DHS took 5 days to fund Texas flooding hotline, federal records show

['Rebecca Hersher', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Vertical-Align Middle .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar Is .Alignleft .Alignright'] TPR: The Public's Radio 2025-08-07 09:00:00

But the day after the July 4th flash floods in Texas, the call center funding lapsed, contract records show. On July 10th, five days after the call center funding lapsed, FEMA’s acting administrator, David Richardson, sent a memo to Secretary Noem asking her to approve funding for at least one call center vendor. On that day, there was a surge in the number of callers to the FEMA assistance hotline for disaster survivors, according to FEMA call center logs obtained by NPR. “They either answered the calls or they didn’t answer the calls on July 7th.”“When there was a spike in calls, FEMA was there to answer the calls,” Richardson said. And Richardson’s testimony appears to be contradicted by the July 10th memo obtained by NPR showing he requested that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem approve call center funding.