Nov. 19 (UPI) — FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was in front of lawmakers on Tuesday to answer questions over the U.S. government response to the recent catastrophic hurricanes in the South.
And House Republicans grilled Criswell over the recent allegations that a FEMA employee instructed federal relief workers to bypass “politically hostile” hurricane-impacted homes that displayed Trump campaign signs.
“FEMA is there to support all people,” Criswell said Tuesday during her testimony.
On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer, R-Kent., alleged that “this was not an isolated event,” he claimed in opening remarks, adding that it “overshadowed FEMA’s critical mission.”
But according to Criswell, it was “an isolated incident that has not gone beyond” which does not go beyond that one employee, saying she has “asked the Inspector General to do full review.”
She added “there is a full team” leading the investigation in FEMA.
Misinformation spread on social media, Criswell added, negatively affected FEMA’s ability to help victims. And the ability to rebuilt communities, she said, is “extremely critical.”
Criswell quickly fired the worker in the aftermath, saying what she did was “reprehensible” despite the ex-FEMA employee’s media allegations that it was a directive in some form from her superior in the agency.
“The current system doesn’t have enough mechanisms to ensure accountability” in order to “hold an unelected workforce accountable,” Comer stated. It was the first oversight hearing since the election, he noted.
Three congressional committees, including the House Homeland Security Committee, have been investigating the allegations that all want to have words with FEMA’s regional officials.
The FEMA administrator testified in the morning before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee, and then later in the afternoon at 2 p.m. for the House Oversight Committee hearing lead by Comer.
Last Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer, R-Kent., first announced the “Oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency” hearing.
FEMA is a collaboration between local, state and federal partners, Criswell said. “They did amazing work in the first few hours,” she stated in her testimony. It has a workforce of more than 22,000, Criswell said at Tuesday’s Oversight hearing, “many of whom were impacted by the storms themselves.”
“I know the people at FEMA are exhausted,” commented Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.
Several Republican lawmakers pointed to the time it took FEMA to get to many hard-hit communities.
Recent Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused “widespread disruption of critical services,” including transportation routes “that isolated communities,” according to Criswell, in “areas not accustomed to this type of disaster.”
In its aftermath, hundreds or thousands of hurricane victims could not call, email or otherwise reach FEMA for help, Criswell explained, which prompted the agency to send hundreds of door-to-door workers to fix the communication gap.
However, what the now-departed FEMA staff member did was “completely at odds with FEMA’s mission.” Criswell added the conduct was not appropriate but otherwise “not indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA,” adding how FEMA has since taken action to investigate.
“I have been given no evidence or no indication,” according to Criswell, that it was widespread or non-isolated incident. She said she is prepared to support requests for information to support the investigation.
House Democrats pushed back on the politically-motivated incident characterized as “an isolated incident” mixed with “propaganda.”
Following the hurricanes Trump allegedly had “spread a ton of misinformation about FEMA,” according to Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla. He said while speaking to hurricane victims in his native Florida that he heard many say they did something “based on what they heard from Donald Trump.”
“We could be here celebrating the [FEMA] workforce but instead we’re here taking about one intermittent employee,” the committee’s ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-M.D., said after Comer in his own remarks.
Raskin says the immediate employment termination showed “powerful evidence that the civil service system is working.” FEMA employees are working “under a cloud of propaganda and lies designed to erode public trust,” he added.
Raskin, a constitutional lawyer, outlined in his opening statement how in Trump’s first term the incoming president-elect had, he claimed, “deliberately directed disaster aid over” political reasons he outlined in a long series of specific accusations.
This was later reiterated by Frost, who added, “we know these storms are happening more often because of the climate crisis,” he said.