by Spokespeople for the city and Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on residents’ criticism.
Cooper said at a news conference Monday that people are working nonstop to provide food, water and aid. He said flooding and constantly rising rivers have prevented first responders from entering some communities.
At a news conference earlier Monday, Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder expressed frustration over what she described as a slow response to supply requests.
“We have asked for water and we are only getting water, and it is still in small quantities,” she said. “There is a great need in our community, and we would like to see a different response from our state partners, a better response from our state partners,” fulfilling these requests through FEMA.
At the White House briefing on Monday, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters that FEMA focused its pre-positioning efforts on the Big Bend, Florida, region and that the effort saved lives. After landfall, “capacity increased to where it was needed most.” She noted that western North Carolina has now been identified as the area most affected.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents western North Carolina, said emergency officials cannot tell him where 400 pallets of food and water from FEMA intended for hurricane relief have gone. Edwards staff says two counties in particular, Haywood and McDowell, are in desperate need of water. FEMA said in a news release that it has sent 25 trailer loads of food and 60 trailer loads of water to North Carolina.
State officials are distributing them now, but Edwards staff says they haven’t been able to figure out where they’re going or when. A state official told Edwards’ team by email Sunday that the state is leaving announcements about where food and water will be distributed to counties. “When the public is told that water etc. has been dropped off at point X, we can see people actually fighting over who gets what,” the official said.
Asked by NBC News on Monday whether FEMA knows what happened to the water and why it isn’t getting to those who need it most quickly, Criswell said the agency “sent as many resources as they requested” and tried “to get water in .”
“It’s going to take all of us coming together to make sure that we understand where the communities are where we may not have gotten around to getting those resources to them yet,” she said.
NBC News also asked FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg about a request for more resources sent on September 17, which cited a “severe shortage” in some emergency response teams. Rothenberg acknowledged that staffing had been an issue. “It’s true that we do a lot of missions in a lot of disasters,” she said. That’s why the agency called for what it called a “surge capacity force” in mid-September.
On Monday, about three days after Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm, survivors were in North Carolina searching for food and clean water and shuffling from shelter to shelter.
