FEMA still recovering

BY CAROL EISENBERG | Newsday Washington Bureau

August 29, 2006

WASHINGTON - Don’t tell Eddie Favre that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has turned itself around. Not yet, anyhow.

Day in and day out, the 52-year-old mayor of Bay St. Louis, Miss., wrestles with emissaries of the agency, trying to shake loose the federal money the city needs to rebuild.

Favre tells how he lost everything but the clothes on his back when Hurricane Katrina wiped away this historic coastal community of 8,500 residents, as if it were a toy set.

Still, he was turned down for a FEMA trailer for no apparent reason, like hundreds of his neighbors. He spent the next year arguing about FEMA's arcane rules regarding when and where it would pay to remove the debris that made Bay St. Louis look like a war zone. And he is still struggling to negotiate the flow of money to rebuild gas, water and sewer systems.

"To be honest, I don't see much change," said Favre, who has vowed not to go out and buy a pair of long pants until his city is made whole again. "It's very, very frustrating."

Despite the administration's rush to create a more nimble, responsive agency - and its naming in April of R. David Paulison, a former Miami fire chief, to the job of FEMA director - the challenges facing the nation's emergency response system remain daunting.

A year after the storm decimated three states, killed more than 1,330 people and dislocated three-quarters of a million others, the Gulf Coast recovery limps along at a snail's pace, still hobbled by red tape, inflexible rules and bureaucratic fumbling.

Thousands still await FEMA trailers, for instance, while thousands of mobile homes sit unused in Hope, Ark., because regulations prohibit them from being used in a flood plain.

Readiness a concern

More disturbing still are questions about the agency's readiness for the next disaster. While officials say they're confident they would respond quickly this time, citing the record amounts of food, water and ice stockpiled in regional warehouses and the billions spent on new communications and tracking equipment, critics are dubious.

"My view is we're still vulnerable in terms of a serious hurricane, and we are very vulnerable in terms of other serious natural and man-made disasters," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.

"For starters, FEMA is supposed to have 2,400 people working for it. They're at 2,000. They were down to 1,700 at the time of Katrina, so they've brought 300 people back. But the entire agency is infected with morale problems and a lack of broad-based leadership."

Others believe the agency is likely to muster a smoother response to another hurricane after the lessons of Katrina. But an earthquake? Or a dirty bomb? Or an aerosolized form of smallpox? The answer is less certain.

"We're going to start getting ready for an earthquake right after we have one," worries Eric Holdeman, director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management. "It isn't smart to be concentrating just on hurricanes. Or just on terrorism. Or just on avian flu. ... We have to focus on the big picture."

Strides to improve

By all accounts, the agency has rushed to reform its communications, logistics, transportation and procurement systems and hired hundreds of people. But some say its structure is fundamentally flawed, and the gaps in leadership and training too great to be overcome in the near future.

Frances Fragos Townsend, homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, recommended 125 changes in her report to the president in February - 11 of them bulleted for action before the June 1 start of hurricane season.

"To the secretary's credit," she said, referring to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, "he has focused on those. We do have more food, water and ice. We do have a permanent director with real emergency management experience. We have filled senior management positions. We are better positioned to communicate during a disaster."

"Am I saying our response to a disaster will be flawless?" Townsend said. "No, of course not. ... This is going to take time, just as getting the department [of homeland security] to act as an integrated unit is going to take time."

No change overnight