I trust you didn’t forget to give thanks to FEMA on Thanksgiving for its response to Hurricane Katrina, which the agency considers this year's top accomplishment:
The response to Hurricane Katrina was FEMA’s largest response in its history. The aid given within six weeks of landfall included almost $3.8 billion for more than 1.24 million households. More than half a million people visited 100 Disaster Recovery Centers that had been quickly created across the Gulf Coast. Working through the American Red Cross, FEMA supported the nation’s largest-ever sheltering operation, with more than 273,000 evacuees at the peak. In addition, again working with the Red Cross, FEMA paid to house more than 600,000 people in emergency hotel housing. Almost 70,000 temporary roofs had been put on damaged homes through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, more than 16,000 manufactured homes or travel trailers had been placed on site, and 20 million cubic yards of debris had been picked up.
But FEMA gets no thanks from Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor:
FEMA continues to be able to mess up a one-car funeral -- we don’t begin to have enough money for major reconstruction. We’re going to have a lot of defaults and bankruptcies.
The federal response, from highways to housing to trailers, is completely unacceptable.”
Piling on, the Washington Post editorialized:
New Orleans today is a city of contractors, low-wage workers from elsewhere and a small number of “natives” living in the relatively undamaged higher-altitude wards. Even if they have homes, most of those residents still have no easy access to hospitals or to schools. Large chunks of the city are without electricity, gas or water, and large numbers of homes are still uninhabitable.
FEMA’s performance (and here) brings to mind the old line: “But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
