FEMA Chief Responds to Criticisms, Calls Texas Flood Response ‘Model’ for Future Disasters

Responding to recent criticisms, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) acting Administrator David Richardson said the federal response to the catastrophic Texas floods earlier this month was exemplary.

“I can’t see anything that we did wrong,” Richardson told a House panel of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on July 23, calling the relationship between state and federal agencies “a model for how disasters should be handled.”

Bearing down on the Texas Hill Country during the July 4 holiday weekend, the floods took at least 137 lives, including dozens of children.

The criticisms of FEMA included a report that the urban search and rescue team was delayed 72 hours because of a new rule put in place by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that she must personally approve any contract of $100,000 or more, which Richardson denied.

The administrator also rebutted a report that 84 percent of calls to FEMA were unanswered on July 7, due to Noem allowing contracts with outside call centers to expire.

In remarks to the House panel, Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) cited media reports that the agency’s urban search and rescue leader Ken Pagurek “resigned in frustration over the Texas response.”

Richardson told committee members that there was no delayed response and that a Texas-based FEMA task force was on the ground on July 4 with the Coast Guard and Border Protection, while a vast majority of phone calls made were answered with no lapse in call center contracts.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson also told The Associated Press that Pagurek chose to “resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight.”

Richardson also responded to reports of FEMA being understaffed, saying that the agency’s response “brought the maximum amount of capability to bear in Texas at the right time and the right place.”

In response to questions about his absence from the disaster areas in Texas until July 12, Richardson said he was in Washington “kicking down the doors of bureaucracy.” He also denied speculations that he was told to stand down by Noem or President Donald Trump.

The hearing came as FEMA’s future remains in question after the Trump administration indicated it would phase out the agency after hurricane season, leaving more responsibility to the states for efficient disaster response.

Noem said on July 13 that the administration looks to remake FEMA rather than completely dismantle it.

“I think [President Donald Trump] recognizes that FEMA should not exist the way that it always has been. It needs to be redeployed in a new way, and that’s what we did during this response,” Noem told NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” responding to questions about the federal response to deadly flooding in central Texas.

Meanwhile, a group of 20 states has filed a lawsuit saying the Trump administration illegally terminated FEMA’s ongoing Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) program earlier this year.

“Projects that have been in development for years, and in which communities have invested millions of dollars for planning, permitting, and environmental review, are now threatened. And in the meantime, Americans across the country face a higher risk of harm from natural disasters,” the plaintiffs argued, saying that only Congress could terminate the program.

Jack Phillips and The Associated Press contributed to this report.