FEMA director: Hurricane relief deployment is agency’s largest
Published: September 26, 2004
The 2004 hurricane season has brought the largest ever deployment of Federal Emergency Management Agency workers, agency Director Michael Brown said Sunday.
The 5,000-plus relief workers in 15 states from the Gulf Coast to Vermont for this year’s succession of storms eclipsed any previous FEMA effort, including its response to the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, Calif., and the September 2001 terrorist attacks, he said.
After responding to Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan, storm-weary FEMA workers returned to parts of Florida lashed by Jeanne with its sheets of rain, pounding surf and 120 mph winds.
Before Jeanne, the agency had received more than 600,000 requests for aid from hurricane victims in Florida and throughout the eastern United States and disbursed about $360 million, Brown said. FEMA already has delivered millions of gallons of water, bags of ice and ready-to-eat meals to storm victims.
With Jeanne hitting Florida’s Atlantic coast and the waterlogged central part of the state, those numbers are sure to rise.
“We just somehow have to get as much relief to them as possible to show them that we’re going to be right there with them, that we haven’t abandoned them,” Brown said.
President Bush is expected to seek emergency aid by next week to help eastern states recover from Hurricane Ivan, but it remains unclear how big the package will be.
Bush’s proposal - anticipated by congressional leaders - would be on top of the $5.1 billion he already has requested to help victims of Charley and Frances, which pummeled Florida and nearby states. Of that, Congress has approved $2 billion so far.
Brown said the frequency of the hurricanes meant that FEMA workers were forced to evacuate areas where they were working, so they would not become victims of new storms.
“We move them in and they do their work and they’re plodding along … and you have to pull them back, then you have to send them back in,” Brown said. “That probably drives them nuts.”
He also advised tired FEMA personnel to remain focused on continuing their good work. “This is the time to suck it up,” Brown said.
Before Jeanne, relief efforts already rivaled those for the Northridge earthquake. The Los Angeles area sustained the brunt of the 6.7-magnitude quake that led to $15.2 billion in insured property losses.
The number of FEMA workers does not include the thousands of state employees, members of the National Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and volunteers from the Red Cross and Salvation Army spread throughout the country.
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