FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors

Leadership decisions and FEMA’s role

• Many comments blame the missed calls on a new expense-approval rule requiring personal sign-off on >$100k contracts, leading to a lapse in call-center contracts during an active disaster.
• Multiple posters emphasize that FEMA is an emergency agency where reliability, redundancy, and speed should outweigh cost-cutting.
• Some argue this reflects a broader ideological push to weaken or shut down FEMA and push responsibilities to states; others note that political leaders quickly reversed course once the fallout became clear.
• A few readers point out wording (“didn’t answer” vs. “couldn’t answer”) matters for how responsibility is perceived.

State/local responsibility and voter accountability

• There is extensive debate over Kerr County’s choices: rejecting federal money for flood warning systems, not fully utilizing phone alerts, and being relatively low-tax.
• Some argue that residents and voters bear collective responsibility for electing officials who refused federal funds and prioritized aesthetics or ideology over safety.
• Others strongly push back, stressing that not everyone voted for these officials and that children and non-voters should not be implicitly blamed.

Anti-federal sentiment and NIMBYism

• Several links and excerpts show locals opposing federal funds over fears of “strings attached” and antipathy toward the federal government, even when the funds were for flood safety.
• Some commenters label this as NIMBYism and self-destructive politics—rejecting sirens and systems as “ruining” the area or as federal overreach, only to suffer worse consequences later.
• Others broaden this to a pattern: infrastructure and preventive measures are politically easy to cut or block until disaster strikes.

Warning systems and alert fatigue

• There is discussion of how poorly targeted or frequent alerts (tornado, tsunami, flood, earthquake) cause “warning fatigue,” leading people to ignore real dangers.
• Some note that in this case, even better phone alerts might have been limited because campers weren’t allowed phones, though staff likely had them.

Broader reflections

• Commenters share anecdotes about shortsighted cost-cutting in organizations and contrast with countries that firewall flood-defense funding from regular politics.
• There is tension between calling out systemic political failures and avoiding what some see as unproductive, demoralizing negativity.