During a House Transportation Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) asked Acting FEMA Director David Richardson about his agency's response to deadly floods in Texas.
00:00Chair, thanks the gentleman. The chair is going to recognize the ranking member for a moment for a close.
00:07Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I do have one final question for Mr. Richardson.
00:13Like you, the loss of life from the Texas Flood haunts me.
00:20The pictures in my mind of people clinging to trees, some who were saved by Coast Guard or other heroes in this incident.
00:31But it haunts me that we could have had more urban search and rescue preposition in place.
00:38We could have saved more of those people who were clinging onto those trees but weren't able to hang on for long enough.
00:47You testified here today that you relied on the judgment of the Texas Emergency Management officials, including Texas pre-based urban search and rescue.
00:59But FEMA did not act to bring in and preposition additional urban search and rescue. That was a choice.
01:08The choice was made not to preposition those additional search and rescue.
01:13In light of the fact that the lack of the greater number of urgent search and rescues that could have saved more lives,
01:24do you still agree with President Trump's assessment that the response to the horrific Texas floods was, quote,
01:32the best FEMA response ever, unquote?
01:36The response in Texas, which was community-led, state-managed, and federal-supported, brought the maximum amount of capability to bear in Texas at the right time and the right place.
01:55Through the Secretary's leadership, to the President's leadership, to my own leadership, to NIM-KID's leadership, to Region 6, we made that happen.
02:04And that is a model of how response should be done. The maximum capability.
02:10Remember, emergency management is not a pile on sport. It's well-coordinated. It relies on personal relationships.
02:17It's got to be exercised beforehand. And all those things came together on Texas's worst day.
02:24And we all grieve for the state of Texas. All those things came together to show what President Trump and Secretary Noem called the best response ever.
02:35And I agree that it was an outstanding response. And the people of Texas deserved that outstanding response.
02:43And Texas emergency managers, Region 6, all did an outstanding job.
02:49I will strongly disagree that all of the resources brought to bear that could have been.
02:56I think it was a choice by FEMA to not fulfill their statutory responsibility to pre-position under the circumstances.
03:03I believe that that likely costs lives in these circumstances.
03:08And I believe it's a shame that you will say that this was the, quote, best FEMA response ever.
