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“The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Saturday as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states.” AP News
“A political row has erupted after Donald Trump claimed Americans hit hard by Hurricane Helene were losing out on emergency relief money because it had been spent on migrants… On Wednesday US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which he oversees, was short on cash for the rest of hurricane season…
“Trump and his allies expressed outrage that the agency had spent over [$640 million] on housing migrants. But officials pointed out that this funding, authorised by Congress, was part of an entirely different programme run by FEMA unconnected to disaster relief.” BBC
The left criticizes those making false and misleading claims about the hurricane response.
“Because it plowed through two swing states just over a month before Election Day, politicians were bound to pay extra attention to this disaster. Both presidential candidates rerouted their campaign trails to visit Georgia and North Carolina. This is par for the course in a democracy. What is neither normal nor acceptable is for former president Donald Trump to exploit the situation with inflammatory falsehoods…
“Misinformation about FEMA’s actions has become so widespread that the agency created a webpage dedicated to ‘rumor response.’ The agency should not have to spend scarce resources dispelling misinformation spread in part by someone running for our highest office.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“‘The last thing that the victims of Helene need right now is political posturing, finger-pointing, or conspiracy theories that only hurt the response effort,’ Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in a letter to constituents Sunday. Appearing on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ Tillis was asked specifically about Trump’s false claim… Tillis talked around the specific claim but contradicted Trump by saying that ‘we have the resources that we need.’…
“Other Republicans pointed to a specific claim about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supposedly confiscating supplies and property… ‘There’s a lot of misinformation,’ Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) said Thursday…
“He added: ‘There’s nothing but commitment to serving the people in this state, and those who spread that kind of misinformation, it’s deeply unfortunate that that’s happening.’ Knox County, Tenn., Mayor Glenn Jacobs (R) also referenced the claim in a statement Friday, urging, ‘Please quit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts.’”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
“[FEMA] initially raised concerns [about funding] at the beginning of the season in June, and the Biden administration overhauled aspects of FEMA relief to get funds out quicker…
“From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 through 2021, FEMA has spent more than $12 billion a year. From 1992 to 2004, it was $5 billion. It was weather, not immigrants, that forced more than 3.3 million Americans out of their homes in 2022, nearly half that number for more than a month. However, the Trump campaign didn’t mention climate change, perhaps because the former president still thinks it’s a hoax.”
LZ Granderson, Los Angeles Times
“There’s no such thing as a climate haven anymore… While there’s still time — however we vote, wherever we live, whatever we believe — we must shore up against the next calamity. We must hold our elected officials accountable and force them to invest in the changes that will keep ‘natural’ disasters from continuing to worsen. And in the meantime, we must help one another dig out.”
Margaret Renkl, New York Times
The right is critical of the administration’s response to the hurricane.
The right is critical of the administration’s response to the hurricane.
“Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, around 4:30 a.m. At Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s request, President George W. Bush had issued an emergency declaration on Saturday, Aug. 27, two days before landfall. Within a day of impact, U.S. Coast Guard helicopters were already working, rescuing some 350 people from rooftops…
“Bush viewed the devastation from the air on Aug. 31 and was roundly criticized for flying over, rather than seeing things on the ground. On Sept. 1, Bush asked Gov. Blanco to allow a federal takeover of the relief efforts, which by then included 15,256 Guard members expected to grow to more than 40,000 personnel from neighboring states…
“Bush visited the scene of the disaster only two days after landfall. Two days after Helene, Biden was on the beach in Delaware, ‘commanding,’ as he claimed, with two hours of phone calls. Vice President Kamala Harris was fundraising on the West Coast… The Biden-Harris administration’s sluggish and half-hearted disaster response has put hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk in Helene’s swath of destruction.”
Chuck DeVore, Fox News
“In Katrina, a three-star general was placed in command, along with the two-star commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division, with a full Airborne Infantry Brigade task force of the 82nd, a corps-support logistics command of thousands of soldiers, a signal battalion, a combat support hospital, robust Army engineer assets, and countless other support units. All of these units were on standby orders days before Katrina hit…
“In contrast, a week after Helene hit, a tiny 1,000-troop Airborne Infantry Battalion task force of the 82nd (one-third the size of a brigade) was given a warning order under the ground command of a mere one-star general. These forces are without the medical, engineer, corps-level logistics, signal/communications, and Division/Army HQ command and control capabilities that defined Katrina support.”
Cynical Publius, The Federalist
“If federal military resources had been scrambled sooner for rescue, how many more people would be alive? I suspect if George W. Bush or Donald Trump were President, the media would spend some time exploring this question. The bulk of the storm damage began overnight on September 26th and roared through on the 27th. The FEMA declaration was not issued until September 29th. The 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg was not activated until October 2nd…
“Military rescue personnel at Ft. Bragg and elsewhere were not in the air until at least a day later. That’s four days after disaster. How many people died because the experts in rescue were not in the air for four days?… For people on the left, maybe be a bit more skeptical that a government struggling to perform core services like mail delivery is actually handling this as well as the government says it is. For reporters, maybe get outside of the urban and suburban areas of North Carolina.”
Erick-Woods Erickson, Substack
