Overview

• DHS restored FEMA call center contracts five days after they expired, seeking to remedy a collapse in answered calls during Central Texas’s flash flood.
• Bipartisan probes have been launched following the agency’s slow disaster response, with Sen. Ed Markey calling for Kristi Noem’s resignation.
• Noem defends her June rule requiring her personal approval for FEMA expenditures over $100,000, insisting resources arrived within hours of the flood.
• Data show FEMA answered just 16% of calls at the flood’s peak and that urban search-and-rescue teams were not deployed until more than 72 hours after the disaster began.
• Critics warn that staff vacancies and micromanagement under the new approval rule continue to undermine FEMA’s disaster readiness.