that starts with the president that called me three times yesterday alone. i believe we will hear from congressman comber here in a minute, and i heard from senator mcconnell, and we are very pleased with the response. we want you to keep it up, and we want to thank you southeast much. first we will hear from secretary of the u.s. department for homeland security. mr. secretary, we can t thank you enough for being here for our people. thank you very much, governor. fema administrator, dean kriswell and i and our teams visited the candle site today, and we had the opportunity to thank some of those members. i saw on site a backpack that was left behind and a pair of
the response is local. it s neighbors helping neighbors. but a federal response is needed fast. so how fast can fema and other federal agencies provide help to these devastated communities? well, as of tonight, three hours ago, i listened to a fema administrator, who is doing a good job, but they had not approved individual assistance. that is where people can call a fema number, get cash into their bank account so they take care of themselves, and go to a hotel area that s designated, or any hotel, and use a fema voucher. because people are going to need temporary housing. the grid is broken in most places where this tornado went through. so people that homes may have survived, they re going to have to evacuate because they can t live in the town because of the
0 nbc s wendy joins us from there. it s good to talk to you again. what are you hearing from folks in these ongoing efforts to rescue as many people as possible? yasmin, good afternoon to you. good to speak to you again. it s incredible, the outpouring of help and support that you are hearing, and seeing people come out in the downtown area. wherever you look there seems to be destruction, and everywhere you turn there seems to be a story, and people sometimes think we are exaggerating that thing, but i m not kidding you, you can walk one block and find a store yeah then walk another block and find somebody who has drove here, and we just spoke to somebody who drove from nashville that happened upon a law firm that was decimated by the storm, and started moving things and cutting out wires, and it was incredible. you ask them why they are doing it? the community needed help. then we have another wife and husband, and that was his law firm completely destroyed in the storm and all the
struggling with. we can keep pushing those resources in. having president biden go see for himself is just a demonstration of the leadership that he wants to provide that the government is behind them and we re going to bring what they need to help with their recovery. fema administrator, deanne criswell this is an offer i made to some early on. if you get told no, if there is something you need for response and you run into bottlenecks please tell the public. please tell us and let us tell the country because there is so much support for what you need to do and if you hit bottlenecks public pressure can help. no, i understand and i appreciate the offer, rachel. all right. thank you. good luck. good luck. thank you. deanne criswell is the administrator of the federal emergency management agency under president biden. you know, at times like this it is sometimes helpful to remember that the news gods just do this to us sometimes.
h in new york has experienced too many emergencies and we ve learned how strong new yorkers are and how much our public servants want to go all out and risk their lives to preserve other people s lives and we thank them. i want to make two points here. number one, we ll do everything that we can to get all of the federal aid that is needed. we did this after sandy and many other storms. up state and the governor knows when we worked together on the storms up state and i spoke this morning to fema administrator, deann chriswell. you know what her job was before this, she was the city s oem commissioner. so she knows new york well. we will fight and make this and make new york declared a disaster area, i ve spoken to the white house as well. and that will mean money. money for homeowners and