First responders in regions hit hard by tornado outbreaks last weekend were surprised when they accessed a FEMA-provided tool featuring an advanced API that maps in almost real-time the paths of destruction caused by twisters only to find it inoperable, all thanks to outgoing dog murderer DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s failure to renew the $200,000 contract with the vendor, CNN reports.
At least 11 Americans have been killed in tornadoes this month, a season already active given wild temperature swings in the nation’s interior. There’s no way of knowing what if any impact the throttling has had on response efforts or whether it made the difference between life or death for those affected, but hey let’s replace every ICE agent’s service pistol with a squirt gun and see if they can adapt to the changes. It’s effectively the same thing that firefighters are stuck with.
“Rescuers were flying blind, having to drive around or use news reports to figure out where the impacts were,” a DHS official told CNN. It’s not clear why the past-tense “were” is in that sentence as the contract – as of the article’s printing on Friday morning – still had yet to be renewed, simply because it’s worth more than $100,000 and thus subject to Noem’s personal approval. “And when a tornado hits in the middle of the night, every moment counts,” the official added.