Tom Bateman
State Department correspondent
The US has been unable to meaningfully respond to the Myanmar earthquake due to the Trump administration’s decision to slash foreign aid, according to three former senior US officials.
One former US Agency for International Development (USAID) mission director for Myanmar told the BBC that “America has been on the sidelines” after the disaster.
“The US basically was not there for the rescue-window period,” said another official. All three suggested the deep cuts to aid probably cost lives.
A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck on Friday, leaving at least 2,700 people dead, more than 4,500 injured and hundreds still missing, according to the country’s military. Those figures are expected to rise.
The former USAID officials said the agency mobilised Disaster Assistance Response Teams (Darts) from the US after previous major earthquakes. Comprised of highly trained rescuers, sniffer dogs and specialist equipment, the teams are immediately made ready then dispatched when the affected country requests them.
A typical deployment, like that sent to the Turkey-Syria earthquake in 2023, could comprise some 200 people – the majority of them rescue workers. US teams are often the biggest of all foreign assistance groups on the ground.
The US Department of State said on Monday a US team based in the region was on its way to Myanmar. It is believed to comprise three people who are advisers, not rescuers.
The state department also said it was donating $2m (£1.6m) to humanitarian assistance organisations to support earthquake-affected communities. This figure is significantly smaller than previous US government donations during disasters, according to the former officials.
President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk is finalising the shutdown of USAID after weeks spent dismantling the agency and placing staff on administrative leave. Trump targeted foreign assistance on his first day in office, calling it an “industry” that was in many cases “antithetical to American values”.
On Friday, after the earthquake struck, the White House attempted to mobilise a Dart team, according to Andrew Natsios, who served as USAID administrator in George W Bush’s administration. But, he said, it couldn’t because key officials were on administrative leave.
“The problem is they fired most of the 500 people that make up the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, so obviously there are no people [from the bureau] to be on the Dart team to be sent – and the people have to be trained and be familiar with disaster relief operations,” he said.
Staff at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received letters of termination the day the earthquake struck, said Chris Milligan, who served as USAID Mission Director in Myanmar from 2012 to 2016.
“The employees… were told to go home by one o’clock. Everyone was told. All employees in that building were told to go home at one o’clock, and then they were told later to come back,” said Mr Milligan.
“It shows the lack of management and the confusion that there was an earthquake earlier, and they didn’t have the foresight to say ‘Okay, let’s retain these people’.”
Two of the former USAID officials said the administration couldn’t deploy US search and rescue teams, sniffer dogs and specialist equipment to Myanmar because logistics contracts to transport them from Virginia and California had been cancelled as part of the cuts, led by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
“It is the first time that I can think of that the US has simply not responded meaningfully to a major disaster,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who ran the USAID Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) from 2013 to 2016.
He said for the last few decades, with every disaster on this scale, the US would be the largest and most capable team on the ground.
“You’ve got 75 to 100 people, the dogs and it’s a pretty substantial lift [which] you’ve got to get there, operating and excavating piles, within the first really four days.”
“The US basically was not there for the rescue window, period. And it’s too late,” said Mr Konyndyk.
It’s unlikely the agency could reactivate logistics contracts in time for a Dart team to Myanmar in time to save lives, he said. “If you wanted to issue new ones, the people who could issue new contracts and do the tenders for that, they’ve all been fired,” explained Mr Konyndak.
The US state department rejects the notion that the cuts have impacted disaster relief in Myanmar.
The department had partners it worked with “that may not require us to be physically present”, spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said on Monday.
“With the reform that the government is going through with the lead of President Trump… certain things won’t necessarily look the same. But the success in the work and our impact will still be there,” she said.
However, Mr Konyndyk described the claim as “fantasy land”.
“You can’t pull people out of a building virtually, you can’t excavate, you can’t do live rescues from a collapsed building without boots on the ground,” he said.
Chris Milligan, the former USAID mission director for Myanmar, said the rescue capacity available in the United States would double the capacity already on the ground in Myanmar.
“This is the new normal. This is what it looks like when the United States sits on the international sidelines, when the United States is a weaker international player, when it cedes the space to other global players like China,” said Mr Milligan.
The state department told the BBC it did not intend to deploy a Dart team to Myanmar, adding it was continuing many existing lifesaving programs and strategic investments that “strengthen our partners and our own country”.
A state department spokesperson said: “USAID has contracts in place with Urban Search and Rescue Teams to assist in responding to disasters.”
“[A] USAID team of humanitarian experts based in the region are traveling to Burma to assess additional needs,” the spokesperson continued.
“A Dart is essentially a coordination mechanism. We are able to coordinate with our partners for this specific response without a Dart. Every response is different,” added the spokesperson.
Additional reporting by Alex Lederman
