Trump took paper towels to Puerto Rico. Thousands died, though Trump refuses to acknowledge them or provide the immediate help his fellow Americans needed.
His failed appointee quietly left this week after two years of failures and abuses of his office.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...-fema.amp.html
Brock Long, FEMA Administrator, Resigns After Two Turbulent Years
Feb. 13, 2019
WASHINGTON — Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was praised for his agency’s response to Hurricane Harvey but sharply criticized for its handling of Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, announced on Wednesday that he would resign.
Mr. Long’s tenure was also punctuated by a controversy that had nothing to do with storms. The inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, found in September that he had improperly used government vehicles to travel between work and his home in North Carolina, where his wife and two sons live.
In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. Long noted that in his two years leading the agency, FEMA had handled more than 220 declared disasters, including during several hurricanes that caused profound damage in Texas, in Puerto Rico and along the East Coast.
“While this has been the opportunity of the lifetime, it is time for me to go home to my family — my beautiful wife and two incredible boys,” he said. “As a career emergency management professional, I could not be prouder to have worked alongside the devoted, hardworking men and women of FEMA for the past two years.” The agency declined a request for an interview.
Mr. Long earned plaudits for FEMA’s response to Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana in 2017. Assessing the damage in Texas, President Trump praised Mr. Long as “a man who really has become very famous on television in the last couple of days.”
But he came under withering criticism for FEMA’s handling of relief efforts after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico later that year, including a call last month from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and a candidate for president, for Mr. Long to resign.
Hurricane Maria eventually caused almost 3,000 deaths and left thousands without electricity for months, and Hurricane Harvey killed nearly 70 people. Those storms combined with others in 2017 caused an estimated $300 billion in damage.
Mr. Long came to Washington with a strong reputation for skilled handling of disaster management, and White House officials often praised his professionalism. But that standing was undercut by the inspector general’s report, which noted that Mr. Long had also used a government vehicle for personal purposes while on a family vacation in Hawaii.
“The FEMA administrator is supposed to be focused on preparing for disasters like the devastating hurricanes that killed thousands of Americans in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — not using government vehicles to shuttle his family around Hawaii at taxpayer expense,” Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who was the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and is now its chairman, said when the report was released.
“Administrator Long’s apparent violations of federal law for his own personal benefit are another example of how senior officials in the Trump administration continue to use American taxpayer money,” Mr. Cummings said.
At the time, Mr. Long took responsibility for his actions but denied that he had knowingly violated agency rules.
Before coming to Washington, Mr. Long had served as a director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency from 2008 to 2011, when he became a private contractor.
Something else that didn’t show up on the radar this week
