Copyright 2006 P.G. Publishing Co.
By KEN KAYE
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
ORLANDO, Fla. — If a hurricane similar to Katrina slams the U.S. coastline this year, federal officials promise that they will be ready with a much more rapid, comprehensive and compassionate response.
“I give you my personal guarantee that we are going to be ready,” R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, told about 2,000 participants of the National Hurricane Conference yesterday. “We are going to do what we have to do to be ready for this season.”
But there’s a problem: Federal administrators insist that local emergency managers be the “first responders,” identify areas of worst need and determine how much food and water should be delivered. Mr. Paulison also emphasized that residents must learn to be self-sufficient for up to a week after a disaster.
“You shouldn’t have people standing in lines only 12 hours after a storm, waiting for ice and water, as we had in Miami with Wilma,” he said.
FEMA’s demands might not be realistic, some officials in Florida said. For instance, if Wilma had hit as Category 4 hurricane instead of a Category 2 in October, it would have destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and left a disaster so massive that local governments might have been paralyzed, said Tony Carper, Broward County’s emergency management director. “That’s when the federal government has to take a leadership role and step in,” he said.
As it was, Wilma left more than 10,000 homes in South Florida severely damaged, and Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties spent millions to provide food, water and ice.
Vince Bonvento, Palm Beach County assistant administrator, said no matter what, the county would respond to a hurricane and hope that federal help arrives quickly. “But that hasn’t been the history,” he said.
Mr. Paulison and his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, insisted that the miserable response to Katrina will not happen again. Mr. Paulison said that among the many federal actions in motion are stockpiling food, water and emergency supplies and ensuring that the supplies can be quickly transported to a disaster scene.
He also said FEMA has developed an improved tracking system that relies on GPS devices to closely monitor where supplies and relief funds go, “to cut down on fraud.”
Mr. Chertoff added that the federal coordination with local and state officials will be improved, that emergency teams will hold exercises to practice responding and that the recovery phase will attempt to better utilize small and minority businesses.
He also said the federal government would push oil companies to ensure that gas stations use generators to remain open and that trucks deliver enough fuel. “We’re going to be better prepared for this hurricane season than any other prior year,” Mr. Chertoff said.
Yet both Mr. Paulison and Mr. Chertoff emphasized that all federal response plans rely on local and state officials to arrive first at a disaster scene, assess needs and then request federal assistance. “We are not first-responders,” Mr. Paulison said.
FEMA and the Bush administration were sharply criticized after tens of thousands of New Orleans residents were left homeless without food or water for as long as a week after Katrina. In the aftermath, ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown resigned.
A report by U.S. House investigators, released in February, ripped every level of government for the sluggish response after the levees broke.