Posted on Wed, Oct. 26, 2005
Gov. Bush defends FEMA, takes blame for shortcomings
BY MARY ELLEN KLAS, NOAH BIERMAN AND EVAN S. BENN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday took the blame for underestimating the need for emergency supplies in Miami-Dade and Broward counties after Hurricane Wilma struck, and he aggressively defended the Federal Emergency Management Agency, urging critics to call him instead.
"If anybody wants to blame anybody, let them blame me. Don't blame FEMA," he said at the state emergency operations center with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA Acting Director R. David Paulison at this side.
"This is our responsibility and overall we are doing a good job," added Bush, who had promised before Wilma hit that relief supplies would be distributed to victims in the first 24 hours.
South Florida storm victims waited in lines for hours Tuesday at distribution centers, many perplexed and angry that state, local and federal officials seemed to have misled them about when and whether ice and water would arrive. The scenes were televised nationally, adding to FEMA's battered post-Katrina image.
Wednesday's operation was smoother at most of South Florida's distribution sites, but supplies ran out at some places in Miami-Dade and Broward.
"When they run out, that's it," said a frustrated Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez. "FEMA cannot tell us when they will be resupplied."
In Hollywood, where ice trucks scheduled to arrive at 10 a.m. were delayed until 2:20 p.m., Mayor Mara Giulianti pointed the finger at FEMA, the bureaucratic whipping boy of Hurricane Katrina.
"Again, there's been a failure," she said. "If there's a failure of the government over something this simple, I'm frightened to see what would happen in an even worse crisis."
Speaking Wednesday afternoon from Opa-locka Airport, Chertoff pledged to send cargo planes and more trucks carrying ice, food and water to Homestead Air Reserve Base by the end of Thursday.
Bush and Chertoff, who oversees FEMA and was touring South Florida with Paulison, said they failed to anticipate how many people would need food, ice and water and then failed to get the supplies to people quickly.
The state has primary responsibility in managing natural disasters and Bush testified last week in Congress that he'd like to keep it that way. FEMA is supposed to support the state and anticipate gaps. Before the storm, both state and FEMA officials bragged that Florida's vast experience in storms has made for a seamless process and what Bush called a "unified command."
On Friday, three days before Wilma arrived, FEMA officials said they had more than 300 truckloads of water, ice and meals stockpiled at Homestead and Jacksonville staging areas.
By Wednesday afternoon, officials said the combined state-federal effort had delivered 1,046 truckloads of food, water and ice to local distribution sites.
Bush's strong comments in defense of FEMA Wednesday underscored the political stakes for his brother, President George W. Bush. Hobbled tremendously after Katrina, the president plans to visit South Florida on Thursday. Wilma did far less damage than Katrina and no one is making comparisons in the government's response.
But in this latest storm, President Bush needs to "reaffirm that the systems work," said William Waugh, disaster management expert and professor of public administration at Georgia State University.
Waugh said the late ice and water do not reflect a failure of Florida's excellent emergency response track record, something Gov. Bush also made a point of emphasizing Wednesday. The first 24 hours after the storm are always the hardest logistically, because trucks have trouble traversing roads still strewn with debris, Waugh said.
State officials had trouble reaching truck drivers by cell phone Tuesday and could not give them instructions on how to fill their gas tanks so they could move supplies to Broward.
To fix early logistical problems, governments would need to deliver supplies by air rather than truck, Waugh said.
By comparison, it took two days for limited supplies of ice and water to arrive after Ivan struck the Panhandle last year and three days for relief to arrive in Mississippi after Katrina.
Paulison, Gov. Bush and Chertoff pushed some of the blame back at residents Wednesday, saying they should have had supplies at home for three days after the storm. Still, Bush promised before the storm that supplies would be in place within 24 hours. And the state's emergency management director, Craig Fugate, said it would be a "failure" they weren't.
"Part of the lesson of Katrina is that emergency management officials can't rely on the preparedness of the population, so there will be people with virtually nothing," Waugh said.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat, said Gov. Bush was "insulting the victims of the hurricane in South Florida telling them to be patient and that they should have had what they needed for 72 hours."
"No one is looking at the centers of poverty as a priority," he said, adding that Little Haiti and Overtown still don't have distribution sites.
Meek has been pressing to get supplies in those areas, but their exclusion from the list of 16 Miami-Dade sites was a local decision. Alvarez said he wished he had more sites, but accused critics of parochialism.
Most other politicians had toned down their FEMA criticism by Wednesday afternoon as the situation seemed to improve. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, said it was too soon to judge FEMA's response, but the agency seems "to be getting these hiccups ironed out."
He and others were pushing FEMA to get more generators to South Florida so the gas stations would be up and running.
"Folks are going to criticize anything that's not perfect," said U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, a Republican and the head of Florida's congressional delegation. "FEMA is not perfect, but I think they're doing a great job."
Waugh said the quality of FEMA's response is tied directly to the state's abilities:
"There are always questions whether the emergency management systems work better if you're related to the president or if in the same political party, or it's an election year."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Knight Ridder correspondents Lesley Clark, Wanda J. DeMarzo, Trenton Daniel, Frank Davies, Gary Fineout, Jennifer Mooney Piedra, Tere Figueras Negrete and Joseph Goodman contributed to this report.
