Report: FEMA Fired Call Center Workers Day After Texas Floods

On July 5, a day after the devastating floods in Texas, FEMA's disaster assistance line received 3,027 calls and answered 99.7% of them, according to documents seen by the New York Times. The documents show, however, that hundreds of call center workers at four companies were fired the same day after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem failed to renew their contracts. According to the documents, FEMA, which has been part of Homeland Security since 2003, answered only around 36% of the 2,363 calls it received on July 6. On July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and only answered 2,613 of them, around 16%. The call center workers' contracts were not renewed until Thursday, five days after they expired.

"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, tells the Times. "Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You've lost everything, you're trying to find out what's insured and what's not, and you're navigating multiple aid programs." Disaster survivors can apply for various kinds of aid through FEMA and Schlegelmilch says assisting people with the process is one of the "most important services in disaster recovery." Last month, the administration ended FEMA's practice of going door-to-door in disaster zones.

An insider tells the Times that FEMA officials were frustrated by the delay in renewing the contracts. Noem recently brought in a rule that requires all contracts and expenses over $100,000 to be personally approved by her. Sources tell CNN that the rule also delayed the deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams from around the country in response to urgent requests. Noem didn't sign off on the deployment until Monday, three days after the floods, the sources say.

• The Times notes that FEMA also failed to keep up with calls during disasters under previous administrations. According to E&E News, the call centers failed to answer around 50% of calls over the course of a week in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene last year. The agency was also overwhelmed after disasters in 2012 and 2017.