Senator Bill Hagerty on Friday said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been “far too slow” in providing relief to those in East Tennessee who were in the path of Hurricane Helene last month.
Hagerty told News Channel 11 the federal agency “has been far too slow to step up to the plate,” and its response plagued with “serious” issues with management and staffing problems.
“Their priority is in the wrong place. They’re not even set up at the right location,” Hagerty told the outlet. “They should be here at the place where people are going to get emergency supplies, not at some remote location.”
The senator contrasted FEMA’s response to the private sector response at a donation center located at Bristol Motor Speedway, which he said is more effective than the federal government’s supplies distribution center.
“I think you’ve got people from the private sector [who] actually know what they’re doing, and I’d like to see more of that expertise reside within the federal government,” Hagerty told News Channel 11. “Here you have FEMA coming and setting up at some remote location. People can’t even find them or get to them. Again, we need a little bit more business-like expertise. You need more business people, I think, frankly, involved in government.”
He told the outlet FEMA should adopt lessons learned from the private sector to better serve East Tennessee, adding at another point, “it shouldn’t require a U.S. senator to call the White House to make this happen.”
After expressing his desire to see a more businesslike approach to the FEMA disaster response, and noting Tennessee received less federal support than other states, Hagerty suggested the Biden-Harris administration’s government has a “diversion” across all levels.
“FEMA now is, I think, exposing all of this, the Biden administration has got the wrong priorities,” Hagerty told News Channel 11. “We need to be focused on the primary mission, in this case, disaster relief.”
The senator’s remarks come after a number of startling facts about the agency’s response were revealed in the weeks after the hurricane, including chronic staffing issues, the depletion of half of its disaster budget, the agency’s focus on “equity” and “underserved communities” in disaster response, and the agency’s relatively recent mandate to provide for the welfare of illegal immigrants.
Most of Tennessee’s delegation to the U.S. Congress, including Hagerty, voted against legislation in April that provided additional funding for FEMA to serve illegal immigrants.
The agency’s behavior during its hurricane relief efforts has also come under fire after it was repeatedly claimed FEMA was confiscating supplies or blocking relief efforts in parts of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene, where a Space X engineer claimed they were prevented from distributing Starlink devices to restore communications.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bill Hagerty” by Bill Hagerty.
