In a Letter to the Editor in today's New York Times, Senators Joseph I. Lieberman (CFL-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, and Susan Collins (R-ME), the committee's ranking minority member, proclaimed:
FEMA’s response to the 2008 hurricane season was effective.
Really?
(SneakySnu posted an earlier diary)
The letter was in response to a Nov. 24 Times editorial "Fixing FEMA" which proposed to "restore the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a separate cabinet-level arm of government." But the letter from Lieberman and Collins completely sidestepped that issue, instead offering a sanctimonious serious of excuses for FEMA's past failures while pretending its current ones don't exist.
Let's see.
Yesterday's Dallas Morning News: "Perry's office criticizes FEMA funding plan for Hurricane Ike cleanup"
Meanwhile, Texas' coastal communities remain devastated, trashed with the remnants of destroyed homes and businesses.
The federal government "is spending billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out irresponsible companies," Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said Monday, "but it refuses to meet its obligations to residents whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Ike."
From the AP via International Herald Tribune Dec. 1: "Debris pile becomes symbol of US agency delays"
A 30-mile (48-kilometer) scar of debris along the Texas coast stands as a festering testament to what state and local officials say is a federal agency's sluggish response to the 2008 hurricane season.
Two and a half months after Hurricane Ike blasted the shoreline, alligators and snakes crawl over vast piles of shattered building materials, lawn furniture, trees, boats, tanks of butane and other hazardous substances, thousands of animal carcasses, perhaps even the corpses of people killed by the storm.
State and local officials complain that the removal of the filth has gone almost nowhere because red tape has held up both the cleanup work and the release of the millions of dollars that the state's Chambers County says it needs to pay for the project.
Elsewhere along the coast, similar complaints are heard: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been slow to reimburse local governments for what they have already spent, putting the rural counties on the brink of financial collapse.
"I don't know all the internal workings of FEMA. But if they've had a lot of experience in hurricanes and disaster, it looks like they could come up with some kind of process that would work," said Chambers County Judge Jimmy Sylvia, the county's chief administrator.
From the Houma Courier, Nov. 21: "FEMA says it won’t clear Gustav, Ike mess"
HOUMA - Busted boats, ruined trailers, felled trees and broken branches are clogging area bayous.
You may not be able to tell which ones were deposited there by the 2005 storms and what to blame on hurricanes Gustav and Ike, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it can.
And the agency, which allocated almost $200 million to remove Katrina and Rita debris under pressure from the state, says it won't remove the more recent mess.
"We have requested that the Coast Guard and FEMA pick up marine debris from Gustav and Ike while they are picking Katrina and Rita marine debris, but so far we haven't received a formal response from FEMA, and they haven't granted this request," said Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas says Katrina and Rita debris has already been identified and very specific contracts have been drawn up. Those documents dictate which waterway will be cleaned and what objects will be targeted. The federal agency can't alter those contracts, he said.
State officials disagree, saying it doesn't make sense not to expand the program to include the debris left behind by the September storms.
From KATC.com Dec. 2: "FEMA Trailers Delayed for Acadiana Families"
Louisiana victims of this year's hurricanes will have to wait until next year to get their FEMA trailers.
350 storm victims are in need of mobile homes after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. A recent report said only 54 had been placed with residences.
Officials blame the process of getting permits and establishing proper infrastructure are slowing down the process.
They say all Louisiana families should be in trailers by January or early February of next year.
But according to Senators Lieberman and Collins: "FEMA’s response to the 2008 hurricane season was effective."
Mission Accomplished!