Lots of folks remember FEMA’s snafus with Katrina. But its history of screwups goes much further back. Here’s a recap on FEMA’s record with Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The conclusion might prove relevant this time around: <\/p>\n
“Hurricanes and governments have developed an odd, symbiotic relationship. The American Spectator BYLINE: by James Bovard.; BODY:<\/p>\n Hurricane Floyd–perhaps the most overhyped hurricane in Weather Channel in the eastern third of the state for weeks. In Florida and South Carolina, by In an unusual act that may now become standard operating procedure, President Administration officials wasted no time spinning what was quickly called ” State officials were also pleased with their work. “Overall, we’ve never spokesman for the Florida Emergency Operations Center. “It was astonishing it And hundreds of thousands did sit in their cars for hours as the evacuation In 1989, when Hurricane Hugo whacked the Charleston area, Gov. Carroll its evacuation effort.” What’s more, “because the state wasn’t ready to do its Clinton was quick to defend the forced evacuations. “There may be some people Clinton and Witt also painted the evacuation as a success because of the Predictably, news of Floyd sent politicians scrambling for a handout. Even The more the federal government gives, the more demanding state and local spokesman Don Pride observed: “If people aren’t reimbursed when they’re ordered After the storm was over, President Clinton began urging North Carolina In a speech in Tarboro, North Carolina, Clinton recited a long list of All of this post-disaster benevolence almost makes one forget that it was government policies that helped place many in harm’s way in the first place. Witt has peddled this schlock ever since he arrived at FEMA in 1993. In “Forget-and-forgive” is FEMA’s attitude toward repeat flood claimants. A covered by federal flood insurance had “multiple losses accounting for 60 FEMA’s repeated bailouts of flood victims and local governments are hell on Island, the lucky spot where Floyd finally made landfall.<\/p>\n Hurricanes and governments have developed an odd, symbiotic relationship. LOAD-DATE: October 28, 1999<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lots of folks remember FEMA’s snafus with Katrina. But its history of screwups goes much further back. Here’s a recap on FEMA’s record with Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The conclusion might prove relevant this time around: “Hurricanes and governments have developed an odd, symbiotic relationship. When the former threaten to make their presence felt, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nWhen the former threaten to make their presence felt, the latter demand equal
\nbilling. By the time the weather calms, it’s not clear which of them caused the
\nbigger mess.”<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n November, 1999
\nHEADLINE: The Floyd Fiasco
\nLike TV weathermen, the Feds love the hurricane season.<\/p>\n
\n James Bovard is the author of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the
\nDemise of the Citizen (St. Martin’s Press).<\/p>\n
\nhistory–wound up killing at least 70 people and causing billions of dollars in
\ndamages. But most of the deaths and damage occurred in New Jersey, parts of
\nVirginia, and North Carolina, where flooding kept thousands from their homes
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\ncontrast, which contrary to expectations escaped the brunt of the storm, federal
\nand state government reactions ended up disrupting far more lives than were
\nseriously threatened by the hurricane itself. No wonder Southerners labeled
\nFloyd “the King of Chaos.”<\/p>\n
\nClinton pre-emptively declared federal emergencies in several states even before
\nthe hurricane touched the continental U.S.–and, according to a FEMA employee,
\n“before the governors asked for assistance. This isn’t permitted by the law, but
\nwhen was the last time Clinton obeyed the law?” With FEMA’s encouragement,
\nSouthern states issued mandatory evacuation orders to nearly three million
\nresidents of coastal areas.<\/p>\n
\nthe largest peacetime evacuation in the history of the United States” as a major
\ntriumph. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt praised
\nstate officials for their rapid and thorough response, and Vice President Al
\nGore quickly declared, “All things considered, it’s gone very smoothly.”<\/p>\n
\nmoved so many people so far with so few problems,” said David Bruns, a
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\nwent as well as it did, but of course, you probably didn’t feel that way if you
\nwere sitting in a car for hours.”<\/p>\n
\norders produced some of the worst traffic jams in the history of the South.
\nFlorida drivers were stuck in 30-mile-long backups. According to the Los Angeles
\nTimes, some Floridians were caught in traffic jams with no movement for 12
\nhours. Some of the worst gridlock occurred exiting Charleston, South Carolina.
\nIt took some people 16 hours to drive from Charleston to Columbia– normally
\nless than two hours away.<\/p>\n
\nCampbell had quickly ordered that all lanes of Interstate 26 be reserved for
\nwestbound traffic out of the city. But on the grounds that this exodus strategy
\nwas too disruptive, state officials this time dragged their feet for eight hours
\nbefore allowing lanes to be reversed. By then the backups were already massive.
\nIf Floyd had sped up and caught the jammed motorists, the result could have been
\nthe biggest hurricane disaster since Galveston, Texas, in 1900. Charleston Mayor
\nJoseph Riley was outraged and denounced Gov. Jim Hughes, a fellow Democrat:
\n“What you’re doing is running the risk of killing my people.” The Charleston
\nPost and Courier editorialized: “The state was unconscionably inefficient in
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\njob, the negative legacy of Floyd now extends to the potentially tragic
\nperception that staying at home during a hurricane beats trying to leave.” The
\nmayor of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, told the Associated Press that “one
\nwoman vowed never to leave after she had to stop by the road to relieve herself
\nin front of a long line of traffic.” (It’s not known whether FEMA has made any
\neffort to offer her one of its ” crisis counseling” grants.)<\/p>\n
\nwho question…whether we did the right thing to recommend all the evacuations,”
\nhe said on September 19. “But now that we have this technology at the National
\nWeather Center, we have to act on it.” Will pre-landfall federal panic-mongering
\nbecome the rule in future hurricanes? In defending the evacuations, Clinton and
\nother officials sought to shift attention from whether state governments and
\nemergency planners were guilty of a stupendous misjudgment that exposed hundreds
\nof thousands of people to greater risks than they would have faced if they had
\nstayed home.<\/p>\n
\nlimited number of fatalities caused by Floyd itself, ignoring that the
\nevacuation cost an estimated $2 billion, almost all of it borne by the evacuees.
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\nbefore the storm landed, Florida Governor Jeb Bush asked Clinton for 100 percent
\nreimbursement of state and local government disaster-related costs. In his
\nletter to Clinton, Bush claimed that computer models were predicting Florida
\nwould suffer an astonishing $7 billion in damage. (Later he conceded this was
\n“purely a guess.”) Once Clinton issued his pre-emptive emergency declaration,
\nstate and local officials were free to rev up spending and send the bill to
\nWashington. Florida, which would suffer little damage, was promised the feds
\nwould cover 75 percent of overtime for police, firefighters, and other
\ngovernment workers and other related costs in response to the proclaimed
\nemergency.<\/p>\n
\ngovernments can become. Florida Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson is now
\npressuring FEMA to compensate state residents who had extra gas and lodging
\ncosts because of the evacuation order. After FEMA did not jump at the
\nopportunity, Nelson–who is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate next
\nyear–announced that he is considering ordering insurance companies to
\ncompensate homeowners, even when their homes suffered no damage. The Tampa
\nTribune noted that such an order “would earn political points along the Atlantic
\nseaboard…. But it would likely be unpopular in the rest of the state, where
\nhomeowners would have to foot much of the bill.” Florida Insurance Department
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\nout, it may be a disincentive for them to obey.” Under this theory, the threat
\nof losing one’s life is not sufficient to leave the coast–unless the government
\nalso promises to force other citizens to pay for your gas.<\/p>\n
\nresidents to “take advantage” of the federal aid elixir. “The American people
\nknow that no individual can handle this alone,” he said, announcing a special
\ndistribution of federal food stamps to people who would not normally qualify for
\nsuch handouts.<\/p>\n
\nfederal benefits available to flood victims and urged the audience: “So you all
\nneed to take advantage of these things.” A White House press release listed the
\narray of benefits–from disaster housing assistance (to cover the cost of a
\nhotel while people are forced out due to home damage), grants to low- and
\nmoderate-income individuals, Small Business Administration loans for business
\nand personal property disaster, Agriculture Department emergency loans to
\nfarmers who suffered crop or chicken losses, reimbursement for paying the cost
\nof clearing roads and carrying away downed trees, and more.<\/p>\n
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\nFloyd’s devastation in North Carolina is a reminder of how federal flood
\ninsurance spurs development along “hurricane alley.” At a televised press
\nconference at FEMA headquarters Clinton was asked, “Mr. President, with federal
\nflood insurance, is the government encouraging coastal development at a time
\nwhen we may be in a new cycle of more dangerous and more frequent storms?” FEMA
\nDirector Witt jumped in: “You know, without the Federal Flood Insurance Program,
\nwithout 19,000 communities across America being in that program, it not only has
\nsaved probably close to $750 million a year in disaster dollars that taxpayers
\npay. And the federal Flood Insurance Program is supported by flood premiums, not
\ntaxpayers’ dollars.”<\/p>\n
\nreality, the NFIP is more than $700 million in debt to the U.S. Treasury because
\nof heavy borrowings to cover its massive losses in recent years, even before the
\nsurge of claims pending from Floyd. The Treasury Department has written off more
\nthan a billion dollars in previous loans to the NFIP, thereby promoting the
\nfiction that the program is not an actuarial rathole. American taxpayers
\ncurrently face over $400 billion of exposure from NFIP policies.<\/p>\n
\nNational Wildlife Foundation study estimated that two percent of properties
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\npercent of the program’s total claims, and more than 5,600 properties had
\ncollected claims exceeding the total value of the property.” Almost $3 billion
\nhas been spent in the last two decades “repairing and rebuilding the same
\nstructures two, three and four times.” One Houston home suffered 16 floods; its
\nowner collected more than $800,000 in compensation for repair costs.<\/p>\n
\nthe environment. The Charlotte News & Observer noted in 1997 that FEMA’s ”
\nbailout (after earlier hurricanes) has reimbursed resort towns for just about
\nany piece of public property that blew away in the storm…. (It) has undermined
\nyears of efforts to discourage unwise development.” Consider the experience of
\nTopsail Island, a 26-mile island off the North Carolina coast. At a time when
\nNorth Carolina Governor Jim Hunt sought to discourage rebuilding on the island,
\nFEMA came in and deluged the area with more than $100 million to rebuild private
\nand public facilities damaged by two hurricanes in 1996. In 1998, the island was
\nhit by another hurricane–and FEMA rushed in to spend another $10 million. The
\n1998 damage was greater than it otherwise would have been because FEMA had
\nextended the sewer system after the previous hurricane, thus opening the door to
\nnew development. Federal relief spending over a three-year period amounted to
\nmore than $10,000 for each permanent resident on the island, according to the
\nAssociated Press. And once again, FEMA will come in and bail out Topsail
\n The American Spectator, November, 1999 November, 1999 <\/p>\n
\nWhen the former threaten to make their presence felt, the latter demand equal
\nbilling. By the time the weather calms, it’s not clear which of them caused the
\nbigger mess.<\/p>\n