Michele Woodhouse, Republican Party chair for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, in an exclusive interview with Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily on Thursday detailed recovery efforts on the ground in western North Carolina, saying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “late to the game,” with private citizens and charities doing most of the work early on.
“I think if you ask people on the ground here, across these 25 impacted counties, they would tell you very clearly, FEMA was very late to the game,” Woodhouse said. “Five days that we waited.”
“We’ve seen not one temporary housing unit from FEMA here on the ground in western North Carolina. We have thousands of people living in shelters. FEMA is housing some of their workers in the very far southern point of this congressional district where North Carolina begins in Cherokee County, that is over four hours on a good day from Avery County, one of the most devastated counties. So the resources on the ground are limited,” she said.
“They were very delayed in getting here, and the FEMA teams don’t even seem to be stationed in the right locations to be able to help the people of Western North Carolina,” she continued. “I’m hearing stories consistently, each and every day, of people that apply, they’re not even — they’re not even awarded that initial $750 direct deposit. I spent some time on the app as well. You know, if you could go to a shelter — there’s no temporary housing — when I put in my address, one location shows up of a FEMA office in Asheville, which is about 40 minutes from my house, not incredibly convenient for most people who, especially those who it’s treacherous conditions to even get out of their home.”
Michele Woodhouse (courtesy of Michele Woodhouse)
Woodhouse said she did not blame FEMA agents on the ground in North Carolina.
“This is a question to the administration, why did it take you so long to get here, and why [was] Mayorkas’s first comment, ‘FEMA doesn’t have enough money to get us through the hurricane season’? Why weren’t you preparing? We have a hurricane season every year. This isn’t a surprise. Maybe the devastation is in different places than you anticipated, but you knew hurricane season was coming,” she said.
“They weren’t prepared. And I think it’s an indicator of what we’ve seen over and over with this administration. They failed domestically. They failed internationally. They don’t seem to be prepared,” she said. “The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, and Americans continue to suffer.”
She also said Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement of $750 in immediate relief funds for those affected did not go over very well with people she spoke to — including Democrats.
“The news traveled very, very quickly. In fact, one of the Democrat county offices had a very colorful message spray painted on the side of it that told Joe Biden and Kamala Harris what they thought of their $750 from FEMA,” she said.
“When she announced the $750 and had to refer to her notes in order to think about the pennies that she was going to be giving to Americans that were suffering, not only here in western North Carolina, but Tennessee and North Georgia when she did it, and then just really within the same news cycle, announced that $157 million to Lebanon for the humanitarian relief there — couple that with the fact that people here in western North Carolina have watched for the last three and a half years, hundreds of millions of dollars given to illegal immigrants who are invading our country, billions of dollars going to Ukraine, and then for us to receive the news that they were going to grace us with $750 — the people of Western North Carolina were — they saw very quickly, very, very quickly, what this administration thinks of them and the rebuilding efforts here,” she added.
She said there are a lot of conversations on the “delay” from the Biden-Harris administration to get relief on the ground in western North Carolina, and whether its being a Trump-supporting area factored into it.
“I think it’s a question that is worth asking, and it is very unfortunate. Their delay in getting FEMA here, Joe Biden’s delay in releasing military that was just a few hours on the other side of the state — it cost western North Carolinians their life,” she said.
Woodhouse said, in contrast, Reverend Franklin Graham’s charity, Samaritan’s Purse, has been a “beacon of light” on the ground in western North Carolina, on the ground within 24 hours.
“You’re also seeing neighbor helping neighbor, donations coming in from all across this country, all across North Carolina, into western North Carolina. And you know, when you look at our, at our communities, we have a lot of communities where people didn’t have a lot, and they lost everything, but they’re giving to someone who they — you know, a total stranger, maybe someone they know, who even had less and lost more. And so it has been well over 95% of this has been driven by private donation and organizations like Samaritan’s Purse,” she said.
She called private efforts the “heart and soul of America right here.”
“These are people who will give to a stranger, the shirt off their back, and do whatever it takes. And we have seen that happen, resourceful, hardworking people with deep, deep roots, roots in these communities,” she said.
She said people in the community would make sure their voices are heard in the presidential election.
“I will tell you what these people do and, and will do, is they vote, and they will make their voices heard, and they will make sure that Kamala Harris knows exactly what they think of the way that they’ve been treated through this unbelievable tragedy,” she said.
Breitbart · Michelle Woodhouse – October 10, 2024Michele Woodhouse is the host of Point Counterpoint: The Michele Woodhouse Show on WPTF Raleigh, NC. Follow her on X @ew2NCSU
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