My name is Cassandra. I live in a little town called Spruce Pond, North Carolina that was directly affected by Hurricane Helene.
Anybody in their right mind thinking that outside
people should not be speaking on what the government has done or is not doing to our area is
insanity to me.
As someone who is here at Ground Zero in Mitchell County, North Carolina
it is going to take you,
you as the creators on this app to speak up to get us help here.
Because I will tell you our government is not doing a damn thing
for us.
Get here. We need you. We need people experienced in hiking.
There's only a few ways to these people. It is to foot, horseback, or helicopter.
Dirt box, ATVs, side by side. If you have them, it can get to East Tennessee or Western North Carolina.
We need you. Do not listen to the news. When they tell you that they don't want you. They don't need you. I'm telling you
I am here. I live here. I have been already. I'm telling you. We need you. We want you here.
We're out of here.
There's a little bit of road road.
Transporting all the pets. All of their shit.
This is basically what's stopping us from getting out of here.
My house washed away.
I had a cat. I had two geckos.
I lost it all.
People's lives could have been saved and the blood is going to be on the hands of those that
did not allow that person who could go help to go help.
I want to show you what Swannanoa looks like right now. At least the area that we're in.
You can see there's still quite a bit of debris right there behind me and it just goes for miles.
I mean there are cars that are abandoned all across this area and it's not that they're not
coming out here and picking up and starting the recovery process. It's just that there is so much
damage. This is the state of North Carolina. This is the area that's without power still.
This is also the state of North Carolina. This yellow outline is the country of Belgium
that I've overlaid for scale. This is the scale. 230,000 customers without power means
households. Based on U.S. census data the average household size here is about three which means
we're talking about six to seven hundred thousand people who have not had power for a week.
That is an emergency by itself. If you don't have power for a week then if you had food
stored in the freezer no you don't. If you had breast milk insulins stored in the fridge
no you don't. You don't get to run your CPAP machine. Three quarters of a million people
without power for a week should make headline news by itself. But power outages are unfortunately
one of the mildest of problems. Water is also out. Cell coverage is out. If you're seeing people
posting from this area there's a good likelihood they're having to drive miles to do that and
that is if they have a car that wasn't destroyed, if they can get gas somehow,
and if they have roads they can drive miles on. These are the road closures.
Okay and these roads are not closed because there's some water on them. They're closed because they
look like this now. What are the states in the storm zone need, Mr. President?
Okay. What are the states in the storm zone? What do they need, every what you saw today?
Oh, the storm zone? Yes, sir. I'm going with storm and dolphin though.
They get everything they need and they're very happy.
Well, this thing has been disgustingly and I do mean disgustingly politicized in recent days.
I appreciate you giving me a call. Okay, well, know that we want to do everything we can and,
you know, I say as a developed public servant, I know how bureaucracy can sometimes get in
the way of speed. So please let everyone know if there are things that you need,
if it's taken too long to get to you, okay? I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
And I get that there's an election going on and everything, but on the same day that Kamala is
sending camera crews and lighting equipment down to a place with no electricity to film both sides
of her phone call about how she's a devout public servant, on that same day she shared that on her
official ex-account, she also shared this post about how they're going to give 157 million
dollars of additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food,
water, and shelter, which brings the total to 385 million dollars.
This woman done come out after she just told us a few days ago that we exhausted all of our
resources. We're so sorry. This is all we can do for you. Then she shows up to Charlotte,
not even clothed, not even to Asheville. She shows up to Charlotte and did the
rest of her hours. What does she do? What does she do? She sends 157 million dollars
to Lebanon because she is worried about their protection and their security and they need
food and water and shelter. I just think it's a little lacking in self-awareness
to stage a phone call with the mayor of Asheville and post that on the same day you're posting
this. This is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. As far as you can see,
semi-trucks, side-to-side trucks, and they're in here cutting and they don't know these people
from Adam. We've got trees over here, people over here, getting ready to go up here to this barn,
this house. So we're just here to help these people here. We don't have an organization
or anything, but they're just here. There has been some amazing and heroic scenes of bravery.
Today my husband left to go help out. He took a truckload of supplies. He's meeting up with
an organization there and I don't know when he will be back. People working all night long,
building bridges and just really doing everything they can to try and help people
in this situation. That was the scariest f***ing thing I've ever done in my life.
Grovestone Mountain in Asheville is now f***ing unpassable. You got four days of power up there.
I gave every single drop. I even pulled back out of my personal tank. It's a 210 gallon
tank and I gave it everything I had. If the needle was below E when I got there and
all the city and Ryzen Tex and even people and neighbors and stuff were like,
there's no way you're going to make it. Mother f***ing, I made it there and back.
And somebody posted this video of trying to get out when this was happening
and what it looked like. And again, I just don't think most people realize this flash flooding
happened so quickly. So quickly it went from a little bit of rain to we can't get down the
streets that there just, there wasn't any way for people to leave. This was a lot of people saying
they weren't getting any warning at all. They heard nothing. It was raining a little bit and then all
of a sudden the water has risen and it's done. You're not, you're not going anywhere.
And the mudslides you just have to see with your own eyes.
And so you're talking about a wall of water and mud in some cases that went into people's houses
all the way up to the ceiling. And so there are people who were swept away trying to escape in their
cars by water or whose houses were swept away with them in it. And there were people whose
houses filled up with this mud and they couldn't get out or their cars filled up with it
while they were trying to escape and they couldn't get out. The count of the people who have perished
in this is going to be difficult to tally for some time because there are a lot of people who
were lost in this water and mud. Every single X that you see on a car structure is the sign
of something searched. There are one, two, three vehicles here, one shed that makes four and
countless other structures that can't even be accessed. That they just, they just haven't
been able to get to them yet. Avery counties have as of yesterday had two fatalities but
there's a lot more. There's several missing people that a dozen or more that we know that
were actually saw swept away that we haven't located. So I think as the days go on this
number is going to get drastically worse. It feels like a literal war zone right now.
But the thing that I'm just trying to tell you everything that I'm seeing and be very
transparent. We have seen some federal agents around the Swannanoa area starting late last night
that I've heard of and I have seen some personally today. There are border patrol in the Swannanoa
area along Highway 70. They're doing body recovery and I think they're kind of guarding some of
the areas where they think that there there are more from the word that I'm hearing. They're
putting orange X's on everything that they check. So they'll have an orange X and then they'll have a
zero or there'll be somewhere else that there's an orange X and one had an 11 and that is the
body count that was found inside. With Baybeam the National Guard have marked over a hundred
bodies in a six mile stretcher river. Possible bodies just where they think they are. You
can't see them guys and I had to explain to him something that had to be explained to me
even as a rescuer. When I watched the National Guard and they confirmed that the smells I had
been smelling were most likely bodies. I was like well where are they so I can get to them.
You can't get to them. They're they're crushed in debris. They're up in trees. They're under
sediment. They're under sand. Unfortunately it's gonna be it will be a very long time
before you find all these people. The body count is astronomically higher
than what we are being told. He said that they found 36 bodies in one embankment alone.
He also said it's true that bodies are being found in trees.
He said that looting has started and if we knew how bad it really was we would be riding in the
woods with no way out of this water. We have multiple people including juveniles trapped.
Are any resources available to send our way? Over. I have a 13-year-old,
one-three-year-old in a house with no oxygen, no power. There's even multiple no one calls about
multiple fatalities, houses, clots. I need to help getting people out of River Street. I
still can't get them all out of here. Temple, I'm heading your way. If they don't move
any faster we're all gonna be good. Says there are 25 families stuck. They've painted an X in a
nearby field needing supplies. Daughter got rescued last night from the house. She grew out back.
She's a personal school. The neighbors saw her parents were trying to get out and I told her
to calm them. I got swept away. My kids and my mom will be coming out to the interstate. I need
you to grab them please. Where are they at? There's a 2,000-pound propane tank coming down
the main channel of the river just past our location. 1st Central and Fire and Search and Rescue
on scene confirmed 2, 10, 7. Thank you. 1,100 you coming? Yes sir. You can get a hold of them all while.
Keep all of those who have been affected in your prayers and keep all of those who are
helping in your prayers. There are videos coming out that it has been eight days
in some of these areas before anybody has seen any boots on their particular ground.
Eight days. Eight days without food, without water, without power. Eight days. And a lot of people
are saying it's not their fault that they weren't allowed to go in there. They weren't
given orders. Days went by before any of these people were allowed to go in. So I just want
to say thank you to everyone who suggested donating to United Cajun Navy. The things they're doing in
the air and on the ground and they really are getting out there and helping people,
having a big impact. But in the last couple days, since October 6th, I've been seeing video now
of their donation sites getting rotor washed by black helicopters. The first one I saw
was from October 6th. You had a black helicopter come in and hover over the donation site and
then fly in real low and just blow everything all over the ground. And people are getting hurt,
supplies are getting destroyed, and there's talk that transponders are being turned off
so that these things cannot be tracked. And it's not the first time it's happened either now.
There was another reporting of this happening, at least one other if not two more reports
of the same thing. So somebody is actively working to destroy citizen donation sites that are
being set up through these organizations to try to help people. It's one of the sickest,
most twisted things I think I've seen yet. Make It Makes Sense, as the Cajun Navy said,
they wrote, y'all were trying really hard to stay out of the conspiracy space,
but some people aren't making it easy. This actually happened to a distribution site we
supplied in Western North Carolina. Make It Makes Sense, please. And there really isn't
any way to make that make sense without entering a conspiracy space. But you know,
at this point guys, we really have to stop being scared of these words and these labels
because this stuff is happening. And I can't believe I'm even about to say this after
everything I've seen, but apparently the Connecticut National Guard is investigating,
or at least reporting on the investigation into the Blackhawk Roter Wash incident. And they're
saying that the initial investigation indicates the helicopter in this video belongs to the
North Carolina National Guard and that the pilots have now been grounded until a further
investigation can be completed. But in the meantime, what the actual f***? Any contractor,
any car that comes through here must help the residents. You must give everything, no.
You must help the residents, and you've got to do it. I want both of your names because I
seriously, it's going all the way to the governor's office. We're eight days, nine days,
post hurricane, and that was the first FEMA drop I've seen here in the Swannanoa area.
One hero come in, and I was told that was FEMA, and that was it. Today was the first
FEMA delivery that I've seen or I've heard of in the entire region. I went to put a couple
of people into a hotel last night, and they have a security guard at the hotel. They said,
oh, we're so sorry. The entire hotel has been booked for federal employees. And I was like,
no, I have people that would just pull it out of a mountain. Hey, you've seen them turning
people away though. Yeah, yeah, they've turned people away for the last two days.
Two days, they've turned trucks and trucks and trucks. That's where Jackie had to come back.
We just seen water come back down here where they just turned them around, told them no.
If you're reading about FEMA online and wondering if they're really a pain in the tail,
I can confirm it is true. I tried to send in a pallet of chainsaws two days ago,
and we had to divert it somewhere away from FEMA because they wanted to confiscate.
FEMA, those ain't your chainsaws. Western North Carolina, Asheville,
you know, that whole area, wherever they can land and drop off supplies. And FEMA has flown in
like 10 or more helicopters and blocked a runway here at Greenville downtown.
Okay, here's the helicopters that are blocking one of the runways here at Greenville downtown,
all flown in by FEMA helicopter pilots. And they're just sitting there doing nothing.
Greenville aviation over here taken in all kind of supplies, everything that people want to drop
off. There's a huge operation going on over here. Yesterday we ran about 30 something planes,
and they came in and halted, FEMA came in and halted all that operation.
Today it's awfully quiet, and we see these helicopters wind up,
and they have a booth set up here and everything. Turns out that's FEMA.
FEMA has shut down all the local donation operations that were going on,
and delivering supplies, and now they're saying that they're not allowed to deliver
any more supplies anymore. So all these people are unfortunately have all these supplies,
but cannot take it up there. So that's our government for you. Oh, and another thing,
those helicopters that have been sitting there, I've been sitting there since this morning.
Haven't seen a single movement, just a bunch of impacting of important equipment and nothing
happening. So I'm so sorry, North Carolina. We're trying to get some long-term emergency
water to the people in North Carolina, and they're being told that they need special requirements
from FEMA in order to enter these certain areas. And so we're trying to find the
workarounds for that. But now everyone's heard about what's going on in the western part of
Carolina, eastern Tennessee, Florida, Georgia. Donate. Please donate what you can. Try to
find a nonprofit to donate to a church, local PD. A lot of those are taking donations,
sheriff's departments. I know my department is running a bunch of stuff
to the western part of the state to help donate. But please do not donate to FEMA.
They are hindering a lot of what people are trying to accomplish out in the western part
of the state. FEMA doesn't understand that these Appalachian people are built differently.
I am very familiar with them. They are not going to stand by idly and have government
officials tell them what to do. FEMA's playing a game of FAFO because free men don't ask for permission.
Again, please donate and help these people out. They need us now more than ever.
So I'm just going to stop there because so many videos, dozens upon dozens if not
hundreds of videos are now up on social media of people saying basically the same thing. If I
just spent hours and hours of my life, I could collect them all and probably make you half an hour
long montage of just the same story over and over and over. But we have other things to talk about.
I'm here with the FEMA administrator. We've been all over western North Carolina talking with
first responders. We are grateful for the work that FEMA has done.
So many stories like this now are coming out of the area that FEMA
has responded by putting up a Helene rumor's website for rumor control.
Meanwhile, the point I just want to make is all of these videos that people are making where they're
talking about being blocked by FEMA or turned around or all these people, their handles and
their faces are on these videos. These people are putting their names and faces behind what
they're saying left and right all over the place. I mean that woman is a realtor in the area.
She is well known to many people. If she's just blatantly out and out lying, her entire community
knows her. She's a realtor. You know what I'm saying? Her name is right out there. Her face
is out there. She's not hiding who she is making these claims. None of these people are hiding
who they are. They're all putting their faces directly on camera and they're saying this
is what I'm seeing. This is what is happening with FEMA. So are all of them liars? That'd be
a really weird. That's a really bizarre phenomenon for a whole bunch of people to get together and
put their face and their name on camera and then just blatantly lie. It doesn't prove they're not
lying, but it'd be really weird to just have hundreds of liars all of a sudden all getting on
camera being like, here's my name. Here's my face. And I'm just going to tell you some
blatant lies that you can't find me later and check up on. I mean, do you see what I'm saying?
She's sitting here telling us that go online, apply. Well, okay, A, hundreds of us still don't
have power. People are saying they're having issues applying for the aid that they're being
turned down because you're telling us to go online to FEMA and apply and you get immediate
help for $750. Hi, I'm Marty and I'm with FEMA and I'm here to talk to you about the
assistance that you can receive from FEMA. I spent a lot of talk about the $750 as your
initial assistance. Well, that $750 is to help you with food and water and your essential needs
right now. Well, okay, I went on FEMA. I applied and I immediately got denied. Everybody in my
area that I've talked to, including myself who applied for the $750 assistance payment from
FEMA has been denied. I did apply for FEMA assistance and was denied. I just want everyone
to know that we are displaced due to Hurricane Helene from Western North Carolina. We cannot go
home. We have no power, no food, no water, no nothing. We are spending $400 a night on a hotel
due to price gouging in the surrounding areas because they know that people have nowhere to
go. We applied for FEMA myself and my sister applied. My sister applied first. She got
denied. I said, okay, let me try. I applied. We got denied. So everyone's saying FEMA is helping $750
and by the way, that $750 wouldn't even cover two nights at this hotel. There were numerous videos
of that and the local news was reporting that if victims put up a go fund me or tried to crowd
fund themselves for what they've just been through in any way, they will not be eligible.
Says survivors may not be eligible for federal assistance if they are receiving crowdfunded
donations for types of assistance covered. And it says, will survivors automatically receive money
when they register? No. FEMA determines eligibility on a case by case basis. So that is what is
being reported. So I just want everyone to know that FEMA sucks. FEMA's here. You know what
FEMA just told us? We can't get you a phone. I have no ID. I have no way to pay for food.
He has no way to get gas. We're stuck. So we have to sleep in a car that's leaking
with the same clothes we've had on since the. So Glenn back in Congressman Mills
showed up to the FEMA truck they found parked I guess in the back of a parking lot
somewhere in Asheville, North Carolina to ask some questions about what that's what that's about.
Hey guys, good. How are you? What can I do for you?
Well, just I'm I'm Glenn and this is Congressman Mills.
Congressman Mills, how are you doing? We're just wondering what you guys are up to.
Basically, yeah. And you guys got here today. We've been here two days. We got here
yesterday. Yesterday, we didn't have any connectivity. So we took 2,800 people
as near as we could count coming through the food distribution line and through the gas station
station and handed them all these fires. We didn't have fires in our fires from here,
but they could take pictures of our fire which told me to go online. They could make a phone
call to have to go online just to get them in the system. These people don't have phones.
Some of them do, but a lot of people lost everything. The app is great. The app,
they can go on, they can upload documents or the app. So they don't need to ask questions and
not stop. One of the biggest problems though is that most people don't have the ability one
to even get on their phones to verify what is going on. How does people even know this
location exists? So that would be the news media's job. They don't have a way to charge the phone
even if they do have it and they definitely don't have television so that they can watch the news
media. I don't understand how they're saying that's the media's job to tell people we're here and where
we are. That's not FEMA's job. They don't have power out of the news media. I mean how about the
people who, oh yeah, the FEMA assistance don't have power. The people who, oh yeah, the FEMA
assistance don't have power. The reason I'm tossing in this Glenn Beck thing is because
he and Congressman Mills asked basic ask questions of these people. Basic questions.
And I swear you could put the soundtrack to the sitcom The Office underneath this interaction
that they had because that's the level of competence this situation had. Okay, first of all they put
their truck in a place where it's not in the main area. Mills is like, you know, isn't it a
little common sense to maybe put the truck where people can freaking see it? I mean how
do people know you're here? Where did we just got here? Oh, you just got here? We were here yesterday.
Yeah. And today's our first day with this unit. Yeah. And then tomorrow we're going to move
this unit up by the car wash. Yesterday we couldn't do anything besides give them the
information because we didn't have any Wi-Fi. Right. I will say unless just someone who's,
we got lucky enough Glenn actually spotted it before I did. But I think even having this
vehicle more towards the front of the road where people even know that it exists
for visibility with people coming by might actually. We were in a van with eight people.
I was the only one that saw it. That's what we're going to do. That's what we got to do.
The guy that's running the parking lot is a different guy. I didn't know that. He said
so the car wash would be better and I was like boy that's really smart. And then they're
talking about how it's not their job to tell people they're there. That's the
media's job to tell people where they are. How does people even know this location exists?
So that would be the newest media's job. They're just supposed to sit there. They're just show up,
park their car in some place no one's looking and then fact everyone to figure it out.
That would be the newest media's job to tell everyone they don't have power.
That's basically what it sounds like. We would be surprised. You would be surprised.
They sit in their cars to charge their phones and listen to the radio. Then he says they're
going to go door-to-door. Those who won are either cut off in the location because they're
still rebuilding roads, obviously, or it doesn't have power, won't know about even right where this
truck exists or if it doesn't exist. There is no way actually. So we're DSA disaster
survivors. So what we actually do, we work items like these and we actually go door-to-door.
We go door-to-door and try to knock on every door in the county. And we go at the
direction usually of the emergency manager because the fire chiefs are going to tell
us where people are, where things are devastated. So we literally go door-to-door.
Then he says, well, no, maybe you should talk to my supervisor over there or whatever.
So when does that start? That's way above my head. You're talking to Pion Eddie.
Yeah. You're not talking. Do you want to talk to my crew? Do you want to talk to my crew?
Did they talk to her? She says some stuff about going door-to-door.
We're wondering. We just asked, when do you guys go door-to-door? He was telling that.
After we get the general stuff done, you know, we got to hit the mass people first,
wherever the mass people are. So the mass people are here. Let's get them into the system as
quickly as possible. Once we get the masses done. Actually go door-to-door. Then she says,
no, we don't go door-to-door. That's not my situation. That's someone else's situation.
We don't necessarily go door-to-door. It's not my contract anyways. There's 23 different
contracts. Oh, I know. I understand how the bureaucratic levels of departments work.
I mean, it's just like this bumbling clown show of ridiculous nonsense. I mean,
but they got to make sure and sign people up and get them into the system. Make them apply.
Make them prove everything because, you know, we wouldn't want fraud. And I'm sure all of
these people, as soon as they saw the giant wall of water and mud rushing at them full blast
with almost no warning, I'm sure the first thing they did was go grab every important document they
have that FEMA is going to require for them to sign up for this process. I'm sure they went and did
that. I'm sure every single person who was involved in this had all of that just on their
person already. They probably just carry that around with them all the time like you do. Actually
go door-to-door. We go door-to-door. Literally go door-to-door. Then we start going door-to-
door. We don't necessarily go door-to-door. Actually, you know what? No. I think my
favorite clip of this interaction is when she says, well, we're coming in from Charlotte
and we're going to start around nine, 10 o'clock, but we got to get out of here by five because,
you know, we start tearing down. We got to go home. We got, we got lives to live and things to do.
And okay. So that's where we're going to be set up tomorrow. And we should be doing
registrations. Well, we'll be here between nine and 10. We're all coming in from Charlotte.
He'll be here a little bit earlier. And then we'll start tearing down
about five o'clock so that we can get out of here. Great. Other people are going to be sleeping in
their car tonight, but whatever. You know, not my problem. Just I don't, what is this joke?
Because it's a sick joke. Okay, so I need to fill out a form. I need to scan a flyer. Yeah. How
do I know this exists? Oh, the local media. Okay. Well, they don't have power. Yeah.
They might not have a vehicle. Right. So I saw a lot of them washed away. That's right.
So if you're a victim of a disaster, better make sure that happens between nine and five because,
you know, they got things to do. They got lives to live. They got to come all the way from Charlotte.
How sad is it to get your ass so owned that a congressman comes down and give you
literally the most obvious advice ever uttered about how to do your own job.
This vehicle more towards the front of the road where people even know that it exists.
Maybe you want to put the truck where people can see it. I was like, boy, that's really smart.
I am not saying there aren't some good people in that age because every place has good people,
but this, this is a very bad look. And I'm telling you right now, this was not planned.
They did this to themselves. These are basic questions that they should be able to easily
answer. I mean, this is just unbelievably mind numbingly stupid. Okay. And the longer I watch
it, the more I feel like it is sucking IQ points out of my brain. I think if everyone found
out how much money these people make to do this job or not do it or sort of do it or whatever you
call this interaction, they'd probably want to punch themselves in the face. We lost everything,
family, friends, homes, our jobs, everything, our animals. We have nothing. We got family
members floating down the river. And amidst all of this, you had the FEMA director go on
national television and whine about her agency being criticized.
So much is going viral online as well. One user suggested yesterday that a militia should go
against FEMA. It got more than half a million views. What kind of impact has this had on the
recovery effort? It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to
be able to go out there. But it's also demoralizing to all of the first responders that have been
out there in their communities, helping people, FEMA staff, volunteers, the private sector that
are working side by side with local officials to go out and help people. I need to make sure I
can get the resources to where they needed. And when you have this dangerous rhetoric,
like you're hearing, it creates fear in our own employees. And we need to make sure
we're getting help to the people who need it. Because there's not enough victims on the ground
right now. She's got to go ahead and make them be the victim. These people are on f***ing
believable. She is right about one thing though, which I posted earlier. And that's
she should make sure she can get the resources to people who need it because it's
being reported that they can't go around road closed signs. So, you know, they're not
going door to door. We don't necessarily go door to door. A lot of people don't have doors.
And they're not going to get to a person if it requires anything. And by the way,
when I posted this clip of the FEMA director, somebody came in and said, this is crazy.
Nobody in those areas was complaining about FEMA. They were waiting desperately for their
help. They did not complain until it was once again, like always, like we're all used to by now,
after years and years of watching this happen to people, disaster after disaster after disaster,
until FEMA's delayed response, parent inaction in the worst hit areas, poor strategy and lack
of connection to reality for victims needs during and after a disaster became apparent.
You could copy that comment that he just left and you could paste it over every single
disaster that has happened this entire century so far. It's not going to get better. This isn't
getting better. This is like the slow motion Hindenburg of agencies. And you know, if it was
just some little whatever agency, paperwork reflects the demands of our citizens for service
from their government. They just push paper around in pneumatic tubes all day like the
Brazil movie. That would be one thing, but it's not. It's the agency that's supposed to deal
with emergency management. And what they've had in this particular case is their asses handed
to them on a platter by civilians who are doing all of the heavy lifting.
And the reason FEMA is so universally lowed is because every single time there's a disaster
going on for forever now, stories come out afterwards about evidence of fraud. Like for
example, during Hurricane Sandy, 60 minutes did a whole thing on it. FEMA evidence of fraud
in Hurricane Sandy reports. Thousands of people who've been denied flood insurance claims for homes
destroyed by Hurricane Sandy have been crying fraud. Now the executive in charge of the federal
emergency management agency's insurance program tells 60 minutes he has seen evidence of fraud
in reports used to deny them their insurance payouts. In 2018, in an internal report which
has now been deleted off of FEMA's website, I had to go through archive.org to get it.
The agency admitted disaster relief failures in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, including the
rerouting of Puerto Rico's supplies to the Virgin Islands leaving their stash of emergency supplies
dangerously low and admitting that because they decided to take on a more direct role
in coordinating supply delivery instead of letting local agencies handle it,
that it actually caused delays, that they had challenges tracking the resources.
And if that sounds familiar to you, it might be because if you'll recall,
in 2020, they ended up finding a massive amount of supplies locked up in a 43,000 square foot
warehouse in Puerto Rico where they'd just been sitting there untouched ever since Hurricane
Maria hit in September 2017. And we all remember after Hurricane
Katrina, when George W. Bush said, you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie, which
and Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job, became the sarcastic catchphrase for FEMA's
botched response to Hurricane Katrina. I think we all remember that one. It's gone down in history.
And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
The FEMA director is working 24.
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
And there are headlines where they claim they've learned from their failure.
But you know what? No, I don't think they have. And to show you how much they haven't
learned from their failure, it has now come out that FEMA is literally sitting on billions of
dollars in unused disaster funds that are just sitting in a government account,
not being used for anything. And they won't release those funds to be used for this.
This actually came out buried in an August report from the Department of Homeland Security's
Office of Inspector General, which found 8.3 billion dollars that's been sitting there for
disasters that were declared in 2012 or earlier. And as real clear investigations reports,
this is an age old game that happens and it doesn't matter what administration it is.
But this audit actually came out just a couple of months ago showing that they
have 8 billion dollars in funding basically lying around not being used because they've
already promised it to victims of storms from 2012 or earlier. So you've got storms like Hurricane
Katrina, Hurricane Sandy caused a ton of damage. Now that money still hasn't been spent because
the construction projects to recover from those hurricanes have been delayed so many years and
FEMA is not enforcing those deadlines. So they set the deadline originally, they said,
okay, you have until say 2020, 2021 to spend this money, use it to recover from the storm.
When that doesn't happen, instead of saying, okay, too bad, you took too long,
now we're going to take the money away. They just award deadline extensions based on what
auditors say working for FEMA are subjective criteria. So they say, okay, now you can
have until 2030 to spend this money, it's fine. So it just keeps sitting around in these
government bank accounts, not being used to help anyone, not going towards a lien,
just a number on a piece of paper pretty much. So when Majorca said they're expecting another
hurricane and don't have the funds to cover it, that's actually not the case. They do.
They're just not using them. And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. And yet
we have the FEMA director going on TV whining about how they're the victim.
It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees.
And by the way, guys, this agency gets $30 billion a year, okay? $30 billion a year.
What for? We lost everything, family, friends, homes, our jobs, everything, our animals.
We have nothing. You know what FEMA just told us. And so at the same time, you have Americans on
the ground affected by this who don't have an ability to go online or download their app or
they have to take pictures with their phone of the flyer to even get the information.
At the same time, this administration is announcing $157 million more bringing the
total to $385 million specifically for essential needs such as food, water, and shelter to
the people of Lebanon. Rightfully, you have people on the ground in North Carolina asking,
are they going to make those people go online and download an app to apply? Are we going to make
them apply? Are we going to make them go online and fill out applications for this assistance?
No, no, not. Still have to go through and verify the damages that have been done, you know,
add that you own the house and that you are the renter. So that you can limit the amount
of fraud we've seen in other areas. We've got it. Thank you very much.
Absolutely. And you want to know why we, the real American people, don't like you.
We're saying the money is needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants.
What a ridiculous thing to say. It's not true.
We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting
another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds
to make it through the season. And now with the Biden era, FEMA has taken on new unprecedented
roles without any clear constitutional basis and well outside of the popular conception
of their agency's purpose. A key example of this is the Biden administration's Justice 40
initiative operated within FEMA as the BRIC, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities
Grant Program, has already funneled billions of dollars into what is basically an embarrassing
misuse of public funds. And sure, that headline came out of Fox News, who obviously opposed the
Biden administration. But come on. I mean, look at what is happening. It reeks of mission creep.
The Biden administration's Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, their 2022 to 2026
strategic plan outlines three ambitious goals with the first focusing on equity as the death toll
from the hurricane Helene surpasses 100. That was several days ago. FEMA's first goal under
this initiative is to instill equity as the foundation of emergency management.
The second is to lead the whole community in climate resilience. And the third aims to promote
and sustain a ready FEMA and a prepared nation. Third, third is the readiness of FEMA and a
prepared nation. The third is actual disaster relief response. The first and second agenda
points are purely political equity along some kind of identity politics basis and climate change
climate change everything through the lens of climate change actual disaster response. Third,
maybe when you're done with that, by the way, it's a job that they can never finish. Goal one,
instill equity as a foundation of emergency management. Yes, the actual direct disaster
relief appears to be downgraded next to FEMA's goals of funding selected quote, disadvantaged
communities based on qualifiers such as susceptibility to climate change and socioeconomic
and identity politics, including race and gender. This stuff over the places who actually need
direct relief after they actually suffered weather events and natural disasters after
something actually happened. The places where something actually happened have been put in the
back seat as this agency and this administration have focused on ideological heavily politicized
goals instead of actually just responding to the emergencies they were set up to deal with.
It's incredible. It is embarrassing. I can't believe I'm reading this stuff. I kind of can,
but apparently, based on these documents, FEMA's primary goal is apparently a highly
politicized picking of winners and losers under this misguided and contradictory notion of equity.
They're using skewed politicized data to choose quote, disadvantaged communities
in the name of equity. It's not equal. It's not fair. It's not merit based. They're picking
winners and losers, but they call it equity, whatever, against its core mission of disaster
response, which had apparently back seated as much as 40% of FEMA's budget goes to communities that
have been classified as eligible for funds based on highly dubious criteria that miss the point of
helping those communities that have actually suffered emergency disasters. Why else do you exist,
FEMA communities not designated as quote, disadvantaged, don't qualify for these programs
so they don't get the money in spite of what they may have suffered in spite of whatever catastrophes
that FEMA would be really any kind of justified and proper and in line with their mission
and using taxpayer dollars to address. I browse a little bit there in North Carolina,
some of the areas in Texas that I'm familiar with, a little bit around the country,
different places where they've applied a map, a so-called climate and economic justice
screening tool that breaks down areas. Each city might have several dozen census data kind of mapped
areas where they have shaded off areas designated as disadvantaged and marked others as not
disadvantaged. And at best, if they're even doing what they claim to do, they're addressing
systemic problems that are hardly the purview of the federal emergency management agency,
however you want to slice it, but they're carving up a billion dollars a year of federal money
and sending it to very selective, very picking of winners and losers communities that have applied
for these funds. It's just categorically full. No, Biden did not take FEMA relief money
to use on migrants. Funding is also available through FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter
Program to eligible local governments and non-for-profit organizations upon request
to support humanitarian relief for migrants. And that OBegotten policy pales in comparison to the
even more controversial FEMA policies under the Biden administration and funding and fostering
an unprecedented, unmitigated wave of undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants, whatever
you want to call them through the Shelter and Services Program. Congress allocated
roughly a billion dollars for migrant assistance. The Shelter and Service Program helps distribute
funds to help communities provide services to migrants, such as temporary shelter, food,
and urgent medical care. And FEMA says on its website that disaster relief money has not
been diverted for other non-disaster related efforts. This is Savannah Hernandez in Brunswick,
Maine reporting to you from the apartments where migrants are getting their rent paid for
up to two years. Now, I wanted to give you guys a first inside look at these units.
The migrants shared with us that they come furnished, so they have a flat screen TV in there,
couches, tables and chairs. We also asked them as well, hey, are you paying utilities here?
They shared with us that no, they do not have a water bill. They do not have an electricity
bill. We don't pay anything. Because there is a housing crisis going on currently for
residents, and these buildings were initially created for main residents, but then it was
decided that homeless migrants would be living here. Now, as an American, you can rent out one of
these units, but a one bedroom is going to run you about $1,800 and a two bedroom is going to run
you about $2,300. This is the same county that has received FEMA funding from that same program
that spent almost a billion dollars through the fiscal year of 2023 and 2024
on sheltering illegal immigrants throughout the United States of America.
And then float in funds to handle these people that weren't really supposed to be coming in,
but they knew they were coming and they just opened the gates for it.
FEMA said, and you can take this as a direct quote, said that they are too tied up at the border
to send any more representatives. Yeah, at the border. So anyhow, I guess border control
Trump's whatever's going on here. That program, shelter and services has been jointly operated
in the Biden administration by FEMA and the Customs and Border Patrol, and camera showed
waves of those immigrants who are being directly ushered into the country by Customs and Border
Protection officers who've been dicks to me every time I've been at the border,
you know, and they're letting them in and high fiving. It says if they're
winking at these people that they're elevating the perception of this problem in anticipation of
a response that's coming. Of course, these people are human beings. I'm very sympathetic to the
humanistic nature of this, but there's a pre planned response going on here. There's another
level of the surveillance society solution that's going to further erode freedoms for
all Americans, including newly immigrated, including those who've been here since
the founding of the country. In this issue that's been heavily promoted on TV and heavily politicized,
it's been riling up the Trump right on the basis of this issue blatantly, flamboyantly
exacerbated under the Biden administration. And it's cheering on what is soon to be the
implementation of a biometric ID check at the border, a Trump policy for digital control overlay
that's been planned all along. And really it didn't originate with Trump either. It goes back
at least to the Clinton and Bush administrations. I guess it depends on when the actual technology
was thought of. These are some of the deeper things going on as this immediate emergency
takes place. You look at the absurd policies, the waste of money and resources and the contempt
for people. This is the kind of context that comes to mind when we learn here in the middle
of hurricane season that FEMA has run out of money again for the second year in a row.
What are they spending their money on? Stuff that's going to make people really pissed off,
and should. The Biden administration's FEMA equity plan faces backlash amid historic
hurricane damage. What do you expect? What do you expect? So it's not just Fox News,
actually. A shameful embarrassment as people in need in North Carolina and the Southern
States on the coast still have been missing, have been unable to obtain food and water.
We have got to rebuild everything. And are now enduring uninsured losses of their home. Stuff
that isn't going to be covered. My uncle has lived in St. Pete, Florida for his entire adult life.
So quite some time. He's 73 years old. He actually worked for the city
in public transit for 20 years. Home was completely destroyed in Helene. He had evacuated,
did what he was supposed to do. He's up in a hotel. And paying for the hotel himself
comes back to his home and it's gutted. Basically, all his possessions are gone.
The home is uninhabitable. FEMA comes in. They're there for five minutes. They didn't even go
through the whole home. They tell him it'll be eight to 10 business days before you hear
anything. We're going to go back and look at everything. We'll let you know. All right,
cool. He gets an email this morning with the results of what FEMA is going to give to him.
My uncle, and a lifelong American citizen, good, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth kind of fella,
guess how much they're going to give him? $2,600. The confusion of refusing help
from local people, from local organizations, when the agency cries for more money, money and power,
that is the money and power under the pretense that it intends to help the communities of
this country. What is it actually doing? And by the way, this is money that the federal government
is shoveling towards them under the pretense that this agency actually intends to help the
communities of this country. And that the reason they're not helping is because of lack of money.
But when they're actually on the ground, how do they actually behave?
And Governor, as you and I talked to President Biden and Vice President Harris,
they have committed that we will be here to provide any resource you need
until all of their needs are met. I don't know. I guess it depends if you just believe some kind
of straightforward mainstream account or if you try to actually look at what's going on.
Yeah. An American citizen is worth $2,600 to our government.
FEMA will continue to ask for immediate needs funding and they'll pretty much get it. I
don't think they've ever been refused. But that's only whenever and wherever specifically
county by county that the president officially declares an emergency and some of the places hit
by this hurricane were not in those declarations, by the way. This is the context in which Congress
has set up FEMA for failure. They've set them up to fail with one side trying to defund them
and the other trying to expand their powers and spending into ridiculous unrelated untenable
creeping mission areas, squabbles and funding fights over extremes in position politicized to
people's detriment dysfunctional in so many ways. But they're also playing with our sense of reality
and try to interfere with our ability to question things and toy with our sense of whether or
not we're imagining things. President Biden is fond of saying show me your budget and I will
tell you what you value. If he's got money for people in Lebanon right now without Congress having
to come back, what does it say about his values? There's not enough money right now for people in
North Carolina. That's not misinformation. Wait, no, that is your whole premise of the question
is misinformation, sir. What you don't, yes, yes, it's misinformation. I just mentioned
I just mentioned to you that we provided more than $200 million to folks who are
impacted in the area and I just shared with you that people are deciding not to,
people are deciding not to, not to. President Biden has heard in Congress that there's not
enough money to help people in North Carolina. We're talking about the SBA disaster loan.
That's money for people in North Carolina. And that's important and people in North Carolina
need that. Wait, this is nothing new. Peter, this is nothing new. Congress comes together,
they provide money, millions of dollars for disaster relief. We're asking them to do the job
that they have been doing for some time. The president's letter is not misinformation. Would
you agree? No, the way you're asking me the question is misinformation. There is money that we are
allocating to the impacted areas and there's money there to help people who truly need it.
There are survivors who need the funding, who need the funding. And it's there. What's happening
is outrageous. What's happening is so infuriating and contemptible and it's happened before and
it's going to happen again. It looks like it might be happening right now because things are not set
up in a way that they could be called into account. You can't call out these things with
the system they've set up. They've built in a protection for their lives. They've built in
the inability for regular people to question what's happening. And FEMA and the federal
government are delivering a major disappointment and failure in response to this emergency.
Perhaps that's to be expected at this point. I've often wondered if they did nothing at all if
it wouldn't be better sometimes. FEMA is relatively recent as federal agencies go,
though disasters are certainly not new nor government mismanagement of them.
It was only formed in 1979 towards the end of the Carter era. But since then a whole
new era has come with the Bush years and the Patriot Act combining FEMA and dozens of other
agencies under the Homeland Security umbrella. If you see something suspicious, say something
immediately. A meta federal agency formed that for a time was almost beyond questioning.
Here somebody in your department could have, should have or would have known
about the operation. Representative, we have hundreds of operations and thousands of
agents on a daily basis. So, but not beyond embarrassment. Hurricane Katrina was a major
disaster, obviously, that the New Orleans community will probably never quite move on from.
And the rest of the public mind will only just gradually forget. The disastrous response cost a
great deal of lives and was very revealing of what FEMA is capable of. FEMA's true nature.
Even after the failed levies and the gun confiscation. We'll be able to be armed.
We'll take all weapons. Police officers shooting victims trying to cross the
bridge to reach safety. The inhuman things that happened at the Superdome. Remember that later
once everything had settled and dislocated people were living in FEMA trailers that were
provided for the victims. That those in turn the trailers themselves paid for by federal
dollars to relieve people in need. That those turned out to be making people sick
in of themselves because of the toxic stuff inside those trailers.
Formaldehyde is an off-gassing product of I think the particle board and probably some of the other
synthetic parts of the trailer. Is this incompetence? Is it what is really going on?
Yeah. How much in disbelief should we be that that happened? What are the odds? I don't know.
FEMA's inhumane mismanagement was typical of government on too big of a scale.
Local response teams and community churches and charities
were much more humane and much better at addressing people's needs because
they're very close to average people. They're on the ground. They're not at the top of some
hierarchy. We said to how I see it. The topic itself of Katrina turned into a nested
tesseract of corruption and neglect. So much so that post-Katrina legislation played upon this
complex outrage in the form of legislative reform. For better? For worse? Well, have things gotten
better? Besides the agency's draconian service to the Homeland Security and Patriot Act fascist
surveillance state overlay, which was very significant until it became basically normalized
with the generation of Americans who learned to accept and cooperate with it,
the Katrina debacle revealed the nature of big government at the very point at which
average Americans who find themselves on the path of disaster more or less by happenstance
when those people are at their most vulnerable. It's the point of transaction for common
people with the federal government when they're actually in need and the confrontation,
the clash between the image of good government and the American way is clearly devastating for many.
Disillusionment, the reality of big government control. It's almost too much to believe,
but it keeps happening. As a general observation, though many human individuals who are people
work on behalf of the feds. The feds as an institution are not there in the spirit of
helping people as a community or as individuals with personal sanctimony and self-respect.
The fed machine can't compute or think that way. It's a fundamentally different creature
than the people who comprise our nation. This entity who only knows its own terms of power
tends naturally to assert control, like it's a turf war, work in inefficiencies at best
and negligent cruelties towards its darker ends. This system only knows assistance on
their own terms. The bureaucratic machine seeks its own continuation of power and has
an appetite to ever increase its budget, scope, and jurisdiction. Plenty of people choose to
remain ignorant of this nature, but it's to their own peril.
At a minimum, are they giving assistance in a timely or reasonable manner?
While we contemplate what else they might be doing, we have to ask,
why is the immediate rescue element so often hampered by bureaucratic delay,
red tape, and jurisdictional dispute? If there's one maxim that's held true in US history,
in spite of changing times and attitudes, it's that the federal government rules by
emergency, problem, reaction, solution, never, never let a good crisis go to waste.
Maybe that sounds too esoteric. Disasters plus crisis generate opportunities to govern.
Trastic times call for drastic measures and new powers can be cultivated and engineered
like a carefully planted crop. I think you all know that I've always felt the
nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
I think people always want flashy conspiracy theories, something sexy, something Hollywood can
make a blockbuster out of, but if you ever talk to people like Katharine Austin-Fitz, you'll find
out right away that what's really going on is burying people in some kind of financial minutia
that most people fall asleep listening to so they don't hear the punchline when it comes.
Scott Richardson and Meta Gatschenberger took a few seconds to take in what's left
of the place they called home for 25 years. And unbelievably, or believably, I guess depending
on how much of a capacity you have to be shocked anymore, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, you have
insurance companies calling people up who have had their house slide off a mountain
and cancel their homeowner's insurance policies on them.
Couples Home is one of thousands destroyed by a landslide caused by Hurricane Helene,
so just days after the storm hit, their insurance company canceled their homeowner's policy despite
the couple not having landslide coverage. And earlier this year, the North Carolina Rate
Bureau proposed a massive hike in people's homeowner's insurance rates to an average
tune of 42.2%. On the coastal areas, all the way up to 99.4% in places.
Insurance for North Carolina homeowners could be going up. Insurance companies are asking
the state to let them raise rates by an average of 42%. That's how much the state's average
homeowner's insurance increase would go up if it gets approved. At today's public forum,
several people spoke out against the proposed hike, with many saying that's outrageous.
This planned hike is nothing short of bonkers.
We find this proposed increase by the rate board to be outrageous.
We've heard words like devastating from the public comment.
Do you all realistically think the customers can afford increases that high?
That's not really for us to decide. I mean, that's what the commissioner does.
But it's regulated in North Carolina, so the insurance commissioner rejected it,
saying the proposed rates were excessive and unfairly discriminatory.
But that rejection triggered a judicial hearing process on it. So it's not final.
Now they have to have a hearing, which is open to the public.
However, it's been scheduled for October 7th for months.
And they did not reschedule it after Haleen, which means a whole lot of the people who
were probably going to go attend that are not going to be able to now.
This made people extremely angry when this was announced.
They had 24,000 emails of people who were upset and hundreds of people who wrote in
and actually mailed something physically to express their concern
over not being able to afford these hikes. So they knew people were really,
really upset about this. But now that this hurricane has happened,
those people are probably not going to be able to attend.
On top of that in 2023 nationwide, which claims to be on your side,
dropped over 10,500 North Carolina homeowners from their policies.
They just dropped them. And over half of them were due to hurricane risks,
which is something by the way that Florida homeowners know all about,
considering more than 30 insurance companies have now either fully or partially pulled out
of Florida altogether. And Florida now has the highest insurance costs in the entire country
with the average homeowner paying over $10,000 a year in 2023. But worse than that is mudslides
and floods are not covered by the average homeowner policy. That is a separate policy that you
have to get through the National Flood Insurance Program that's run out of FEMA,
which apparently hardly anybody has. North Carolina and many other states,
flood insurance is not required unless the bank requires it. In fact, less than 3% of properties
in the state have that insurance. So many, many people were not protected.
It had basic homeowners insurance, including fire and theft, but no landslide or flood
insurance. The National Flood Insurance Program says across seven affected states,
less than 1% of homes in the inland counties affected by the storm had flood insurance.
And in fact, according to FEMA, just 4% of homeowners even have this insurance.
Flood insurance is not mandatory for most people, although it is if you have a government-backed
mortgage. But it's all based on flood zones that are set by FEMA. And the data for those
is based on extremely outdated flood plain maps, which have not taken any of the weather in recent
years into account. And Wired actually quoted a law professor from the University of North
Carolina as saying, the biggest non-secret in Washington for decades is how hopelessly out
of date these flood maps are. And FEMA knows their flood maps aren't up to date.
And it was reported that the director of FEMA knew it in 2022. They've been knowing this for years
and they haven't updated it or fixed it. So the bottom line here is there are a whole lot of
people who are not going to be covered after this event. And if your house doesn't get completely
wiped out from it, getting water in your house can do tens if not hundreds of thousands
of dollars in damage to a house. And there's just not a lot of people sitting around with
hundreds of thousands of dollars ready to pay out of pocket to fix these things. So what's going to
happen to their house? What's going to happen to their land? Because somewhere somebody had
this data and they recognized that a lot of these people were not going to be covered after
this happened. Many homeowners will be unable to afford to rebuild and are now at risk of being
forced to move out of the area altogether. Start over with nothing or next to nothing
and to leave the area that for many people their families have been part of for generations and
generations. That's what's happening here. It's such a cluster you would think that
this was the most inept coordination of resources ever
or the most Machiavellian evil. I don't know. I just don't I don't know.
Finally, before I close out this installment, I just want to say I had someone come on social
media today and list off to me all of the things that local county and even North Carolina
states authorities have been doing to help the situation and say to me that I basically need
to stop criticizing an obviously flawed executive branch. This was the end of the that thread.
I needed to provide one benefit to the survivors by criticizing an obviously flawed
executive branch. What my behavior is lowering morale, delaying recovery and harming survivors.
That's what I was told today. I'm sorry, but after everything that I have seen,
everybody I have talked to hours upon hours of researching what is going on on the ground there,
it was all I could do not to just scream through my screen to the point that it exploded.
The citizen response is amazing. I've seen some amazing responses from local government.
You know, the problem is not citizens and local government, although questionable on the North
Carolina Guard there with rotor washing the United Cajun Navy, but that aside, okay, it's not about
it's not about the citizens stepping up. They're amazing. It is about what the bloated,
the viathan federal government that is funded to the tune of trillions of taxpayer dollars
every year did and did not do. And I wrote back and I said with all due respect, you had
troops not deployed for five days, hundreds of Tennessee Guard deployed to the Middle East
after the storm hit FEMA not showing up until the sixth. They're sitting on $8 billion in surplus
funds while they fund housing for migrants that are here illegally. All of this is on record.
You have dozens of people on the ground, more than dozens. I can't keep track of how many
videos I have seen from people on the ground saying that their disaster efforts, their aid
efforts are being hampered. Okay, it's not a local issue. It's a federal issue. Criticizing
an obviously flawed executive branch is because if we don't criticize it now while it's happening,
not only will it just get buried when the next one happens and the next one and the next one
and the next one and forgotten, but it will just keep happening. It will get worse. It will
get worse. It has gotten worse. This is not better than Katrina guys. This is not better.
Okay. Things have not gotten better and there were legislative, you know, changes and things.
None of that has fixed what this is. This is getting worse. It happens every time. It happens so
much. It's to the point now where it's expected for it to be bad. That is not how things should
be. So not only will this happen again, but it will get worse if we don't hold these people
accountable by criticizing it right now while it's happening. And if social media had existed
at the time of Katrina widespread in the way it does now, more probably would have been done,
you know, but now we can see it. We can see it all happening. It's unfolding in real time in front
of our eyes. Accountability saves lives. That is what the media is supposed to be doing, by the
way. They're supposed to be holding government accountable. That is what they're not playing
catch all and making excuses and burying and blackholing every mistake. They're supposed
to be holding them accountable. That is what the fourth branch of government that the unofficial
fourth branch of the media was supposed to be. That is the point of it is to hold them accountable.
So you criticize now. Okay. Accountability saves lives. Holding this government accountable
saves lives because hopefully they don't do this again in the future because there will be
too much of an outcry to let them get away with it and continue getting away with it as
they have gotten away with it for decades now. Accountability saves lives. This response did
not save lives. And in fact, lives may have been lost because of this response. Okay. That is why.
That is why that is my excuse, my one benefit to the survivors for criticizing and obviously
flawed executive branch. And I will keep doing it because I am just not going to stop about
this. All right. So I am sorry if I have done anything to lower anyone's morale, but I do not
think I am the one on the hook for this. I think this is a government issue and it needs to be
fixed. This is not right. And the media is not going to tell anybody that they're going to sit
there like they always do and make excuses for this and then wash it away with the next thing
that happens they could distract everybody with because that is what they always do.
You know, I didn't spend the last like 24 hours only taking breaks to eat and go to the bathroom
trying to make this video because I want to demoralize people in a horrible disaster situation.
I made this video because I don't want this to keep happening to people. I don't want this
to be the way we live in this country. That is why I made this video because I want these
people to survive. Because I don't want things to be this way and people don't deserve things to be
this way. So that's why. That's why.