Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday criticized the inefficiency of federal disaster relief for the past 15 to 20 years, advocating reforms to prioritize immediate federal support and empower states to lead long-term recovery efforts.
Noem emphasized at a meeting of the FEMA Review Council the need to reduce bureaucratic delays to support states with resources such as search and rescue and emergency aid, The Hill reported.
“One of the things I’d like to charge your [council] with is: How long should a disaster be left open?” Noem said. “How quickly should we deploy resources, and then how long can cases continue to be filed?
“That is one of the things that makes it difficult to deploy immediately … when the termination date for a disaster goes on 15 to 20 years after the event has already occurred.”
Noem and President Donald Trump had advocated shutting FEMA down, but Trump appeared to backtrack on such talk in July after the devastating floods in Kerr County, Texas.
“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump told reporters at a briefing in the Oval Office.
“The president believes that we should be in a disaster response portfolio and footprint, but the long-term mitigation should not be something that the federal government is continuing to be involved in to the extent that it has been in the past,” Noem told the review council.
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