09-23-2008, 11:12 AM
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Analyst
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 1,987
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Katrina II: Bush doesn't care about wet people
Billions for Wall Street bankers, but no help for working Americans?
After Ike, FEMA comes under fire again
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...22/1009/NEWS07
Quote:
BEAUMONT, Texas -- In its first major test in three years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has come under scrutiny for failing to develop a long-term housing plan for the more than 1 million evacuees from the Texas gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Faced with criticism, FEMA has agreed to pay a month of hotel expenses for some evacuees from the hardest-hit areas. But in a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday, local officials expressed concern that there was no longer-range plan for residents whose homes in devastated areas such as Galveston, Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange will be uninhabitable indefinitely.
"Housing is a big concern and our county judges and elected officials brought it up with Secretary Chertoff," said Officer Crystal Holmes, spokeswoman for Beaumont Emergency Operations. "We just don't have apartments here, and when you think of the thousands of homes actually obliterated, where are all those people going to live?"
With 32,000 people in shelters across the state and thousands more living in hotels and with relatives or friends, Texas officials said they are anticipating a housing strain on the area, which already has a shortage of apartments and other rental units. Meanwhile, the housing burden has fallen on state shelters, which were initially set up as an emergency resource and could now be forced to remain open longer.
According to Zachary Thompson, director of the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Resources, FEMA should have established programs with housing agencies across the state in advance of the storm or immediately afterward, so that apartments and Section 8 housing could be readily identified. Those are lessons that should have been learned from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, he said.
"We have seen this movie before. It happened with Katrina," Thompson said. "When you evacuate the majority of residents from an impacted city, the game plan for the federal government should be to look at housing needs. People clearly can't go back to Galveston.
"The shelters were put in place to get people out of harm's way. The next step is up to FEMA. No city in America is set up to handle long-term shelters," he said.
He said FEMA is also looking for mobile homes in the area that can be rented, but the agency has abandoned the controversial travel trailer program, which provided housing for Katrina and Rita evacuees for months after the storms. FEMA was criticized for taking too long to get people into the trailers initially and for allowing people to stay in them after learning the units were a health risk.
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Chertoff a "son of a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)" says Bridge City mayor
http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/ne...9-21-2008.html
Quote:
A quick fix will not come to Bridge City's housing problem, federal officials told the town's residents Sunday, because the federal government will not provide small travel trailers for flood victims with unlivable houses.
Without housing inside the city limits, the town of 8,000 will "shrivel" and die, said Mayor Kirk Roccaforte, who had terse words about the Department of Homeland Security's secretary.
Hundreds of upset Bridge City residents attended the unruly town meeting in a sun-drenched outdoor park Sunday afternoon, and they left in droves when they received no answer to their most important question: Where do they live for now?
"You can't find a hotel room. You can't find any place to live," said Sharon LeBlanc, a 58-year-old Orange County literacy agency director who had about three feet of water in her house and is staying with family in Lake Charles and Lafayette, La.
Before more than 500 residents who gathered beneath and around a pavilion near the city's youth baseball park off Roundbunch Road, Roccaforte opened the meeting by praising area first responders. He also praised the Federal Emergency Management Agency's representative for their work in hard-hit Orange County since Hurricane Ike flooded thousands of homes along Sabine Lake and area bayous.
However, he had fewer kind words for Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, under which FEMA operates.
He chose to meet with the secretary once, he told the crowd over the public address system, and he was "conned" into it again. Roccaforte said he would not meet with the secretary again in Port Arthur or at Ford Park in Beaumont.
In a moment of anger, as Roccaforte described it later, he said the "son of a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)" could come to Bridge City to see what the people here are doing for one another.
"We're not looking for a handout," Roccaforte said later. "We're only looking for a little help."
Roccaforte and school leaders said the small town would die if temporary housing was not available within the city limits. He said 99 percent of the city's homes were damaged by floodwaters, and most were unlivable.
FEMA representatives disappointed many in the crowd when they said the agency is "out of the travel trailer business" since many Hurricane Katrina victims housed in the recreational vehicles became sick from formaldehyde in the temporary housing. Other options exist, said Mark Neveau, the local coordinator from the agency.
Upon learning that temporary housing would not come quickly, many residents left the meeting early.
"We're right where we started. There are no answers," said Sheila Richard, a 44-year-old housecleaner whose home had several feet of water.
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