Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration is taking care of business for North Carolina residents hit hard by Hurricane Helene.
“President Trump came in and visited this community, and in less than 20 days secured over $54 million for families in need and registered 2,600 families that needed assistance and hadn’t gotten that type of help to get signed up for the programs that we have,” Noem said in a post on social media platform X.
“In the past five days, we’ve decreased the number of open cases by almost 80 percent,” she said.
“President Trump is ensuring that communities aren’t forgotten, and he launched the first major initiative to connect farmers with recovery assistance as well,” she said.
🚨BREAKING: Kristi Noem announces that FEMA has addressed 80% of the cases in Western North Carolina within just five days.
Real leadership.
pic.twitter.com/SNTonVIA1x— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2025
Hurricane Helene hit the U.S. in late September, causing its worst damage in North Carolina, which was hit on Sept. 27.
Trump denounced the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under former President Joe Biden during a visit to North Carolina.
“At one point, half of the emergency calls to FEMA went unanswered. That’s real bad. FEMA was not doing their job,” Trump said, according to a White House transcript of his Jan. 24 remarks.
With Trump and Noem fixing FEMA, should the government agency be kept?
Yes: 50% (2 Votes)
No: 50% (2 Votes)
“Biden did a bad job,” Trump said. According to calculations by The Western Journal, Biden was president for 116 days after Helene’s rains stopped. And yet, Trump said, the region has not recovered.
“Some residents still don’t have hot water, drinking water, or anything else. And many of them don’t have quarters. They don’t have anything. They got a stipend for what they lost, and we’re going to take care of it. This is totally unacceptable, and I’ll be taking strong action to get North Carolina the support that you need to quickly recover and rebuild. We’re working on it very hard,” Trump said.
FEMA now says 153,000 households have received assistance since the storm ended, according to KATC-TV.
Noem said the recovery efforts of the Trump era have only begun.
“FEMA can often be slow and confusing and a lot of paperwork. I heard that over and over and over again today. And we’re going to fix that,” Noem said, according to the North State Journal.
“I’ll promise you one thing: President (Donald) Trump has committed, and I’m committed with him, to bringing FEMA into the 21st century.”
Trump issued an executive order to review FEMA’s structure and operations. Noem addressed that during her visit.
“You’ve heard him make comments that he might even want to end it and have it be a process where the federal government sends block grants or sends the dollars to the state or to the local communities, and they decide how it’s spent,” Noem said, according to USA Today.
“I want to be clear; I heard from people today that had good stories and positive testimonies of what FEMA has done. There were some folks that got their checks promptly, had the assistance that they needed, and we appreciate that, but we also know that isn’t true for everybody,” Noem said.
Noem elaborated on that in a Sunday interview.
“We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters, like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California,” Noem said, according to The Washington Post. “But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed, so it can be deployed much quicker.”
Noem said changes will be made in consultation with legislators so that reforming FEMA is “done correctly and that we’re still there to help folks who have a terrible disaster or crisis in their life.”
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