The bureaucracies of natural disasters

0:00Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print, postage, and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sink your contacts into the address book. Get detailed accounting insights and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered. All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the four million businesses using stamps.com right now with Code Podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com Code Podcast. Texas and fees apply. The bureaucracies of natural disasters, that's the topic of today's book and I'm going to tell you a host, Cheryl, tell me, giving you a Christian conservative book of today's news, politics, culture, and events think back over the years in the number of times that whether disasters have struck at various states, New Orleans, Hawaii, California, Texas, and the millions upon millions upon billions of dollars that are supposedly supposed to

1:00flow from the government, straight into the hands of the people so they can rebuild. And yet here we are years later and some of those same states are still in so-called rebuilding mode or barely rebuilding at all. Why is that? Well the bureaucracy, that's why. And before I get into more of that, I want to quickly mention, if you like Bold and Blunt, you may get Bold and Blunt at Real Life Network, that's RLN, that is the faith-based news outreach of Pastor Jack Hibbs's Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills Church in California, great news there, great faith-based news. Bold and Blunt has been part of its lineup for a very long time now. You may also get Bold and Blunt at WashingtonTimes.com where if you have not subscribed to my best of Cheryl Chumley newsletter, I would encourage you to go there and click on the newsletter

2:01link on the Washington Times page and just enter your email address and you'll get delivered to your email box, my commentaries, my Bold and Blunt audio versions, and my Bold and Blunt video versions, right to your email box delivered, you don't even have to do anything. But you can also get Bold and Blunt wherever podcasts are available, all you have to do is search for it online and you'll see all these places. You can sign up to have it delivered to your email box or get easy access. So it's been one year since wildfires devastated Los Angeles, what have we learned? That is a headline that came out January of this year from Columbia Climate School, news.climate.columbia.edu and yada yada. So what have we learned? Let me read a little bit from this piece just to refresh your memory about those wildfires.

3:02The wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles a year ago, well a year and a half ago now, heading on, right? We're heading into October. So it's very nearly getting to be two years ago, but anyhow, this January, the wildfires that ravaged LA a year ago were among the worst in California's history. They were exasperated by persistent drought, a build up of vegetation and Santa Ana winds which at times exceeded 80 miles per hour, the most damaging fires which reduced all to the dina and Pacific palisades, palisades, excuse me to ashes were finally extinguished. On January 31st, 2025, a year later, a year and a half later going on two years later, what have we learned about the wildfires and their aftermath still reading? Approximately 59 square miles burned and estimated 440 people died.

4:0631 as a result of direct contact with the fires, others as a result of heart and lung conditions and of the aggravated, excuse me, by the smoke and stress or breakdowns in the healthcare and mental healthcare systems. More than 200,000 people were forced from their homes in as of October, this is going back last October, about 70% of residents remained displaced. Remember, we had headlines in the months after that of Hollywood celebrities and the rich and elite coming out and actually criticizing Democrat governor Gavin Newsom for his so-called slow rebuilding and the mayor of LA who had hopped on a plane and taken off somewhere for a vacation as her city burned. And it's funny how normally Democrats and normally leftist leaning voters will stay silent

5:11when disasters hit a Republican controlled state like Texas, right? But when it hits home, all of a sudden they're criticizing their own Democratic leaders. It's interesting how that happens, but when that does happen, you need to sit up and take notice because the takeaway is that Democrats are so feckless in their response and in their public service that when even their own voters get upset, you know that they've really screwed up. And I think that's a little bit more from here. Over 17,000 homes were destroyed. Imagine that. What a wildfire and those were beautiful homes too, right? Seriously damaged or rendered unenhabitable. The tons of ash and debris left behind were laden with toxic material because many homes were built before 1975 and constructed with lead paint and toxins as bestos, both of which are now banned by the EPA.

6:12Hazardous material like asbestos, batteries and propane tanks was initially removed by the EPA and by September the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had cleared 2.6 million tons of ash, debris and contaminated soil from the area. There was also a drinking water quality issue, an air quality issue. It just went on and on. So where does that rebuild stand now? That was in January and now Governor Gavin Newsom may, May 8, 2026, his website, his governor's website in California put this out. Governor requests extension of FEMA disaster funding to help survivors of LA wildfires. California is requesting a 12 month extension of federal disaster assistance for LA fire

7:15survivors to ensure thousands of families can continue accessing housing and financial support as they rebuild. If you're like me, you wonder, why does it take so long? Why does it take so long for the billions and billions of dollars that flow into federal disaster and emergency response agencies? Money supplied by taxpayers. Why does it take so long to flow into the hands of people who need it most? The homeowners, the citizens, the business owners, the ones who, through no fault of their own are suddenly left homeless, suddenly have no place to live, have no place to work. Why does it take so long to get the money that is supposed to be for them to actually get to them? bureaucracy, right? bureaucracy. Reading from this Governor website still, thousands of Californians are still navigating

8:20the long road to recovery after these devastating fires. We're doing everything in our power, Governor Gavin Newsom said. To support survivors, but they need continued federal support to rebuild safely and fully. Cutting off assistance now would leave families without the resources they need at a critical moment in their recovery. Well, cheese, it just seems like a very long time has passed and why hasn't money gone from the state into the hands of those who need it most. Well, FEMA, FEMA is a cash cow. So FEMA is doing what FEMA does, sending money, right, dispersing money. But there are huge walls of bureaucracy to overcome when you're talking about spending FEMA money. And that's part of the problem, right? If you look at natural disaster response time, excuse me, it's really the private sector

9:24that leads and the nonprofit charitable organizations, the ones on the ground that actually get things done a lot faster. And that's a shame because so much of our tax dollars go into supporting FEMA. And so much of this money is just, it's just slowed in getting into the hands of the people who need it most. Just a quick glance at FEMA, just some quick facts about how much money they have. This headline, how much does FEMA spend on disaster response in the USA? This is from USAFacts.org, updated August 17th of this year. So this is very recent. FEMA spends around $8.28 billion per year on average, according to the last five full

10:24years of data in 2025 that would have been around 0.12% of the federal budget. This funding goes toward direct aid for individuals, debris removal, repairing public infrastructure, and projects that reduce future disaster risks. It sounds like a ton of money. Sounds like they're saying all the right things, right? It goes right toward aid for individuals, except it doesn't, right? Ask those individuals out in California. I'm sure you could probably find some still in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina that haven't received aid. And that was years and years ago. But ask the people who are most impacted and ask them, hey, did you get your FEMA check yet to rebuild? No, probably because their mailboxes aren't even existing any longer. But still, there has to be a better way, right? Just a few more facts.

11:2628% is the average share of FEMA funding for individuals in housing between 2021 and 2025. 68% is the average share of FEMA funding for public assistance, 2021 through 2025. And 4% is the average share of FEMA funding for hazard mitigation 2021 through 2025. FEMA has approved 41.4 billion in disaster funding in the last five years of that. 67.6% went to public assistance. And the remaining 32.4% was split between individual and housing assistance, 28.4% and hazard mitigation, 4%. Historically, public assistance gets the most funding and has the biggest variation in

12:28amounts allocated. All right, it all sounds like a very smooth process, a nice streamlined process, very well organized, very well laid out. Check the boxes. You go through A, B, C, and D. If you look up FEMA quickly online, it just has these bullet points that public assistance grants for state and local governments, money to clean up storm debris, funds to rebuild roads and bridges, funds to repair public schools and hospitals, and then it talks about individuals and households get financial aid for basic housing needs, money for temporary rental assistance, funds to repair their damaged homes, help for medical or even personal costs at all. Sounds very organized, right? Sounds very easy, streamlined. If something happens in a natural disaster, wipes out your home, all you got to do is make

13:29a quick phone call and FEMA's got your check in the mail. Well, that just doesn't happen, right? And the reason why buy and large is bureaucracy. And I guess today, David Richardson, he is the former acting head of FEMA, oversaw FEMA as the acting head during the 2025 Texas floods and he has lots of insider information on why it takes so long to get FEMA money into the hands of those who need it most. David, David Richardson, I want to thank you so much for being on Bold and Blind. So great to have you here. Well, Cheryl, thank you for having me. I really appreciate this. Yeah, this is going to be a very interesting discussion because we're going to talk about the bureaucracies of government responding to natural disasters. But you have an insider look at this because you were the former acting head of FEMA during the 2025 Texas floods and just start a little bit from the very beginning, what happened

14:33when this flooding first started occurring? So the flooding, which is not necessarily anything unusual and it was caused by a stalled out storm in the hills of Texas. And we got the first word of this about noon on 4 July. By that time, the flood had already essentially occurred and most of, unfortunately, most of the deaths had already happened because it started sometime about four in the morning. So what we immediately began to do is coordinate search and rescue for the tragedy. I was in contact with Nim Kid, who was the emergency manager in Texas. I was also in contact with Sean Planky, who was overseeing the Coast Guard at the time. And most of the immediate support for that tragedy came from within Texas, FEMA teams

15:36and Texas National Guard, Nim Kid's teams and the National Guard, I'm a question, the Coast Guard in Galveston. So that's where most of the immediate support came from. I think Sean Planky was overseeing the Coast Guard at the time. Last time I talked to him, I think it was like 235 survivors were rescued, some out of trees. So after the first day, really, what it was was a search and rescue operation. Unfortunately, for the people in Texas, primarily a search operation for the bodies of the people who had been killed in the flood. So we were acted immediately on 4 July and then began to coordinate the moving in of search and rescue to Texas over the next few days. And once again, I was in very close contact with Nim Kid. There were some bureaucratic obstacles that we hadn't had to overcome and we overcame

16:37them successfully to make sure the people of Texas got what they wanted when they asked for it. What are some of those bureaucratic obstacles? Because if you look at the response then versus the response say in New Orleans during that hurricane, it's very different. So what are some of the obstacles people might not be aware of? Well, so let me talk about how Texas was handling this first and then I'll get to the obstacle. So when it comes to search and rescue, you don't want to turn it into a pile on sport. In other words, there's only so many search and rescue things that you can fit into the scheme of maneuver as they maneuver down the river doing the search and rescue. So Nim Kid, the state of Texas, they had a scheme to do this or a plan to do this. And so he wanted the search and rescue teams phased in according to his plan. And now it's very close contact with him as we discuss this.

17:38And he needed search and rescue teams from Colorado and Missouri to be on the move by Monday morning so they could get to Texas. They could get briefed on what was going on. And they could replace search and rescue teams from Texas and other places and continue the search and rescue. The challenge we had at FEMA was that DHS headquarters had put in place something called the 100K memo, bear with me for a second. When I was the assistant secretary at Country and Wuppens of Mass Instruction at DHS, I approved all contracts. The budget was only $400 million. The budget for FEMA alone was $30 billion and considered this. Wow. A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. And because I have been working disasters in the three or four or in a month and a half

18:40before after I got to FEMA and the month and a half later when the disaster in Texas took place, I knew what it was going to take to process anything over $100,000 for DHS headquarters to approve. So between four July and when I overrode DHS headquarters on Sunday evening, I believe it was, there was a discussion on how we were going to handle the 100K. And I repeatedly spoke to DHS headquarters and I got various answers back. None of them to my satisfaction. So I gave them a chance to essentially relieve us of the burden of the 100K memo. And when they never did, I simply released the search for rescue and we paid them as we normally would have without the 100K memo in place. What is the memo? What did it stay? The 100K memo stated that the secretary herself would sign off on all contracts over $100,000.

19:49Gotcha. Okay. And we knew that the search and rescue and whatever else Texas needed was going to be in the millions. And I knew that because the operations officer at FEMA had walked me through something called the Danielife of the disaster or the Danielife of Hurricane, showed me where the decision points were. And then he showed me the graph of the money spent. An average level of three hurricanes, which I think that's what we used, we were spending $500 million a day. So I already knew the magnitude of what disasters were. And I'd done the math actually on a piece of paper to figure out how many contracts that would be required. And I could tell you, nobody could sign all those contracts. Yeah. That's your first. That seems to be your first. So how long does it honestly take to unfreeze funding? And why does it seem like the, I look at what's going on in California with the wildfires.

20:51And that's fallen off the radar press coverage. But it seems to me that there were a lot of angry people out there who didn't receive the promised funds from federal sources to rebuild quickly. What's the holdup on it? Is it fraud? Is it bureaucracy? What takes place behind the scenes? So, let me put it this way. FEMA is DHS's part of gold. Okay? It's the fattest calf in DHS to be sold, slaughtered and consumed. There's a lot of money to be had. And with that, a lot of money goes in, a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork. And there are hordes of FEMA personnel and what they call in the field. So they're in states living on podium in hotels. And they report to a center each day and they go down range and they count every fence, driveway, shed, house.

21:52Anything that's had damage put to it. They evaluate it and those evaluations are open to appeals. And because of that, they're often slow, for example. It's not uncommon that if FEMA evaluates something at a certain cost, the state or county would have hired a former FEMA employee to appeal that. So the appeals go on sometimes for years. So there's a lot of bureaucratic wrangling going on within the FEMA ranks and the state ranks who are arguing and grabbing it for that money. Do you, given your experience and knowledge of how the money trickles down and sometimes it gets held up for years, as you just said, do you feel when you were former acting head of FEMA that you were actually doing? I don't know, providing the best possible service and I don't mean this as a criticism of you. I just mean it as a question about the actual system in place.

22:57Is there a better way to administer emergency funds so that people who are most impact to get the money quicker? There is. So, first of all, I'm going to say that Texas got what they want when they needed it. And I've detailed that in my book, Texas Fund 2025. And now to your question. So yes, there is. So instead of evaluating every single fence, dry way, whatever it is that got damaged and doing it today is a bottom up evaluation that can be appealed, lawyers get involved, they argue with it and there's tons of paperwork. We could use something called block grants. So in other words, with our technology today, particularly with aerial photographs and that type of thing, you could fly over an area and you could say like in one county of Florida, you could say, well, this damage looks very much like a county in South Florida

24:00or a county in North Carolina. And this is what we estimate the damage to being. So we're going to give you a $55 million check and we're going to call it a day, state, you spend the money, how you see fit. But nobody wants that. And the reason they don't want that because instead of getting $55 million today, you could appeal and appeal and appeal and possibly get $75 million next year. Now, that's from public assistance money. And most of that money goes to contractors who are doing disaster recovery. And otherwise, in other words, the cleanup, whether it's debris, whatever the cleanup is, that's the preponderance of the money. But nobody wants to do it in a different model than they use now because you could possibly come up short. And that's understandable. The problem is that the ladies to get the money takes it so long. Now, that's public assistance. For the individual, it's a little bit more troubling.

25:03Like I just said, most of the money goes to contractors. The little that does go in individual assistance to individual citizens is you apply for it and you apply for it to FEMA to something called call centers. And at the call center, I don't know if you remember the Jerry's kids call centers from 25 or 30 years ago, that's essentially what they are. So they're a very antiquated model. And I think it's 24 that the disaster survivors have to fill out and navigate before they even get considered for $700. My uncle's house was destroyed in a flood in 2012, because his house was built inside the levy in Arkansas. And he was able to get some money for FEMA. I paid for a third of the house to be rebuilt. But I remember how frustrated he was.

26:05In fact, the fibergasted. At the amount of work it took just to get the individual assistance. What they could do. And it's the corollary to the box grants. And I had a plan to do this before I left FEMA. They could make an app. And back then, I spoke to Steve Davis, Elon Musk's right hand man. We discussed having an app that we could somehow provide Americans so they could have a streamlined way to apply for the individual assistance. So yes, there are ways to reduce it, but there's no push to get it done. So I'm glad you mentioned your book, because I was so intrigued to discuss with you this topic. I forgot. We were supposed to be talking about your book. Which is about this. It gives a detailed behind the scenes, insider's account of how this stuff actually unfolds during a FEMA disaster. And your book title is Texas Flood. And I imagined that you wrote your book in part because of the frustration that you yourself

27:11experienced and the opportunity to give people some advice for a better way going forward. Well, yeah, the book is titled Texas Flood 2025. And I say that because if David Richardson, if you look forward at Amazon, there's other Texas Floods that come in. So you got David Richardson, Texas Flood 2025. It's kind of a shameless plug. But yeah, so I wrote the book for the children of Camdenestic and that other people who died during the Texas Flood because I had to get to the bottom of it, though why. And I can tell you that there are folks out there that will often really tell you why the disaster happened. But I'm going to detail it in probably one minute how and why it happened. So number one, the flood that the primary cause or the immediate cause of the flood was they stalled out storm in the hills of Texas and had nothing to do with climate change regardless of what institutes, PhDs, and everybody else will tell you the flood move down the storm move again couldn't get over the hills, stalled out and it dumped all the rain into the tributaries

28:17of the Guadalupe River. The second, okay, or the proximate cause of the flood and I'm very careful what I say here is possibly a failed warning system and also imperfect weather forecast. Those are human errors and those are limitations that are never going to go away. And the perfect warning system is a scream and beyond that there are, it's it's fallible. The same with the weather forecasting, it's never going to be perfect. So the immediate cause was the rain in the hills. The proximate cause was potentially warning systems that failed and an imperfect weather forecast which we understand. But the deep cause or the root cause is building in the flood plain and FEMA has two programs that encourage building in the flood plain. One of them is a national flood insurance program, which is a program that came in 1969 and it backfired.

29:18Instead of only ensuring structures that work inside the flood plain, suddenly a building boom took place inside the flood plain because the national flood insurance program is a federally subsidized program where the taxpayer puts the bill. Private insurance from the late 20s till 1969 or so would not cover flood insurance. So the government took it up and they put it on the backs of American who now pay for repetitive loss. The partner of the national flood insurance program is flood mapping. And flood maps tell the or or inform the national flood insurance program of where the lines on the map or where they can ensure structures. So they're they're partnered together. Building a flood plan is indeed the deep cause of the tragedy in Texas.

30:20It's fostered partially by NFIP and flood maps. I want to say one more thing about flood maps. FEMA will tell you that flood maps are for actuary purposes and they are not predictive and that's true because they inform the national flood insurance program. What they won't tell you is they have nothing to do with safety and precaution. So that's what happened in the flood and that's how it happened. So you have a immediate cause, approximate cause and a deep cause. There is no one cause and that one cause is definitely not a climate change. So I want to chime in with something additional about flood maps and the flood plain as well based on my coverage of local zoning and planning commissions back when I used to do local news and it was a it was an area that was heavily run by environmentalists and it seems to me that the environmentalists got involved with expanding some of the flood mapping and

31:21the flood planes as a way of halting development. So that seemed to convolut the whole thing as well. What's your response to that? Well, I will say I tell you the flood maps are a weapon and you can use them as a weapon for what you just told me to keep people from building in the flood plain which might be an environmental concern. You could also have the flood maps altered so you can appeal the FEMA to have them altered so that you can actually put more buildings in the flood plain or you can reduce the already low premiums of buildings in the flood plain. And that's what happened in Kent Mystic by the way. Between 2011 and 2020, Kent Mystic and Associated Personnel appealed the FEMA. They have the lines on the flood map change so that they either build more buildings or reduce the premiums or the already low premiums of the ones in the flood plain. That's how FEMA gets involved in it. They work with local so it could be the environmentalist or it could be people wanting to expand

32:27into the flood plain. And the bureaucracy, the levels just get deeper and deeper. Don't they look? I know our time, we've already gone over a little bit. I just want to wrap with this one question, David. So if you yourself knowing what you know about FEMA's response in the bureaucracy of the process, were to be impacted personally by a flood, by a natural disaster, would you wait on FEMA to bail you out or would you take other measures yourself? I would move on. First of all, FEMA doesn't respond immediately. That's mostly done by the state. FEMA is the wagon train that comes in and kind of burrows in at the state and local level and so they can collect per diem and sift through all their bureaucratic mess. So definitely, I would take matters into my own hands and state free from anything FEMA had to offer. I would just have with my uncle, I had footed a third of the bill and we built nothing

33:31more than a shack. I'm a small little hill that passed state and federal housing inspection. That's a hard truth to stomach, given all the tax dollars that fuel FEMA. But I appreciate your honesty. David Richardson, your book is Texas flood 2025. I hope people read it. What a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Cheryl. I appreciate it. And that's another Bold and Blood. Remember, if you like Bold and Blood, make it Bold and Blood. Take edipi.app at real-lifenetwork.com watchingtontimes.com. And of course, wherever podcasts are available. Tune in next time when you love, don't forget, state blood. Stay bold. Tired of your car insurance rate going up, even with a clean driving record? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry. Your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop.

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