HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina — Mike Toomey called a federal helpline last week to get disaster aid after Hurricane Helene flooded his home in western North Carolina.
He got a recording instead.
“They said I was 675th in line,” Toomey, a painter in a spattered shirt, recalled as he waited outside a federal recovery center in Hendersonville.
Hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to recover from disasters nationwide have been unable to get through to federal call centers or have stayed on hold for excessive periods of time in the weeks since Helene barreled into southern Appalachia last month.
Overwhelmed by Helene and Hurricane Milton, the centers failed to answer nearly half of the incoming phone calls over the course of one week recently. For the calls that were answered, it took more than an hour for federal workers to pick up, on average.
The disaster agency’s ability to provide financial relief has become a burning issue in the presidential election. Former President Donald Trump campaigned recently in two heavily damaged swing states — Georgia and North Carolina — and made misleading statements about the Biden administration’s response. But as the federal calls data shows, the hurricane response has encountered genuine problems amid a steady toll of disasters.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which published the call data Tuesday, also disclosed that it’s struggling with staffing levels a month after the hurricanes heavily damaged states from Florida to Tennessee.
FEMA data shows that the agency has almost no capacity to deal with another major disaster — two weeks after the Small Business Administration ran out of money to provide low-interest disaster loans for small businesses and households.
The agency said Wednesday that it has given survivors in the six damaged states more than $1.2 billion in emergency aid. It came as Deputy Administrator Erik Hooks was meeting with state and local officials in North Carolina.
After a speaker at a Trump rally on Sunday made racist and hateful comments, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign aired ads criticizing Trump for his response to Hurricane Maria after it demolished Puerto Rico in 2017.
FEMA has struggled to deal with catastrophic disasters such as Helene and Milton since at least 2005, when Hurricane Katrina killed almost 1,400 people in the Louisiana area.
When Hurricane Sandy devastated New York and New Jersey in 2012, FEMA call centers “did not have the staff or technology needed to keep pace with survivors’ requests for information,” the agency’s own analysis found.
In 2017, FEMA’s workforce “was overwhelmed” when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria slammed Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico in quick succession, the Government Accountability Office found. Agency call centers, plagued by “low morale and inadequate training,” failed to answer 2.3 million phone calls during an eight-week period.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell lamented the agency’s workload when talking to reporters shortly after Helene made landfall in Florida last month.
“I have over 100 open disasters,” Criswell said. “We’re seeing more disasters exceeding the state capability” to respond.
Former FEMA Administrator Brock Long said the agency has been deluged with more disasters and new responsibilities, such as performing a leading role in the government’s pandemic response.
“We’ve been redlining since Harvey and have never recovered,” said Long, who ran FEMA from 2017 to 2019 and lives in Hickory, North Carolina, where his house lost power for four days.
“You’re seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of FEMA employees being put out in the field to essentially run all aspects of disaster recovery. That’s got to change,” added Long, who’s the executive chairman with Hagerty Consulting, which specializes in disasters.
US disaster management ‘in trouble’
FEMA saw a surge in phone calls when people began seeking help after Helene and Milton, agency spokesperson Daniel Llargués said.
“We will not rush disaster survivors to get off the phone. We’re going to stay on the phone with them as long as they need to stay on the phone to get all their answers,” Llargués said.
Workers match callers with appropriate FEMA programs, such as payments for hotels and minor home repairs and providing emergency cash.
“We want to make sure you understand the programs to see which program you’re best qualified for,” Llargués said.
The phone data published by FEMA shows that 900,000 calls were made to agency call centers during the week from Oct. 14 to Oct. 20. Forty-seven percent of the calls were not answered.
For those that were answered, callers waited an hour and five minutes on average to speak with someone.
The situation improved the subsequent week, which began Oct. 21, when FEMA received 500,000 calls and answered 68.5 percent. FEMA took 25 minutes on average to answer calls.
The call data is for 19 disasters nationwide, including Helene-stricken counties in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, and Hurricane Milton in Florida.
The FEMA Daily Operations Briefing also showed that it was responding to 110 major disasters on Tuesday and had just 530 workers available for a new assignment. (The number was 504 on Wednesday.) Every one of FEMA’s 55 federal coordinating officers, who directly oversee disasters, was “assigned” or “unavailable.”
On FEMA’s busiest day after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria — Sept. 23, 2017 — the agency had 1,752 workers available.
“They have very little capacity left to handle another multibillion-dollar event,” said Long, the former FEMA administrator.
Even before Helene and Milton drained FEMA of workers, lawmakers were complaining about the agency’s response times. Vermont’s all-Democratic congressional delegation told FEMA in a Sept. 13 letter that people dealing with recent flooding “continue to face delays, confusing and conflicting guidance, and inefficiencies in getting clear answers and timely responses from FEMA.”
In recent days, the Biden administration increased its presence in the six hurricane-damaged states, particularly in North Carolina. FEMA now has 21 disaster recovery centers spread across 39 counties in North Carolina with 1.7 million households.
Florida has the same number of centers. But they are spread across 52 counties with 6.1 million people, an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News shows.
When Long was FEMA administrator, he questioned whether the agency should raise its financial threshold for states to receive federal disaster aid in an effort to reduce the number of disasters FEMA handled. Now members of Congress are trying to expand FEMA’s responsibility.
“There are 10-12 bills to strap new programs to the rusty old bicycle,” Long said. “The business model of emergency management in this country is in trouble. It’s overloaded.”
During a town meeting last week at a hotel conference room in Lake Lure, one of the hardest-hit towns in North Carolina, a FEMA official told an overflowing crowd of survivors that the agency would continue to help.
“We are going to be here with you all until the state kicks us out,” the official said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized a comment by FEMA spokesperson Daniel Llargués about a recent increase in phone calls to the agency’s helpline and also an effort by former FEMA Administrator Brock Long to reduce the number of disasters the agency handled.
