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Jeb: This is how to respond to hurricanes
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| Fir3start3r |
It really makes you think in restropect, what was going through Louisiana's mind during Katrina...
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Jeb: This is how to respond to hurricanes
Florida's governor said relying on federal officials can be a critical error.
By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published October 24, 2005
NAPLES - Gov. Jeb Bush praised Florida emergency management officials on Monday while blasting the efforts of Louisiana officials during Hurricane Katrina.
Bush said Florida responded successfully in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma because the state relied on the expertise of local emergency managers. He said relying on federal emergency officials can be a fatal blunder.
"Our system is a bottoms-up system," Bush said. "In the case of Louisiana it was left to the federal government to fill a void and the consequences are there for the rest of the world to see."
"This is the model for how to respond to hurricanes," Bush said of Florida. "Compare this to what happened a month and a half ago in other parts of the country."
Bush spoke at the Collier County emergency operations center after he was briefed by local officials. He praised the residents of Collier County for heeding evacuation orders, and criticized residents of the Florida Keys who did not evacuate.
"Too many people stayed," Bush said. "And for the life of me, I cannot understand why."
Bush said 3,000 National Guard troops already have been activated, and 3,000 more are on standby. He said emergency officials would soon set up checkpoints to distribute relief supplies.
Bush also said Wilma's quick romp through Florida had hurt not just the coast of Collier County, but much of the rest of the state as well. He said it is important to make sure relief efforts reach residents in hard-hit rural parts of central Florida, citing damage in Immokalee, LaBelle and Clewiston.
[Last modified October 24, 2005, 17:12:18]
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| occrider |
Well of course Florida is the model to follow. They've perfected the model of fleecing FEMA and taxpayer dollars when there's no real damage:
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Disaster, politics go hand in hand
By Megan O'Matz, Sally Kestin, John Maines and Jon Burstein
Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 19 2005
Assistance designed to help those struck by disaster has also become a tool for politicians to bring home prized federal dollars and a windfall to residents in some of the nation's poorest communities.
In between are privately contracted damage inspectors with little incentive to safeguard the public purse.
The system is fueled by an unlimited budget -- if the money runs out, the Federal Emergency Management Agency returns to Congress for more.
Everyone benefits, a South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation found, except taxpayers footing the bill.
In the name of helping disaster victims, FEMA over five years awarded at least $330 million in areas with little or no damage, the newspaper found. While aid has legitimately flowed to thousands of people who lost their homes or belongings to fires, floods and hurricanes, thousands more have abused the system.
"It's an absolute abomination," said U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Jupiter. "Whether intentional corruption or mismanagement ... it seems like FEMA is just a money pit.''
Outrage over $31 million to residents of Miami-Dade County last year for a hurricane that missed the county called national attention to fraud and waste in FEMA assistance. But the problem has evolved over years in cities across the country, the newspaper found.
It all starts with the federal disaster declaration, the first step to start the money flowing -- a process heavily influenced by politics.
Once disaster strikes, however small, politicians from mayors to governors to members of Congress pressure FEMA for a declaration and then boast about bringing money home.
By law, federal aid is meant for disasters that overwhelm state and local governments. Officials are supposed to prove a need for help through "damage assessments," the backbone of formal requests from governors to the president.
But the Sun-Sentinel found those assessments are not always done. Even when they are, they're sometimes not an accurate reflection of reality.
In New Hanover County, N.C., several residents whose names appear on assessments used to support disaster declarations for Hurricane Isabel in 2003 told the newspaper they suffered no damage to their homes.
In Ohio's Summit County, Emergency Management Coordinator Annette Petranic said her office has been pressured by the governor's staff and members of Congress to "try again" when initial counts failed to turn up enough damage for a declaration.
"We get asked to take a second look at things ... for political reasons," Petranic said. "Elected officials really want to get the disaster declared."
Politicians then tout their role in getting the money.
"This summer, Gov. [Jim] Doyle was successful in obtaining federal disaster aid for storm victims and local communities in 44 Wisconsin counties,'' a December 2004 state news release said. "This was the greatest number of declared counties in one summer since 1993.''
Russell Sobel, a West Virginia University professor, has researched how closely disasters and politics are intertwined.
"This is really the game of politics," he said.
Sobel co-authored a 2003 study that found states politically important to a president have higher rates of disaster declaration. Last year in Florida, President Bush declared Miami-Dade and other counties a disaster for Hurricane Frances before the storm had passed through the state. That decision eventually led to almost 13,000 Miami-Dade residents collecting money though they never experienced a hurricane.
Four years earlier, President Clinton granted a declaration for an Oct. 3, 2000, storm that delivered heavy rains in South Florida.
"FEMA is expected tomorrow in the a.m. to begin their damage assessment," an Oct. 4, 2000, Miami-Dade County report states. By that evening, a declaration had been issued.
Declarations often include areas much broader than the disaster -- "contiguous counties" included only because they are next to a stricken area -- and entire counties for damage confined to a few blocks, the newspaper found.
After a tornado in Miami-Dade County in March 2003, some nonprofit agencies and the county's public housing agency concentrated their assistance in the 1.5-square-mile area affected. But FEMA declared the whole county a disaster and awarded most of the aid, $9 million, to people outside the damage area.
Once a declaration is made, anyone in that area can apply, and FEMA does little to verify the legitimacy of the claims, the newspaper found. In disasters reviewed by the Sun-Sentinel, FEMA officials never consulted meteorologists or local officials most familiar with damage in their communities before approving claims.
"I would have told them there was no damage," said Ed Broomfield of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management.
The county was included in a declaration for wildfires that raged through Southern California in 2003. The fires never burned in the city of Los Angeles or nearby areas, yet FEMA awarded $5.2 million to more than 5,000 applicants there.
FEMA's own publicity efforts can help bolster claims. Within hours of a declaration, the agency begins publicizing assistance through the media and "community relations teams" that visit churches, businesses and community groups, posting fliers and encouraging applications. The teams carry cell phones so that people can apply on the spot.
"They're out there almost begging people to apply," said Arthur Jones, disaster recovery chief in Louisiana, where the teams were temporarily kicked out after storms in 1995. "They were drumming up business."
In July, after Hurricane Dennis hit the Florida Panhandle, then-FEMA Director Michael Brown appeared on CNN's Larry King Live show and promoted federal aid.
"I would encourage anyone, whether you think you're qualified or eligible or not, don't make that decision yourself. Call the 800 number, and our operators will work through the process with you to see if you are eligible," Brown said, reciting the phone number 1-800-621-FEMA.
"That's FEMA, F-E-M-A," King added.
The message gets out loud and clear.
Because FEMA assistance is restricted to those with losses not covered by insurance or with no insurance at all, most of the money winds up in the poorest communities.
From Miami to Baton Rouge to Cleveland, word spreads when FEMA is in town. Inner-city residents call the assistance "free money" and have learned from disaster to disaster how to file claims even if they suffered no damage, the Sun-Sentinel found.
Katherine Williams and other tenants of Nickerson Gardens, a public housing development in the Watts section of Los Angeles, said they thought they deserved money for the 2003 wildfires just as much as people in "big houses" in the hills where the blazes burned. Though miles from the fires, they said smoke got into their clothes and furniture, and ash damaged the paint on cars.
"We're a struggling people," said Williams, a 54-year-old nursing assistant. "Whenever we lose something, it's hard to get it back."
Williams said FEMA turned down her claim but she knew of neighbors collecting money.
The job of deciding whether claims are valid falls to FEMA inspectors assigned to visit applicants' homes. FEMA refers to the inspectors, who work for private companies under contract with the government, as their "first line of accountability" against fraud.
They get paid for each inspection completed, regardless of whether the claim is approved, and have little incentive to safeguard tax dollars.
After last year's hurricanes in Florida, FEMA relied on hundreds of novice inspectors, each with only a few hours of training. Their error rate was more than three times higher than those for experienced inspectors, a U.S. Senate investigation revealed in May.
The newspaper found that for years inspectors have signed off on dubious claims in areas on the fringes of disasters.
Current and former inspectors told the Sun-Sentinel that they are often sent to poorly kept homes and apartments that leak in any hard rain. FEMA isn't supposed to pay for damage that is a result of "deferred maintenance," but the agency has instructed inspectors to take applicants' word when they insist losses were caused by a disaster.
After Hurricane Isabel in 2003, Eddie King, emergency manager in Pender County, N.C., recalled "a lengthy discussion" with a FEMA inspector who argued zealously that a fire that destroyed a woman's mobile home was hurricane-related.
King, who was also the county fire marshal at the time, attributed the blaze to faulty electrical wiring in the kitchen. "I'm, like, `Sir, it occurred 24 or 36 hours before any hurricane-force winds ever reached Pender County!'" King said.
"I do not know where that case ended up, but that to me is an example of misuse of the system," he said. "I hate like everything that this lady's house caught on fire ... but it was not related to a hurricane."
Intimidation can also make the money flow. Inspectors told the newspaper that some applicants have threatened them. FEMA acknowledges inspectors have been too generous in assessing damage, a phenomenon the agency calls the "tough neighborhood syndrome."
After the 2003 tornado in Miami-Dade County, "irate applicants" called inspectors "demanding to know why the inspectors didn't give credit for all the damage," according to a quality control review by the inspection company. The applicants used "abusive language" and "charged that the inspectors discriminated against them."
Once the inspection is complete, the results are sent by computer to FEMA. If eligible losses are recorded, the applicant gets a check.
Few of the claims are scrutinized. FEMA requires a "quality control review" of only 3 percent of inspections but has left it largely up to the contracted companies to check their inspectors' work. During the past three years, those reviews revealed errors as high as 90 percent, records obtained by the newspaper show.
A complex system made up of many moving parts, the disaster assistance program rarely stops once it kicks in, the newspaper found. Officials in several states have gone so far as to write FEMA with concerns of widespread fraud but have been unable to stop the money.
In Miami-Dade, FEMA's own community relations teams left the county after only one day last fall because they could find no damage from Hurricane Frances, records show. Yet the money continued pouring into the county for months, even after complaints from the public and Congress.
All the while, FEMA officials denied any major problems. A Senate committee investigating the Miami-Dade Frances payments found "fraudulent claims, wasteful spending and ineffective government management in FEMA's response to the 2004 Florida hurricanes."
Then-Director Brown responded in writing by thanking senators for their input on FEMA's "successful response and recovery efforts" to the hurricanes.
Last Monday, Brown resigned amid criticism over his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina.
Sharlot Edwards, emergency preparedness director in Louisiana's West Baton Rouge Parish, just wanted FEMA to explain where the alleged damage was after Hurricane Lili in 2002. Parish residents collected $1 million from FEMA.
"I was totally shocked when I saw the figure," Edwards said. "I really was, for the simple fact that we weren't aware that there was much damage in our parish."
FEMA informed Edwards it could not share any information because of privacy laws."I tried to get them to tell me at least the areas that the damage was in so we'd know where to start looking and doing preventive measures,'' she said. "They informed me they couldn't do that."
Why?
"I don't know," Edwards said. "They said they couldn't tell me."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...-home-headlines
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But really, Florida getting disaster relief right after yearly hurricanes and the Katrina disaster was completely unexpected :conf:. |
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| squirrelly |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Well of course Florida is the model to follow. They've perfected the model of fleecing FEMA and taxpayer dollars when there's no real damage: |
Woah now, last year when there was hurricane after hurricane and Florida got ripped to shreds we were shafted on aide. It took forever to get houses fixed, lives restored, roads cleared, to get gas back into Florida period. There were still people in Florida who had damage from last years hurricanes before Wilma even set foot. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by squirrelly
Woah now, last year when there was hurricane after hurricane and Florida got ripped to shreds we were shafted on aide. It took forever to get houses fixed, lives restored, roads cleared, to get gas back into Florida period. There were still people in Florida who had damage from last years hurricanes before Wilma even set foot. |
Maybe you should have taken notes from the counties that fleeced FEMA ... :conf: ;) |
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| squirrelly |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Maybe you should have taken notes from the counties that fleeced FEMA ... :conf: ;) |
Hush you |
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| occrider |
Yea maybe Jebbie should have waited a bit before singing his own praise :p :
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Floridians Line Up Again for Food, Gas By ERIK SCHELZIG, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 28 minutes ago
MIAMI - Many Floridians began another day of struggling to find food, water and fuel after Hurricane Wilma on Thursday, with lines of people and cars forming around home improvement stores and gas stations.
About 2 million homes and businesses were still without power, which was making the recovery more difficult. Many gas stations that had fuel were without electricity, and others that had power ran out of supplies. Shouting matches broke out at some stations when people tried cutting in line.
"Get gas down here. This is craziness," Connie Rodriguez, 23, said Thursday while she and her fiance tried getting gas at two stations across the street from each other.
But progress was being made: Port Everglades had power back for most of its fuel depot, which supplies stations across South Florida. About 700 trucks will be picking up gas there to deliver to stations Thursday, down from the normal 1,000, said Carlos Buqueras, director of business development at the Fort Lauderdale-area port.
A day earlier, Gov. Jeb Bush took responsibility for frustrating relief delays in a state all too familiar with powerful storms.
"We did not perform to where we want to be," the governor said at a news conference in Tallahassee, adding that criticism of the federal response was misdirected. "This is our responsibility."
Bush's comments came amid finger-pointing by local and county officials upset with aid efforts, and criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency reminiscent of the anger unleashed following Hurricane Katrina.
"This is like the Third World," said Claudia Shaw, who spent several hours in a gas line. "We live in a state where we suffer from these storms every year. Where is the planning?"
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez called the relief distribution system "flawed." Nine of the 11 sites in his county ran out of supplies, according to its Web site.
But at another South Florida distribution site, ice sat melting Wednesday night, with officials issuing a plea on television stations: Come get it before it goes to waste.
Wilma killed at least 27 people in its charge across the Caribbean, Mexico and Florida. Florida's official death toll doubled from five to 10 Wednesday, and the storm also killed at least 12 people in Haiti, four in Mexico and one in Jamaica.
In Mexico, weary tourists camped out at the airport in hopes of grabbing a precious seat on flights Thursday leaving hurricane-ravaged Cancun. Thousands of tourists remained stranded along Mexico's Caribbean coast.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA, asked Floridians to have patience as he surveyed crumpled boats, shattered mobile homes and snaking lines of cars at fuel stations along the storm's path.
Chertoff promised to deploy cargo planes overnight to gather water and ice from across the country for delivery by Thursday. He also said the government was working to find more power generators to send to south Florida, and called on oil companies to help distributors get fuel out of the ground and into gas tanks.
"I have to say, in honesty, patience will be required for everybody," Chertoff told The Associated Press during his flight to Florida. "Under the best circumstances, even in the best planning, you still confront the physical reality of a destructive storm."
President Bush planned to arrive in Florida on Thursday to get his first look at the damage wrought by Wilma and to visit the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
More than 2,900 people remained housed in 25 shelters spread over 11 counties.
The state's largest utility, Florida Power & Light, had restored power by Thursday to about 36 percent of the 6 million people who had lost it. Officials warned, however, that the full restoration process could last through Nov. 22 in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
"All we can do is be patient and tell them an estimated time because we don't know what we might find down the line," utility foreman Heath Lowery said in Coral Gables. "We don't come out here and just turn a switch on and the lights come back."
Broward County Mayor Kristin Jacobs told CBS' "The Early Show" on Thursday that a boil-water order should be lifted soon, but the extended time the county is expected to be without power was problematic.
The record-breaking storm season wasn't over. Tropical Storm Beta formed early Thursday in the southwestern Caribbean Sea, becoming the season's 23rd tropical storm, the most since record keeping began in 1851. It was expected to threaten Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, but not the United States.
In Florida, the Upper and Middle Keys announced plans to accommodate tourists again beginning Friday; the Lower Keys, including Key West, expected to have tourists return starting Monday.
In the meantime, storm-savvy Floridians resorted to their ingenuity.
At one Wal-Mart, 30 people sat on the sidewalk while they used the store's outside electrical outlets to recharge their cell phones. At one gas station, a man went car-to-car selling fuel from a 10-gallon plastic tank. The price was $20 for about a gallon, and people happily paid.
"It's not a matter of we lack fuel, we just can't get it out of the ground because we lack power," said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez. "Grocery stores are closed because we don't have power. The longer we go without power, the worse the situation gets."
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