FEMA chief grilled about government’s response to hurricanes Helene and Milton

WASHINGTON — The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Deanne Criswell, faced questions from House lawmakers for nearly five hours on Tuesday about the federal government’s response to hurricanes Helene and Milton, which caused catastrophic damage in the Southeast.

Criswell testified before the House Oversight Committee after she appeared before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee earlier in the day.

House Republicans grilled her about previous revelations that an agency worker said higher-ups told her to skip houses with signs supporting Donald Trump in Florida. Criswell fired the worker and said she found her actions “reprehensible.” The worker, Marn’i Washington, has gone on Fox News and other news outlets to allege there was a directive from her superiors not to go to homes with Trump signs as a way to avoid conflict.

Criswell told the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee that FEMA later sent a team to provide assistance to residents of the 20 homes that were identified as having been skipped.

Three House committees are investigating the reports, including the Homeland Security Committee, which wants to speak to leaders in the FEMA regional office.

“While today’s hearing will focus on FEMA, the issue at hand is part of a larger problem: the urgent need to hold the unelected, unaccountable federal workforce accountable to the American people and to the duly elected president of the United States,” said Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

Comer said people in Highlands County, Florida, needed help “but at least one FEMA official used her power to make help harder to get.”

“And FEMA leadership didn’t take action against this supervisor until the press exposed this discrimination,” he said. “More importantly, FEMA officials did not immediately end the discrimination.”

Criswell said in a statement this month that the employee’s directive about avoiding Trump-supporting homes was a “clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

Criswell said in an exchange Tuesday with Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., that FEMA is working with the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to determine whether the incident is indicative of a broader pattern, although she added, “The evidence that I have seen so far shows that this was an isolated incident.”

“It has not gone beyond what this one employee did,” Criswell said.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, responded to Criswell’s remarks by showing a screenshot from what appeared to be a text message to a crew team for instructions.

Along with advice for FEMA workers not to go anywhere alone, take a towel and drink water, one of the bullet points says “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Criswell reiterated that the incident is under investigation.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody sued Criswell and Washington over the incident last week.

Congressional Democrats focused some of their questioning Tuesday on the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks and conspiracy theories about FEMA and its response to the natural disasters. As a candidate, Trump spread false claims about FEMA’s disaster funds, claiming they were being used on undocumented immigrants instead of aiding people in the hurricane recovery.

In his opening remarks, Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., condemned the FEMA employee’s directive as a “bad mistake, legally and constitutionally,” but said the agency’s workers “have been forced to work under a cloud of propaganda and lies concocted to erode public trust in FEMA.”

Touching on misinformation and disinformation, Criswell agreed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that “if someone thinks that a FEMA official is coming to their house to take their house away, that’s a situation that could be escalatory or potentially become violent over something that’s not true.”

Criswell pointed to Chimney Rock, North Carolina, where, she said, “there were accusations that there were physical threats to our FEMA staff when we temporarily moved all of our staff into fixed locations.”

States are still reeling from the destruction the hurricanes caused this fall, and the Biden administration on Monday submitted a new funding request to Congress of nearly $100 billion for the government’s ongoing response.

More than 220 people died from Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina in late September. At least 17 people died during Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida hard in early October.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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