Tag: fema

Man accused of threatening FEMA workers in western North Carolina speaks out

Recovery efforts in western North Carolina are being disrupted by safety concerns following threats against federal responders, including FEMA workers. While local officials confirm that no threats originated in some counties, FEMA has made operational changes across the region out of caution.

FEMA teams continue to help residents register for disaster assistance, but some personnel have been moved to secure locations rather than conducting door-to-door outreach. This change follows the recent arrest of William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, who was charged with making threats against FEMA employees in the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock areas. Deputies found Parsons armed with a handgun and a rifle.

The threats came after Parsons posted a message on Facebook calling for people to “overtake” the FEMA site in Lake Lure based on what he says were social media reports that FEMA was withholding supplies from hurricane survivors.

“We the people are sick and tired of the BS. We the people are seeking volunteers to join us and overtake the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the products up the mountains this Saturday. We the people are done playing games. It’s time to show who we are and what we believe. They want to screw our citizens. Now, we return the favor,” Parsons said.

When asked about his post, Parsons explained that he believed FEMA was failing to help residents in need.

“I viewed it as if our people are sitting here on American soil, and they’re refusing to aid our people,” he said. “So we were going to go up there and forcefully remove that fence.”

Upon arriving at Lake Lure, however, Parsons said he realized the situation was different than he had imagined.

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Biden-Harris regime has “better things to do” than help victims of Helene, the deadliest hurricane since Katrina

As Hurricane Milton has just been downgraded into a post-tropical cyclone and left at least 10 people killed and three million people in the dark as of press time, desperate victims of Hurricane Helene are still waiting for the Biden-Harris administration’s financially depleted Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to realize that they need its help.

Americans from Florida to North Carolina continue to deal with the devastating consequences of Helene, which is considered the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. since Katrina. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which received non-stop coverage on cable news for weeks, with primetime anchors like Anderson Cooper visiting on location covering stories of human tragedy and government incompetence, Helene’s aftermath has received far less coverage.

According to analysts, news about the horrifying damage of Helene has just proliferated on social media. What makes it worse is that there was a lack of government assistance and private efforts from private individuals were more evident.

An account on X even exposed FEMA’s instruction to Mission Hospital, a private medical institution, to recover the bodies who were killed because of Hurricane Helene, and even expand the number of fatalities. FEMA people said that this is because they could no longer assist in this operation as their officials are too busy helping illegal migrants at the border. (Related: Too busy helping illegals: FEMA passes responsibility to a private hospital for body recovery post-Helene.)

“Picked up a flight of pediatric medical supplies that were brought in and are going to North Asheville,” the woman said. “We were sitting in the private portion of the airport and we got to overhear an awful lot. There was a lot of chatter among the army pilots, the navy pilots, hospital representatives.”

According to the woman, a FEMA executive told people from the hospital that “it is going to be the morgue center for body recovery of all the fatalities of Helene.”

“So, they told Mission Hospital they are not sending refrigerated trucks,” she said. “Whatever fatality numbers you are hearing, add a couple of zeros.”

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What Happens When FEMA Buys Your House?

It’s been a rough hurricane season. Between them, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have devastated many communities throughout the southeast. Rebuilding what was lost will take years. 

But as devastating as these storms have been, they are sadly not unique. Property damage from storms and flooding is on the rise. Storms resulting in over a billion dollars in damages have become more frequent in recent years. 

The prospect of repeatedly having to rebuild properties in storm-prone areas has led some governments to pursue an unusual solution to the problem: buy the properties themselves. Some local governments, in partnership with federal agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have developed programs that use disaster relief funds to purchase homes in flood- or storm-prone areas. This isn’t the only way, or even the best way, to reduce the destruction from increasingly severe natural catastrophes. But the idea is that keeping such vulnerable properties vacant will save money in the long run because they won’t need to be continually rebuilt after storms.

Such buyouts are hardly ideal and can lead to some perverse situations. In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that HUD was selling homes in flood-prone areas to unsuspecting buyers even as it was buying out homes in the same neighborhoods under a flood mitigation program. While not ideal, in a world where government disaster relief is a given, a voluntary buyout program could make fiscal sense in some circumstances. Voluntary buyout programs have been implemented in over a thousand counties and have been used to relocate almost 50,000 households throughout the country. 

The situation is very different when the buyout ceases to be voluntary. A little-known provision in the Hazard Mitigation and Relocation Assistance Act of 1993 authorizes local governments to implement a mandatory buyout program for flood-prone areas. So far, just three localities—Cedar Rapids in Iowa, Minot in North Dakota, and Harris County in Texas—have adopted a mandatory buyout program. The Harris County program is the largest of the three and is expected to forcibly purchase 585 households and 390 businesses by 2026 and turn the land into green space.  

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Harris Attempts To Blame Trump For FEMA Hurricane Relief Failures 

Kamala Harris reverted to her default position when talking to the cackling hags on The View about FEMA’s disastrous hurricane relief efforts.

She attempted to blame Donald Trump.

“He puts himself before the needs of others. I fear that he really lacks empathy,” Harris said of Trump, also describing his criticism of her as “callousness.”

Trump hasn’t been in office since 2020, yet somehow a woeful federal government response to a hurricane that occurred in 2024 is his fault because he said some mean words.

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FEMA Doesn’t Care About Helping Americans After A Disaster, It Cares About ‘Disaster Equity’

What’s the point of a federal disaster agency if the chief priorities of said agency are not to save Americans from disaster?

In September last year, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell joined the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to sign the “Agreement to Advance Equity in Disaster Resilience.”

According to an NAACP press release, the group’s “Emergency Management Task Force … will meet regularly with FEMA leadership to advance progress on equity within disaster preparedness and resilience.”

“The signing comes on the heels of an Intergenerational Climate Resilience Roundtable recently hosted by NAACP and FEMA during NAACP’s Climate Week NYC activations,” the release read. “The roundtable focused on disaster preparedness, climate resilience and instilling equity in emergency management.”

FEMA’s website characterized the roundtable as a forum where “presenters shared their wealth of knowledge and information gleaned from their areas of expertise and personal experience regarding the intergenerational impacts of climate change and how disaster resilience can be improved.”

“At a time when we are experiencing some of the worst natural disasters, we need effective collaboration, communication and transparency of resources to help Black communities,” said the NAACP’s director for Environmental and Climate Justice.

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How FEMA got into the illegal immigrant business, and who is covering it up

In the midst of the last major budget crisis in Washington, Democrats diverted money and the legal authority to put the nation’s disaster relief agency into the business of caring for the millions of illegal immigrants who crossed the border on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch. And now both parties seem to be trying to obfuscate the truth.

White House spokeswoman Karine-Jean Pierre took the lead in trying to suggest it was a “conspiracy theory” to suggest the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was using its resources to aid illegal aliens. Republicans countered with surprise and shock that FEMA had routed $640.9 million in grants to nonprofits aiding immigrants, many of whom have crossed into the U.S. illegally. 

But the truth is both parties signed off on a budget deal earlier this year that increased funding for the new mission authorized in 2023 for FEMA, which is now reeling from a double-barreled hurricane crisis that has led to frustration over alleged missteps by the agency as millions of stranded and needy Americans in the Southeast await help. 

“FEMA, as well as this whole Biden administration has is here to protect Americans, our citizens, and hurricane Helene has put a tremendous burden on us, but, get this, follow these funds that have been directed at anything but Americans: $110 million in FEMA funds went to the emergency food and shelter program to assist migrants,” Congressman Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told the “Just the News, No Noise“ TV show Monday. 

Norman partly blamed the broken budget process in Congress for giving funds to FEMA  for immigrants rather than American citizens suffering from a disaster. 

“If we don’t get back to regular order, John, then there’s no hope for ever having a fiscal sanity plan in place,” he said. “They, the Democrats, play us like a drum waiting to the end of the year.”

FEMA has disputed the Republican characterizations in recent days that disaster relief money was diverted to fund illegal immigrants, instead pointing out that Congress appropriated funding for the immigrant programs separately during the budget process. 

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Watchdog found $7B in untapped FEMA funds — even though DHS Secretary Mayorkas said none available for future disasters

A Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report from August reveals more than $7 billion remain in emergency funding that could be used for natural disasters — even though DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week none was available after Hurricane Helene.

Mayorkas, 64, told reporters following the devastation of Helene in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “does not have the funds” to endure more hurricanes this fall.

“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” the DHS chief said Oct. 2, days before Hurricane Milton began picking up speed in the Gulf of Mexico. “We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent.”

But DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari found in his Aug. 14 report that as of October 2022, FEMA had $8.3 billion in unliquidated funds meant to relieve declared disasters from 2012 or earlier.

More than $7 billion of that “could potentially be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund,” the report notes, referring to FEMA’s dedicated fund for natural calamities.

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‘Redneck Air Force’ Reportedly Steps Up After FEMA’s Lackluster Response to Helene

Turns out that even in the face of unmitigated disaster and tragedy, good men can still step up — and with some humor in their hearts, as well.

As the American southeast continues to grapple with the debilitating aftermath of Hurricane Helene, many eyes have turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to see how the government organization would respond to this catastrophe.

Helene’s damage was a multi-state affair, starting in Florida and moving up the east coast through Georgia and Tennessee, ending up in North Carolina.

And it’s in the Tar Heel State that this story of good men with a sense of humor originates.

Asheville, North Carolina, continues to grapple with the cataclysmic fallout from Helene, with much of the city still looking like a ravaged war zone, weeks after the devastating storm hit.

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Grieving North Carolina families forced to bury dead in backyards as they blast FEMA for hurricane ‘cover up’

Grieving families in North Carolina have been forced to bury their dead in their backyards – and are accusing authorities of downplaying the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

The official death toll rose to 227 over the weekend – half of whom were from North Carolina – but state and federal officials told The Spectator that this number is woefully inaccurate. 

Many bodies haven’t even been recovered amid debris and flooding. There are also piles of deceased people who have yet to be identified. They are being transported all over the state in hopes of finding open morgue space.

‘According to folks on the ground – fire, medical, law enforcement officials – they’re way underreporting the numbers. All the morgues are full and they’ve hauled a ton [of bodies] to Greensboro,’ the state official said. ‘People are starting to bury them in their yards because they have no place to put them.’

One individual who was in Asheville when Helene hit told The Spectator: ‘It’s so much worse than they’re saying…I think there’s a massive cover-up.’

The destruction from Helene, and the immense multi-state death toll, comes just days before Category 5 Hurricane Milton is set to barrel into Florida’s coastline.  

Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida at night on September 26 before laying waste to Georgia and the Carolinas with record storm surges and tornados.

North Carolina alone had six confirmed tornados on the morning of September 27, two days before 500 members of state’s national guard were deployed to help with rescue efforts.

Locals say they are ‘pissed’ at General Major Todd Hunt, director of the North Carolina National Guard, for waiting a whole 48 hours to get boots on the ground.

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FEMA abandons devastated NC town residents because it can’t drive around ‘Road Closed’ sign: ‘Nobody’s been bringing in supplies except civilians’

Residents of a tiny North Carolina town that was almost totally destroyed by Hurricane Helene have been fending for themselves after FEMA told them that a “Road Closed” sign is an insurmountable obstacle for the agency to navigate.

“FEMA called me and told me they wanted to inspect my house, then called me back to say they couldn’t drive around the ‘Road Closed’ sign. They weren’t allowed,” local Chelsea Atkins, 38, told The Post.

“You can drive it by car for sure, it’s not that bad, you just have to drive around the ‘Road Closed’ sign. I explained that to them. They said they couldn’t,” she said, recounting her maddening exchange with the embattled federal agency.

Left to fend for themselves, Bat Cave residents banded together — opening the roads and starting the arduous work of cleanup and recovery. Residents told The Post that they don’t need FEMA now — and at this point, they don’t even want the disaster relief agency to come.

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