Acting FEMA Chief Quitting To Spend More Time Not Going To Work At FEMA
He'll leave at the end of hurricane season, which he'd never heard of.
David Richardson, the (acting) administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has decided to take a permanent break from the job he was never interested in doing. Richardson, who had no experience at all in disaster management, will be stepping down at the end of this month, which is coincidentally the end of the Atlantic hurricane season. Remember when Richardson told staffers he hadn’t known there’s a “hurricane season,” and then the administration huffed that he’d been “joking” about his phenomenal ignorance? Will anyone know he left?
Richardson made clear to NBC News Monday that he’d only taken the job because nobody else would, and now that he’s served the minimum time he committed to, he’s going to go make some money in private industry, so please thank him for stepping up, won’t you?
"I agreed to be the acting administrator through hurricane season when others wouldn’t," Richardson said. "Hurricane season ends on 1 December. Since the danger has largely passed, I can now leave for other opportunities.”
Gosh, he seemed so committed to Sparkle Chaos when he used his first day on the job to threaten FEMA staff, warning them, “Don’t get in my way, [...] or I will run right over you.”
Our theory of the Trump administration’s hiring practice is that they immediately struck every job candidate who said they were a “people person.”
Luckily for Americans — so far at least — no disastrous hurricanes have hit the US this year, although there’s little reason to think FEMA’s degraded ability to deal with a serious disaster will be the least bit improved by Richardson’s departure. As you’ll recall, Trump and all the other wingnuts have nothing but deep hatred for FEMA, because it helps people rebuild their lives after disasters, but that’s expensive and sounds suspiciously like something liberals would do. Besides, natural disasters might make people think climate change is real, even after Trump outlawed it.
Richardson will primarily be remembered, if at all, as the answer to “Who was that asshole at FEMA who couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone during the flash floods in Texas?” The Washington Post reported that, according to people who have worked with him, Richardson doesn’t like cellphones, and when he gets home from work, he literally puts his own phone “in a box” and seldom answers outside of office hours.
When deadly flash floods hit central Texas in the early morning hours of the Fourth of July, a Friday, Richardson was away on vacation with his two sons, and he’d already set his out-of-office message up and everything. He didn’t get involved with the agency’s response at all until Sunday evening, and probably resents that nobody has given him credit for coming in before that Monday morning.
Because DHS Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that any agency expenditures over $100,000 be personally approved by her, officials and staff were desperate to get Richardson on the line so he could convey their requests to Noem. Those delays almost certainly slowed the deployment of some resources, especially specialized search-and-rescue teams that would normally be pre-deployed to likely disasters. In the wake of that fucktussle, the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch resigned, citing the chaos and penny-pinching when lives were at stake.
After Richardson’s resignation was announced Monday, the Washington Post also reported (gift link) that it learned, after its initial report in September, that
Richardson’s network password had expired on July 3, hours before dense rains triggered rapid, fast-moving floods, despite receiving warning emails to reset it. That meant he did not have access to his email as the disaster began, a senior official with knowledge of the situation said. Richardson did not regain access until he reset the password on the evening of July 6.
Details, details. IT people are so annoying. Besides, what part of “holiday weekend” didn’t they understand?
That new reporting also underlines that throughout his tenure at FEMA, “Richardson was frequently absent, did not frequently interact with employees, and would often leave headquarters during the work day, according to interviews with nearly 30 current and former agency officials interviewed earlier this year.” Unsurprisingly, many of the Post’s sources requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Internal documents also supported the insiders’ contention that Richardson was difficult to get ahold of outside office hours, although the Post doesn’t specify whether his casual attitude toward emergency response continued after all the deaths in Texas, which weren’t his fault, that was God, OK?
Maybe not the work habits anyone wants in the nation’s disaster response chief. Unless of course you consider that an illegitimate role for the federal government — or maybe just a boring, unimportant role that’s not as interesting as blowing up drug boats and ethnically cleansing American cities.
NBC News reports that Richardson has come to appreciate FEMA a teensy tiny bit during his tenure, but not a whole lot. The network somehow got hold of him for an interview Monday evening — now he picks up the phone? — in which he explained that
when he came to FEMA, his understanding was that his role was “to shut it down.”
But he said the agency’s experience in dealing with the floods in Texas and severe flooding in western Alaska proved the need for the agency, if at a smaller scale.
“We want to push it back to the states,” he said. He said that he believes states can do more, but that he also believes Trump will reform the agency.
But honestly, he’s getting out now, so why would he care what happens next? There’s private business to be done now.
Richardson also claimed in that interview that Noem’s $100,000 spending cap didn’t slow the response in Texas, insisting that “Anything life-threatening, we didn’t go by the $100,000 cap.”. First we’ve heard of that — maybe there was some other reason that the search-and-rescue teams didn’t reach Texas until five days after the floods, and for the closure of FEMA call centers because the funding expired and couldn’t be reauthorized without Noem’s say-so.
Bet it was Joe Biden’s fault. No way Richardson would lie about that.
Like an Oklahoma tornado victim’s roof, FEMA’s fate remains up in the air, waiting on a report by a “review council” that Noem’s in charge of, so we’ll probably have to wait until the next significant revelation in the Epstein files for that report to land.
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if a one-time donation works better for you, then you can use this button without even getting Kristi Noem’s permission.
As always:
"𝗧𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁-𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘀𝘆𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆."
~ Hannah Arendt
You KNOW this guy has a bottle of bourbon in his desk.