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Gone with the wind

As new revelations emerge about troubling procedures at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its faulty distribution of aid following Florida's four hurricanes last year, one word keeps surfacing: accountability. Or, more precisely, the lack of it.

Exhibit A: the most recent expose by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale - which revealed that FEMA employed at least 30 housing inspectors with felony or misdemeanor records for crimes such as embezzlement, drug dealing and robbery. FEMA declined to name its inspectors, but the Sun-Sentinel reported identifying 133 inspectors nationwide, noting 22 percent of them had criminal records.

The story tops a string of reports from the South Florida newspaper on the weaknesses of FEMA, which paid $31-million in claims to Miami-Dade County residents for damage from Hurricane Frances, though the hurricane made landfall 100 miles north. Subsequent Sun-Sentinel stories noted FEMA paid $1.27-million for 315 hurricane-related funeral claims in Florida, despite an official death toll set by the state's medical examiners at 123.

In Miami-Dade, FEMA paid $23,608 for five funerals, though the county's medical examiner recorded no hurricane-related deaths, the newspaper said. Official death tolls already include those who die from causes indirectly connected to storms, such as falling while repairing a roof. But the Sun-Sentinel cited several instances in which FEMA officials pressured medical examiners to certify deaths occurring coincidentally close to a storm as hurricane-related, regardless of the circumstances.

Perhaps recollections of criticism following the sluggish federal response to 1992's Hurricane Andrew sapped the will of federal officials to regulate the flow of money this time around.

FEMA responded promptly to Florida's hurricanes, but it did not always respond responsibly. Congress should hold the agency accountable for improperly spending public money on people who likely were not victims of a disaster.

[Last modified April 27, 2005, 00:47:14]