Donalds says feds handling Maui disaster same as Hurricane Ian: ‘Will not be there to help you’
MAUI, Hawaii (FLV) – U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., slammed the federal response to devastating wildfires of the Hawaiian island of Maui.
The fires have resulted in at least 115 deaths with hundreds still reportedly unaccounted for.
President Joe Biden has just visited the island, and his administration will provide one-time $700 checks as an early form of relief for victims.
“The people of Maui are experiencing the same bureaucratic responses from the federal gov’t that my constituents received after Hurriance Ian,” Donalds said. “@JoeBiden has no idea what is going on and will not be there to help you. The $700 check is just the beginning.”
Earlier this year, speaking at a press conference on Hurricane Ian relief for his district area in Southwest Florida, Donalds discussed what was “not happening federally” at the time.
Donalds said FEMA has been “very, very slow” in their response to housing issues from the storm.
He had said their “big argument that they like to make” is that while a lot of affected areas are in flood zones, “they don’t put trailers in the flood zones.”
“But this is not a normal situation. This is an emergency situation, this is a recovery situation,” Donalds said.
At the time, he said there were nearly 200 residents “out of the area completely, simply because FEMA has not been able to respond to their needs as effectively as possible.”
“I’m having now, a very public declaration towards FEMA, to cut the red tape to get people to housing that they need immediately,” Donalds said in March. “They should not have to wait another 90 to 120 days to be able to get the housing that they so desperately need.”
“Enough is enough. I mean, we know we live in a flood zone, I mean guess what, it’s Southwest Florida. I mean, you know, look behind you, we get that. But when people need help, they need help.”
Donalds asked the White House and FEMA to “get the job done.”
“And so I’m asking for the White House and FEMA to just get out of the way of the silly stuff and the red tape, let’s just get the job done,” Donalds said. “You’ve seen a blueprint for it here in Florida, with Governor DeSantis and his leadership is about people not politics and not budgets.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida government stepped in where the federal government either could not or decided not to.
“Unfortunately, we got word last week that FEMA had denied our request for funding our state-led housing initiatives, citing their quote ‘limited authority.’ But we’re not just gonna sit there and take no for an answer,” DeSantis said in December 2022, as recovery efforts continued. “We wanna cut through bureaucracy. We wanna bring relief to impacted Floridians regardless of whether FEMA wants to be a part of that.”
