U.S. Rep. Roger Williams has sent a letter to the Small Business Administration asking for a briefing on how the agency is assisting victims of the Hawaii wildfires.
Williams (R-TX), the House Small Business Committee chairman, wrote that the victims of the Maui fires are receiving “lackluster government response,” the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday.
The letter was sent to Small Business Administration (SBA) administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman.
“The committee is keenly aware of the challenges that disaster efforts face and how the SBA helps survivors rebuild,” Williams wrote in the letter, the Examiner reported. “When Americans are in need, the resources their tax dollars fund should, at minimum, work effectively. The committee is interested in ensuring that these resources are being administered properly.”
The SBA, which provides disaster loans to homeowners and business owners, has until August 31 to respond.
Republicans have criticized the federal government’s response to the Maui wildfires. President Joe Biden visited last week to survey the damage, nearly two weeks after the fires started and burned down the entire village of Lahaina. Biden was on vacation in Delaware and at one point answered, “no comment,” when asked about the tragedy.
A congressional investigation of the emergency response might be forthcoming, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said.
“I’m very concerned about the response,” McCarthy said this week in New York, the newspaper reported. “We still have hundreds of individuals that are missing. I think there’s [going to] have to be a congressional investigation in response [to] what happened.
“How could we lose that many Americans in today’s age? And the federal response seems very delayed. The president’s response to have no comment? That’s unacceptable.
“So I’m going to work with committees, too, to look at investigating what went on, so that never happens again, as well,” McCarthy said, as per the Examiner.
Meanwhile, Maui officials continue to search for between 500 to 1,000 people missing in Lahaina. However, authorities say they will not publish a list of names.
“The names of, and any information related to the missing individuals, will not be published or be made publicly available at this time,” a Maui County spokesperson told the Associated Press.
Adam Weintraub, a spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, said there were privacy concerns and that the agency did not want to further traumatize families by listing their loved ones as missing only before learning they are actually dead.
The State Joint Information Center also told the AP it is “a standard held by all law enforcement and first responders here in Hawaii, out of compassion and courtesy for the families, to withhold the names until the families can be contacted.”
