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Longtime federal employee Angela Gladwell will “oversee” a $4 billion compensation fund that was supposed to pay out victims of the devastating New Mexico wildfires that were wrongly caused by the Forest Service in 2022. did. Her resignation comes as a result of FEMA’s commitment to funding and paying residents for damage caused by the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire, which destroyed more than 400 homes and racked up literally billions of dollars in suppression costs and damages. The handling of the matter has received severe criticism.
Angela Gladwell is actually being “reassigned” because the Federal Emergency Management Agency is “restructuring” disaster response in New Mexico, which means disaster relief and compensation. Part of the reason is loud and long-standing criticism of the treatment of the state, which is funded by the state of New Mexico. propublica I’ve been following you for the past year.
One year after the fire, the FEMA claims office had paid out less than 1 percent of the total funds allocated.
In a news release announcing Gladwell’s departure, Claims Executive Deborah Martinez said, “We are building a team of locally hired staff with knowledge of New Mexico and wildfire-impacted communities. “We were able to successfully build a compensation program from scratch.” Martinez said Gladwell will now “transition into a new role” as FEMA ramps up recovery programs in the state. But she did not answer her question about what that “integration” entails.
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