Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell pushed back against fears her agency doesn’t have enough resources to respond to Hurricane Milton, though she admitted FEMA funding is set to run out before the year’s end.
During an interview with Fox News’s Brett Baier on Monday evening, Criswell responded to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s recent remarks made in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s landfall that FEMA is running out of money.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are anticipating another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent,” Mayorkas said on Oct. 2.
Criswell assured the country that FEMA “absolutely” has enough funding not only to get through Hurricane Helene but through incoming Hurricane Milton as well.
“We have enough funds to absolutely get through the response for this hurricane, as well as the continued response for Hurricane Helene,” she said.
But she agreed with Mayorkas that FEMA doesn’t “have enough money to continue throughout the rest of the year.”
“What I find that we might need to do is in the December, January time frame — we may have to go back into that immediate needs funding to ensure we always have enough to support life-saving actions,” Criswell said. “From the Disaster Relief Fund, again, we’ve been able to anticipate last year, this year, and even going into next year, that we are not going to have enough to pay all of the recovery bills because we’re right now paying on the covid reimbursements from the last few years.”
Amid the shortage of FEMA funds, Criswell’s agency has been criticized for releasing roughly $650 million in assistance to illegal immigrants.
Pressed on the matter on Monday, Criswell replied that none of the funds in question had been diverted from the Disaster Relief Fund, which serves as the agency’s main funding pot for hurricane response efforts.
“The Disaster Relief Fund is the fund that we use to respond to disasters, and there has been $0 removed from that fund to support any other activities. The funding that you’re talking about was funding that was given to [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] and then transferred to us to support some of those efforts,” she said. “The Disaster Relief Fund — nothing has been taken away from it.”
Following Hurricane Helene’s devastating landfall, which estimates say has claimed over 230 lives, and wreaked complete devastation in many Southeastern towns, the private sector and nonprofit organizations have stepped in to assist in vital rescue and recovery efforts.
While aid from groups such as the South Carolina-based Happy Helicopters, Samaritan’s Purse, a faith-based humanitarian aid organization, and North Carolina’s Mountain Mule Packer Ranch has garnered praise, critics have said that FEMA has led bureaucratic and inefficient efforts in the aftermath of the disaster.
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Criswell called the backlash “false” as she tried to put the accusations to bed on Monday.
“We have been on the ground since before Hurricane Helene hit Florida and before it crossed over North Carolina,” she said. “And what I would say is, just because somebody doesn’t see a person in a FEMA shirt doesn’t mean that we’re not in the area.”
