Overview

• FEMA handled over 99 percent of incoming calls on July 5 but answered only 16 percent on July 7 after its call-center contracts lapsed.
• Noem’s June order requires her to approve every FEMA expenditure above $100,000, covering rescue-team deployments and major relief contracts.
• Urban search-and-rescue teams and mutual aid crews from other states and Mexico were not activated until the Monday after the July 5 floods due to the added sign-off step.
• Workforce reductions and vacant regional-administrator posts left FEMA with fewer than 100 responders on the ground in the first four days compared with 1,500 in a similar past disaster.
• Secretary Noem has denied that her policy slowed aid, stating federal resources reached Texas survivors “within just an hour or two” of the floods.