The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s urban search and rescue unit has resigned, telling colleagues he was frustrated by bureaucratic hurdles the Trump administration imposed that delayed the agency’s response to deadly flooding in Texas, according to three people familiar with his reasoning.
Ken Pagurek, who worked with FEMA’s search and rescue branch for more than a decade and served as chief for the past year, told associates that his concerns had been mounting since the start of hurricane season and that the administration’s changes to the agency were causing “chaos.”
He said he worried that a new policy that requires purchases of more than $100,000 be personally approved by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, could hurt disaster response efforts that require speed and agility.
Experts have said that responses during a disaster can quickly total billions of dollars, and that requiring personal approvals for expenses of $100,000 and above could easily create bottlenecks.
“This decision was not made lightly, and after much reflection and prayer, it is the right path for me at this time,” Mr. Pagurek wrote in a resignation letter. His departure was first reported by CNN.
Mr. Pagurek could not be reached for comment.
The catastrophic flooding in the Texas Hill Country on July 4, in which 120 people were killed, was the final straw for Mr. Pagurek, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel issues. FEMA was slow to deploy response and search-and-rescue coordination teams, according to half a dozen current and former FEMA officials and disaster experts. Several Democratic lawmakers have called for an investigation into the agency’s handling of the disaster.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that FEMA did not experience any delays in deployments in Texas.
“It is laughable that a career public employee, who claims to serve the American people, would choose to resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight,” she said referring to Mr. Pagurek.
“We’re being responsible with taxpayer dollars, that’s our job,” she said. “Attempting to spin a personal career decision into some big scandal is ridiculous.”
On Monday, Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called for President Trump to “immediately fire” David Richardson, the acting administrator of FEMA, who had no experience in emergency management before Mr. Trump appointed him.
Ms. Noem has said that FEMA responded to the flooding better than it had to any other disaster in “many, many years” and said criticisms amounted to people “playing politics with what happened to Texas.”
The New York Times reported that the new policy requiring her personal approval for contracts larger than $100,000 had left FEMA call centers understaffed for five days following the July 4 floods. Internal documents viewed by The Times showed that thousands of calls to FEMA from flood survivors went unanswered. Ms. Noem has dismissed that as “fake news.”
The departure of Mr. Pagurek comes just weeks after the resignation of Jeremy Greenberg, who led FEMA’s disaster command center, which coordinates the national response to earthquakes, floods and other disasters.
Under the Trump administration’s drive to reduce the size of government, FEMA has lost about a quarter of its full-time staff. That has included 20 percent of the coordinating officers at the agency, who manage responses to major disasters, as well as the deputy regional administrator in the agency’s Region 6 office in Texas.
Michael Coen, who served as FEMA’s chief of staff under the Biden and Obama administrations, said the loss of institutional knowledge with the departure of senior officials like Mr. Pagurek was worrisome.
“The people that are there will work hard, but when you lose that experience its hard to replace,” he said.
The future of FEMA under the Trump administration remains uncertain. In March, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “phase out” the disaster response and recovery agency by the end of hurricane season in November, and to shift more responsibility for emergency management as well as more of the cost to the states.
FEMA, established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, coordinates the federal response to disasters, serving as a backstop for states if they cannot meet the needs on the ground. The agency’s role has grown more complex and expensive as climate change has made extreme weather events more frequent and severe. FEMA’s budget for the last fiscal year was roughly $35 billion.
Since the Texas floods, Mr. Trump has praised the agency and the White House has suggested the president now intends to reform it.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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