FEMA under fire for 24-hour delay in sending search and rescue teams to deadly Texas floods
Sam Owens/Staff Photographer
After the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s delayed response to Hurricane Katrina brought national scrutiny, Congress passed a law requiring the agency to be ready to provide emergency assistance at a moment’s notice, even before a state asks for help.
But it took 24 hours for FEMA search and rescue teams to arrive in Texas after state officials requested their help responding to the devastating flooding in the Hill Country earlier this month, according to timelines provided by state and federal officials.
At a hearing in Washington this week, Republicans and Democrats questioned acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson why he hadn’t immediately deployed search and rescue teams to Texas in anticipation of a request from the state.
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U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., chair of the House subcommittee holding the hearing and a retired Army National Guard brigadier general, said during the war in Iraq, the military Medivac units were expected to deploy within eight minutes.
“(24 hours) seems from my standpoint a long time to wait,” Perry said of FEMA’s response.
The scrutiny on the agency comes as President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the necessity of FEMA and called for states to take a greater role in disaster response. Since taking office, Trump’s administration has reduced FEMA staff by 20% and established a new rule that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sign off on any agency expenditure over $100,000.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Noem and Trump officials have pushed back on allegations that there were delays in the federal response to floods that devastated Central Texas on July 4 and 5 and killed at least 136 people.
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Richardson described the agency’s response as a “model.”
“I can’t see anything we did wrong,” he said at Wednesday’s hearing. “We would like to see the strengths we did in Texas and share them with other states.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican ally of Trump, praised the administration as “exceptional partners throughout the flood response.”
Experts say FEMA should have asked search and rescue teams in other states to start deploying to Texas when floodwaters first began sweeping through the Hill Country on Friday, July 4.
Instead Richardson, who said he had been on vacation at the time of the floods, waited until the state’s request came in on Monday, July 7 to start contacting teams in Missouri, Colorado and other states, he testified. Those teams then had to drive across the country and begin arriving in Texas on Tuesday, July 8.
That chain of events is a break from the norm, said Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff during the Obama and Biden administrations. He pointed to a case from 2021, when a 12-story apartment building in South Florida collapsed. FEMA immediately sent search and rescue teams to the location, to be ready to jump in when Florida officials requested their help, Coen said.
“We knew (local search and rescue) was going to be exhausted and was going to need to be relieved,” he said. “It’s better to send them, so they’re there if you need them, than to worry about spending the money.”
Within FEMA, the response time to the Texas floods had been a source of tension.
On Monday, Ken Pagurek, the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch, resigned after ten years at the agency, telling colleagues that FEMA’s delayed response to the Texas floods was the tipping point, according to media reports. He did not respond to an interview request.
And in a closed-door meeting with members of Congress last week, senior staff at FEMA blamed Abbott for the delays in deploying search and rescue teams to Texas, said Rep. Greg Stanton, an Arizona Democrat and former mayor of Phoenix. Stanton said he strongly disagreed with their assessment, which he described as a misunderstanding of federal rules.
A clean up crew works to empty cabins and sort through belongings at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, on Thursday afternoon, July 10, 2025.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
“You need to talk to your staff because your staff was pointing the finger at Gov. Abbott’s office and saying the lack of urban search and rescue was based on a late request from the governor’s office,” he told Richardson. “This wasn’t just incompetence. It wasn’t just indifference. It was both, and that deadly combination likely cost lives.”
Whether the 24-hour delay in getting search and rescue teams to Texas hampered rescue efforts is unclear. The Texas Department of Emergency Management did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
States like Texas and Florida, that endure frequent natural disasters, have robust emergency response operations that typically allow them to manage the immediate aftermath of a storm on their own, experts say. They often rely on FEMA search and rescue operations for relief days into an event.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board last year that state largely relies on FEMA to help in the rebuilding process, by providing funding to repair homes and infrastructure.
“We didn’t need the federal government on day one, two or three,” Patrick told us, defending his decision not to request a federal emergency declaration before Hurricane Beryl hit Texas last year. “We were already prepared.”
Earlier this month, Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight Committee, including Reps. Greg Casar, of Austin, and Jasmine Crockett, of Dallas, wrote to FEMA requesting communications between Noem and FEMA officials that took place during the flooding and all the contracts Noem signed off on, including the dates and times.
“We are deeply concerned not only that Secretary Noem may have effectively crippled the agency’s ability to respond to this crisis, but also that she failed to personally act to ensure a timely response,” they wrote.
Washington Correspondent
James Osborne is a Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle.
James covers politics and federal policy impacting Texas from the Houston Chronicle’s bureau in Washington, D.C. He’s been with the Chronicle since 2016.