The Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground – and on the clock – after the killer St. Louis tornado May 16, say Missouri’s two U.S. senators.

Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has pledged expedited disaster relief for the storm that killed seven and left $1.6 billion in property damage.

Still, Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, who toured the devastation last weekend and earlier this week, are mindful of how conservatives feel the Biden FEMA utterly failed victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Georgia last year.

“Yeah, they did fail them miserably. Absolutely,” Hawley tells The Heartlander in an exclusive interview. “I was there when the testimony came in, and when we heard from the FEMA workers saying that they deliberately didn’t go to Trump households.

“That’s illegal, by the way. I mean, that’s totally illegal. 

“And I have to tell you, I’m worried now in Missouri – I’m worried that FEMA is not moving like they should. I don’t like the foot-dragging. We have multiple disaster requests that are pending with FEMA and have been for months. And now we’re in the midst of another series of storms, the disaster that I saw in St. Louis. 

“The damage that I saw on Monday is unbelievable. It is extensive. It is devastating. We need relief. And my message to FEMA is: get with it. I mean, time is of the essence. I don’t want to hear any more excuses about, ‘Well, we need to do that,’ or ‘Do we need to send this program to here, have this bureaucrat sign off on it?’ 

“Forget it. Come on. I mean, move. Get people on the ground. Get people the relief that they need. Every day that goes by in Missouri where they don’t take action, to me, is the day that suggests we need fundamental FEMA reform.”

FEMA has indeed been on the ground this week to at least do its initial damage assessment, Schmitt says.

“FEMA is on the ground today; they’ll be on the ground through the weekend,” Schmitt says in a separate interview with The Heartlander. “They’ll get their initial damage assessment done, which will be the key for more robust requests for federal assistance, which I’m sure the governor will then make.  

“He’s made a request. We will be supporting that request for the public aspect of it – think of infrastructure, those sorts of things.  

“We’re pressing FEMA to move as quickly as they can, but the most important thing happening right now is the onsite damage assessment, property damage assessment, not just in the city but in Scott County and also in the eastern parts of St. Louis County.”

Schmitt agrees the Biden FEMA let the people of North Carolina and Georgia down big-time.

“Well, I do think it failed, and we’re just trying to do everything we can from an oversight perspective. We’ve got a good relationship with [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem. I spoke with the president on Saturday afternoon. 

“We just want them to be as responsive as they should be, so we’re pressing for that. But there’s no doubt they’ve failed in the past and we want to, again, make sure that they’re very focused on what’s going on in Missouri.”

Will this time be different, with a new administration in place?

“I hope so,” Schmitt says. “That’s what we’re aiming for. There are certainly some things I think that FEMA can do better, but right now we’re picking up the pieces. After that, we’ve got to press forward and make sure that the leaders there, we have their attention. And that’s what we’re doing right now.”

Hawley didn’t have to work hard to get the promise of urgency from Noem – but he did anyway.

“The state has pending three requests for major disaster relief declarations from earlier storms,” he told her in a Senate hearing. “Counting the people we lost on Friday, we’ve lost almost 20 people now in major storms in the last two months in Missouri. It’s been a terrible spring for us.

“For those three disaster declaration requests that are still pending, will you help with those and get those approved? We are desperate for the assistance in Missouri.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Noem told him.

Schmitt, whose office says he toured the disaster scene Saturday just 12 hours after the tornado’s touchdown, was clearly moved by the swath of destruction.

“Big trees down, power lines down, homes just destroyed, old brick homes – think of those older structures just crumbled to the ground. So, it was pretty widespread. It’s pretty devastating.  

“I met with law enforcement, first responders, met with the governor, met with the mayor, other local officials there. Our office led a call yesterday with Region 7 in FEMA with all the congressional delegation, along with the governor and the mayors’ offices, to get a sense of what their timing is.”

Just to be sure, the two senators wrote a letter to President Trump on Wednesday in support of Gov. Mike Kehoe’s Monday request for an emergency disaster declaration.

“If approved, this declaration would immediately unlock critical funding to support state and local efforts to remove debris and take emergency protective measures,” they wrote.

“After touring the devastated neighborhoods, we can personally attest to the scale of the damage and the clear need for the governor’s request to unlock this first step of federal assistance to support first responder efforts.”