equity” programs, failed to answer roughly half of the phone calls made by survivors of Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
Between Oct. 14 and Oct. 20, days after Milton hit Florida on Oct. 9, FEMA received 900,000 calls from survivors, but failed to answer 47% of them, Politico reported. The large number of missed calls was partially attributable to staff and resource shortages at the agency. FEMA, however, spent nearly $1 billion on providing services to illegal migrants and allocated $12 million for a grant program designed to increase equity in disaster responses by making greater investments in communities with high concentrations of racial or sexual minorities.
The 53% of survivors who did have their calls answered waited an average of one hour and five minutes to speak with someone from FEMA, according to Politico. During this period FEMA had just around 500 workers available for new assignments, alongside 55 coordinating officers, to handle the massive volume of calls.
FEMA had 1,752 workers on hand during the busiest day after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, agency records show.
FEMA’s staffing issues in the aftermath of Milton followed a warning from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Oct. 2 that the agency did not have enough funding to make it through hurricane season, which typically runs until Nov. 30.
In the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, FEMA spent about $1 billion on providing shelter, food, transportation, acute medical care and personal hygiene supplies, among other goods and services, to illegal immigrants. Congress and the Biden-Harris administration apportioned funding to FEMA specifically for those purposes, not disaster relief, according to federal documents.
“Let’s go and point out the obvious which is that FEMA had utilized a large majority of the personnel who should be here taking care of this to be replaced or repurposed for immigration resettlement when we need to be focusing on Americans whether it be in Maui, Palestine, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, or Tennessee,” Republican Florida Rep. Cory Mills told the Washington Examiner in early October.
Over 250 people died in Hurricanes Milton and Helene which, by some estimates, caused over $150 billion in damages, according to CBS News.
“They have very little capacity left to handle another multibillion-dollar event,” a former FEMA administrator told Politico. “The business model of emergency management in this country is in trouble. It’s overloaded.”
Maggie Jarry, an emergency management specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services, said at an internal meeting with FEMA representatives that emergency management is moving away from providing “the greatest good to the greatest amount of people” and working towards “disaster equity.”
FEMA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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