Homeland’s Security Secretary Christie Nome denied that there was a delay in suggesting the deployment of resources in Texas, as its new rule required all FEMA contracts or her personal signal on more than $ 100,000 grants.
In an interview on NBC News’s “Meat the Press” on Sunday, NoM admitted that it implemented the new rule, but said that resources were immediately deployed after the flood.
“Those claims are absolutely false. Within just one or two hours after the flood, we had the resources of the Homeland Security Department, to help those individuals in Texas.
“So those claims are false,” he continued. “They are from people who will not put their names behind those claims. And those call centers were completely staff and the fastest, I believe, in years, perhaps in decades, that FEMA has been deployed to help individuals in such a situation.”
NOEM explained that his new policy is “a accountability” mechanism on contracts, but he insisted that “there was no break in the contracts” and resources were immediately deployed.
He said, “As soon as he was in front of me to those contracts, and FEMA knew that he was completely to deploy the instantaneous that the local authorities had asked for his request,” he said.
NOEM pushed back to Velkar’s suggestion that its new rule is the amount of “additional red tape”.
“This is not an additional red tape. It is making sure that everything is happening at my level and replied immediately. It was not slow at all.
“So false reporting is something that is inappropriate and it is something I think we need to clarify: that this response was the best response ever we have seen from FEMA, the best response that we have seen many, many years from the federal government and surely better than what we had seen under Joe Biden.”
