After Ike, FEMA aid is hard to come by

[DogPoundPup]

Six weeks after Hurricane Ike ravaged Southeast Texas, federal officials have approved only about 13 percent of requests for money to repair damaged houses or replace ruined belongings.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has received more than 710,000 requests statewide, has provided almost $300 million for housing and other needs to more than 92,000 households.

Yet the agency continues to find the overwhelming majority of applicants ineligible, prompting widespread concerns that applicants are discouraged by unwieldy procedures and that the agency's staff and contractors don't always follow its publicly stated policies.

FEMA's newly assigned Harris County station chief, Philip Parks, said last week that he would review the reasons for the low approval rate, which include insufficient damage to homes and errors on applications that may be as minor as an omitted middle initial. Parks noted that many families denied assistance could reverse those decisions through appeals.

But local members of Congress and other elected officials, whose offices field calls daily from people struggling to navigate the assistance process, said FEMA and other relief agencies are moving too slowly and helping too few families.

Albert Myres, a Reliant Energy executive administering the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund, said many storm victims are falling through gaps among the programs offered by FEMA, the Small Business Administration and their own insurance coverage. As a result, he said, the charitable group's task of filling needs unmet by the government seems to grow larger every day.

"It's extremely confusing to folks," Myres said. "Kids are still not situated, families are living in cars or tents or in patched-up houses."

Contradictory information
Disaster victims and leaders of local agencies assisting them said FEMA personnel, including call center workers who take applications over the phone, sometimes make decisions or statements that contradict policies the agency outlines on its Web site and in other forums.

Read more at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6078556.html

[babylonsister]

1. The local news stations around here are hitting this hard; they've

had three different FEMA reps. since Ike hit; some continuity for all the problems around here. Again, FEMA is FUBARed. I guess they learned nothing from Katrina. EPIC FAIL! :grr:

[KharmaTrain]

3. How Are Insurance Claims Going?

Words can't describe what a disaster FEMA and the "Homeland Security" department are. I'm curious about how insurance claims are going? Are they being processed quickly or are they starting to play the games they did with Katrina?

Hope you're all cleaned up as well...

Cheers...

[babylonsister]

6. I honestly don't know since we didn't have to file one and I don't

often listen to the local news. I do know that the insurance companies were out in force and advertising their numbers and info to those that needed it the day after Ike hit, so that must have been comforting. And there is lots of construction around here, i.e., roofs being repaired or replaced, fences being rebuilt, etc. Most of the residue out on the curb has also been picked up, so I can't fault the city. That in itself was a massive job.

[KharmaTrain]

7. That's A Very Good Sign...

I worked in a town that was devestated by a tornado...no sooner did the skies clear than the insurance companies were up and running. I was working at a local radio station and we stayed on the air for nearly a week with almost non-stop storm info and a ton of announcements about where people could go to take care of their claims. It wasn't long that the mess was cleaned up and the area came back stronger than before.

Inversely, I was down in NOLA last spring and met with several people who still were waiting on closing their cases...one of the biggest problems was that their companies didn't feel they were fully liable for replacements in the floods due to the faulty levees...it was a government problem and the government tossed it back at the insurance companies. I guess it all depends on the area you live in.

Glad to hear you came through it with everything in one piece.

Cheers...

[rainbow4321]

2. There is a huge early vote turnout in area hit by Ike

Maybe those affected by Ike are taking their frustrations to the polls.


http://www.quorumreport.com/
(click on "buzz word" tab and scroll to October 23, 2008 5:10 PM entry.)


VOTERS IN HURRICANE-AFFECTED AREAS OF GULF COAST ARE SURGING TO THE POLLS
Hurricane Ike appears not to be dissuading voters in Galveston County from early voting; Democrat numbers guy Leland Beatty says older Democrats are accounting for most of their turnout across the state while GOP pollster Mike Baselice says that Republicans are performing better than expected in Harris County.
With three days of early voting now in the books, some interesting things are happening along the Gulf Coast. The book has long been that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ike would wreak similar devastation on turnout figures in places like Galveston County.

Well, here are the numbers out of Galveston County, according to the Secretary of State’s Office:
-- Number of in-person votes cast, 2008: 19,205 (10.16 percent of total registered voters)
-- Number of in-person votes cast, 2004: 10,819 (5.82 percent of total registered voters)

In other words, early voting has nearly doubled in Galveston County compared to a similar point in the last presidential election

[malaise]

4. Katrina revisited

Rethugs won't even let them eat cake

[Flubadubya]

5. And there are over 10,000 uninhabited FEMA trailers here in Hope, AR...

and they are still paying the city rent for storage:




Here's a little factoid from 2006:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://nomadfeet.blogspot.com/2006/02/irony-of-it-all.html&h=267&w=400&sz=44&hl=en&start=4&usg=__QeMwoOwaM22dYHQy1E_B8GNXXbQ=&tbnid=hD4QkmnikvFuvM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfema%2Btrailers%2Bhope%2Barkansas%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1T4ADBS_enUS272US273%26sa%3DG