The Disaster That is FEMA

Just One Taxpayer's Experience

The photo is Deanne Criswell who is the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. She’s the lady who’s telling us FEMA is (a) out of money but (b) didn’t give money to unauthorized causes like the illegal aliens. To be sure, Criswell didn’t cause the problems at FEMA—she’s only been there since Biden got installed in the White House and FEMA has been a shipwreck for decades. But Criswell sure hasn’t helped.

Just so we get my bias out of the way, I think that FEMA is a ridiculous, ineffective, and stupid organization. Having lived most of my life at various points on the Gulf Coast, I’ve been involved in more hurricanes and weather events than I can remember. Twice I had to deal with FEMA. This is anecdotal evidence, but as a person who’s been in multiple disasters, it’s interesting that 100% of my FEMA interactions have been quite unsatisfactory and, frankly, absurd.

In the 1980s, while living in far north Houston, I was involved in a freak rainstorm event. Rain fell in sheets on our part of town for 24 hours and when it was all over, we had gotten something like 40 inches of rain in one day. It was a “storm of the century” or maybe a “storm of the millennium.” It wasn’t even really a storm, just unrelenting extreme rain. My house had 11 inches of water inside. My car, in the garage, got water in the engine. We were rescued from our home by an air boat (private citizen, not FEMA). We grabbed what we could of clothing, papers, wallets and purses, and some photographs are the boat brought us and some neighbors to a local motel. We checked into the motel—nobody paid for that, we had a credit card that got us entry. The waters receded and after a couple of days we returned to our house. We had to rip out walls, sheet rock, and insulation. We had to pull up the floor. It was a major project.

By the time FEMA arrived, we were already out of the motel and had most of our house mucked out. FEMA never arrives early. But when they were set up, we went in for a face-to-face interview to see if we could get some help.

Before you start entertaining soft and conciliatory attitudes toward our government, let me assure you that the FEMA people don’t give you money—the lend it to you. They take our tax money and then provide lower-interest loans to the taxpayers.

And you still have to go through the tortures of the damned to even qualify for that loan. We waited for hours for our turn, then we sat at a wooden desk in a big bull pen room of desks to discuss our “case” with the FEMA agent. Of course, they wanted us to fill out a bunch of paperwork, but before we could get started, the agent asked for our address. The FEMA clerk looked up our location on one of those big old-fashioned paper maps people used in the 1980s and said, “You didn’t flood. That address is not in the flood plain.”

We explained that we did flood in a rain event, we were told, “You’re not in the flood plain. It’s impossible for you to have flooded.”

We tried and tried—I even asked the FEMA clerk to come with me to our neighborhood to see it. (Remember, if FEMA’s on site, the roads are already passable. They don’t go places where you need to wear boots.)

She called me a liar and refused to pursue the “case” at all. She even told us to leave the premises.

And that was that. It was like meeting the Soup Nazi. “No FEMA for you!”

That’s the caliber of knuckleheads who work for FEMA.

My next experience was more recent. I live in an area hard hit by Hurricane Beryl, which arrived earlier this summer in 2024. A few days after the hurricane, I learned that FEMA had set up a website where people could apply for help.

Think how utterly clueless this is—in an area hit by hurricanes, without power, with extensive flooding, with homes destroyed, even cell phone towers in places gone—FEMA cheerfully tells those displaced by disaster to just get out our laptops and fill out an online application. Ever try recharging a laptop when you don’t have power? Ever tried working your various devices when you haven’t had power for weeks? Ever tried finding a laptop when your house has washed away?

Anyway, I was very fortunate. Our power was not out more than a day and I was able to apply online. FEMA asked me if my house was habitable. I answered honestly and told them yes. They asked about the damage. I told them I had a very large tree fall which took out my fence but, fortunately, missed the house. I said that the damage would be less than my deductible on my insurance (I have insurance) but I did not have an estimate yet. (It turned out to be $1700 worth of damage—tree removal is super expensive, even if the tree falls over.)

In a few days, FEMA emailed me with the news that they had turned down my request. I was OK with that because in the big picture, I got off easy. My damage was not that severe. So many people really suffered huge damages in Hurricane Beryl, and I wasn’t one of them. If FEMA has to triage limited funds, funds should go to the many people who lost their houses and cars.

Now fast forward about 3 weeks. Most of our area is recovered or on the mend. My house was never uninhabitable. Most people were back at home, power is restored everywhere, nearly all of us are back at work, even back to normal or nearly normal. But now I get an email from FEMA.

FEMA announces to me that I qualify to get a voucher good for 4 nights in a hotel. The email missive then explains how to obtain my voucher.

This is both curious and infuriating. Why in the world would a person who can live in their house not qualify for help with needed repairs but qualify to get four days free in a hotel? And why would anyone need a hotel a few weeks after the hurricane? The real emergency occurs when the hurricane hits and in the first few days after the storm. If somebody could survive without a hotel for three weeks, why give them a hotel now?

I laughed about it until I found other people got the same thing. FEMA couldn’t pass out hotel vouchers fast enough.

Now just for easy math, let’s assume a hotel in this part of the world cost $100 a night. I think that’s low, but let’s use that figure. So FEMA was essentially giving me a voucher that was worth $400. They did not say how they had arrived at their decision or why I would get four days of free hotel accommodations. I have a feeling they didn’t explain it because there is no explanation to random stupidity.

Had them offered me $400 to put toward my repairs, I would have been jubilant. But I got no cash, just an unnecessary hotel voucher.

Why give out hotel vouchers, particularly to people who did not request them and by their own applications did not need them? Are they that incompetent? Or is somebody getting a hotel kickback?

Let me tell you who helps you in a disaster. In my neck of the woods, there is a grocery chain called HEB and they get here first. HEB opens their stores as soon as the roads are passable, maybe even before. They bring in lots of water which they hand out for free. Bottled water is surprisingly important in a hurricane. Opening freshly stocked stores is also very helpful—they don’t give the food away but if you’re living in 100 degree heat with high humidity for a few days, you don’t have safe food to eat. Your refrigerator and freezer have been nonfunctional for days. All your perishables have perished. After a few days, you get sick of eating peanut butter and crackers. Then it runs out and you miss peanut butter and crackers.

But sometimes in these disasters, you can get free meals. You know who handed out free food in my community during those first post-hurricane days? My church aided with donations from Samaritan’s Purse. So did some other churches. In other words, nonprofit Christian organizations. Those pesky Christian nationalists, always clinging to their guns and Bibles and handing out food in a disaster. At my church we provided about 800 cooked nutritious meals every single day for 11 days straight. You didn’t have to fill out a form to qualify, you didn’t have to submit an online registration, and we didn’t charge you back for the food plus interest.

That’s a lot of work, done by volunteers, and a lot of food, subsidized by Samaritan’s Purse. Christian nationalists: 100%. FEMA: 0.

Samaritan’s Purse likewise helped with clean-up and some repairs. Cajun Navy showed up (a charity) and helped with rescues.

This all happened long before FEMA even realized a hurricane had hit. FEMA arrives last, does the least, and hogs all the credit (and keeps the taxpayer money to fund their pet projects which never involve helping actual American citizens).

You know who else helps? I call them rednecks with chainsaws, but sometimes they’re rednecks with boats. They go out first, work the hardest, do the most, and leave last. Likely more Christian nationalists. Definitely toxic masculinity. American taxpayers who pay their taxes to thieves and then go do the work for nothing that their taxes should have paid for.

God bless ‘em.

Sometimes they rescue you by boat and you never even get their name. They help haul trash out of the street so you can get out of your driveway, and they never tell you who they are. They put up makeshift barricades so you don’t accidentally drive over a downed powerline. They sometimes hand out you food or towels, and they never ask for anything in return. (Towels are big in hurricane—remember, washers and dryers don’t work if you’ve lost power, it’s still too rainy and humid to dry clothes on a line providing you even know what that is—and you run out of towels fast.) The local communities open shelters. Neighbors rescue pets. People do what they can.

Americans are great people. Too bad our government isn’t as great. How did a bunch of wonderful people like Americans ever wind up with a den of thieves in Washington, D.C.?

According to FEMA, in 2023, they responded to 100 disasters, but it was all just to lend some money. They claim to give out $1.3B to invidividuals (callously called “survivors” in FEMA jargon) and $12B to the local government for infrastructure. If they ever gave away any money in the disasters I was involved in, I never saw it. And I don’t mean I didn’t get money, I mean I don’t know anyone who got money. Or saw FEMA-funded repairs.

The reports coming out of North Carolina sound worse than anything I experienced by a factor of 100. The disaster was worse and FEMA is like adding insult to injury.

A monster storm with the unfortunate name of Milton is brewing and bearing down on Florida. OK, FEMA, prove me wrong. Show up on time fast and do something effective. Deanne Criswell says FEMA did not divert any of their money to illegals or non-FEMA missions, so there should be enough to provide some aid.

Or is Criswell lying? Once upon a time, FEMA called me a liar. I think that gives me the right to say it back to them.