FEMA first hand - emails from a friend

[ted]

Pretty grim reports from the front line in Lousiana. Really worth reading.

>Hey folks,
>
>This morning I set off with a friend in a rental car for Biloxi,
>Mississippi. We left from Baton Rouge, where the Louisiana FEMA
>headquarters is based, and drove along I-12 for several hours past
>countless convoys of power trucks, military hummers, and flatbeds loaded
>with power generators and canned drinking water. Hundreds of overturned
>cars lined the side of the Interstate, along with gigantic piles of
>assorted debris (mattresses, sheetrock, brush, entire roofs, mobile homes,
>toilets...). When we turned onto I-10 and headed closer to the coast and
>Mississippi border the first thing we saw was a gutted Wal-Mart with
>thousands of people sitting and eating under canvas military tents in the
>parking lot. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees at this time, with 95%
>humidity level. A pungent odor of rotting flesh and food filled the air,
>replacing that damp hummusy vegetative odor of the Deep South. Hundreds of
>stray cats and dogs dug through debris piles and lapped up water from
> rancid green puddles in ditches by the road. Hurricane Katrina, a
>National Guardsman told me, thoroughly destroyed 90% of the homes in this
>town (Pearlington). The golden arches of McDonalds were only a distorted
>tangle of wires forming a rather unsavory M one hundred feet in the air. A
>mobile home was lodged into the side of a Waffle House; two girls played
>jumprope with what looked like downed power lines. With the exception of
>military personnel and aid workers, nearly all the people walking the side
>of the road and eating at the makeshift parking lot kitchens were black. My
>friend and I ate lunch in the Christian Cavalry Kitchen: pink hotdogs
>buzzing with flies, brown carrots, warm water and greenish white bread. The
>free Bibles were in much better shape than the food. We drove for another
>half hour to the town of Bay Saint Louis, where the complete absence of a
>major bridge forced us to stop. This was the stretch of coast, several men
>from the Army Corps of Engineers told me,
> where the eye of the storm came through. "See that sandbar?" one man
>asked me, pointing to a strip of white sand beach lining St. Louis Bay.
>"There used to be a dozen or so antebellum homes right there. Now it's just
>sand. Even the foundations are gone. Friggin' yeah." I used my FEMA pass to
>go past a military checkpoint, but had to turn back because of the smell.
>The sky was a lovely blue...no clouds, only helicopters. A month after the
>storm and most people I met today are still dazed. Me too.

>Subject: Dispatch #2--Walker, LA
>Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 14:55:06 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hey folks,
>
>For the last thirteen hours I’ve been flanked on all sides by Les, Bo,
>Chopper and Stoley. Each is armed with a Glock 17 revolver and a
>collapsible baton, and their eyes are hidden behind military-issued
>reflective sunglasses. Les and Chopper recently returned from nine months
>stints as Special Operations Specialists in Iraq. Les and Stoley are just
>big, bald, bad-ass guys from Georgia. They are apparently here to guard me
>from my FEMA applicants, those hundreds of people who stream through the
>Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) in Walker, Louisiana, where I’ve worked for
>the last few weeks. Most of these applicants are evacuees from New Orleans,
>Gulfport, or Biloxi, whose homes, communities and lives were generally
>annihilated by Hurricane Katrina and then given a cheapshot jab in the gut
>by Hurricane Rita. Many are illiterate, low-income, disabled, elderly, or
>astoundingly obese, and have nowhere else to turn except FEMA or Red Cross.
>They’ve already slept on cots in shelters for the
> last month or stayed with distant relatives in mobile homes and now that
>most of the shelters are beginning to close and the relatives are getting
>restless, most of these applicants have to move on. An hour ago I spoke
>with a 76-year-old man named Sherman with severe emphysema who can’t keep
>living in his mobile home because of the black mold. FEMA won’t pay him
>anything because they say his dwelling was insufficiently damaged. He
>claims that his entire house was flooded during the storm but that there is
>no evident structural damage. When the inspector came to his home several
>weeks ago, nothing appeared damaged so he wasn’t awarded any financial
>assistance. Sherman now says that the mold is growing so vigorously that
>the walls of his mobile home are beginning to cave in. When I explained to
>him that FEMA couldn’t move him into a travel trailer for another week or
>two, he began crying. “I feel like I’m begging,” he whispered, rubbing the
>back of his hand over his bloodshot eyes.
> Most of the stories are of this genre: hopeless, directionless, spiraling
>more and more into poverty and dependence on others.
>
>Yesterday there was a shooting at a DRC in Baton Rouge. A man was pissed
>off at having to wait for six hours in the heat just to be told that he
>wasn’t eligible to receive FEMA’s $2000 expedited assistance. This morning
>at my DRC another man tried to knock my computer off the table when I
>explained that he had to be patient in waiting for the FEMA inspector to
>arrive at his home. Chopper, who’s itching for some action, tapped on the
>man’s shoulder and cleared his throat. “Screw it,” said the man, throwing
>his papers on my desk. “I’m off.” Les and Chopper escorted him outdoors.
>Thirty minutes after this incident a reporter from the Los Angeles Times
>showed up at our well-guarded doors with her photographer. I asked them to
>come back tomorrow after contacting a Press Information Officer from the
>Department of Homeland Security. Despite being in crisis mode, everything
>still depends on the paperwork. The entire situation, from my perspective
>in the bowels of FEMA, seems to be ideal
> fodder for a Borges short story or Kafka novel.
>
>About ten days ago, because of some absurd scarcity of trained FEMA staff,
>I was appointed manager of the Walker/Denham Springs Disaster Recovery
>Center. Representatives from IRS, USDA, Department of Social Services, U.S.
>Hazard Mitigation, Small Business Administration, Crisis Counseling, FEMA
>Housing, FEMA Other Needs Assistance, and Salvation Army are all packed
>under the blazing fluorescent lights of the Old South Jamboree Hall. The
>smell of urine, locker room body odor and McDonalds are pervasive. When I
>came to relieve the previous manager there were two Confederate flags
>hanging on the white walls. When I tore them down an old black man with a
>cane chuckled and said, “Hey, hey…you must be a Yankee.” Indeed. So I also
>tore down the photo-collage of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. The
>black man shook his head and continued chuckling.
>
> Workdays in the DRC begin at 7h00 a.m. and generally end
>around 9h00 p.m. Last night I stayed until 10h00 to help a young man who
>had evacuated from Texas during Rita and didn’t have enough gas money to
>get back. He wanted $2000 directly deposited in his bank account by the
>next morning. He said he had two mentally-disabled children and they were
>going to starve if we didn’t get him the money right away. I
>surreptitiously sent one of the guards out to investigate his file and got
>a phone call twenty minutes later from a man at FEMA headquarters. “Have
>the guards escort him out,” I was told, “This is his fifth DRC today. And
>he’s from California, doesn’t have kids.” Post-disaster landscapes, I’ve
>learned, are breeding grounds for profiteers, fraud, and manipulation. The
>Gulf Coast, it seems, has become the land of pirates once again.