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Homeland Security Focus
Areas chicagotribune.com Campus is soaked, but summer classes still onUniversity officials just not sure whereBy Jo Napolitano Tribune correspondent June 18, 2008 IOWA CITY — Matt Marquardt was studying the flow of rivers inside the basement of the University of Iowa's hydraulics laboratory when the Iowa River made a surprise visit—pouring into his lab.
Flooding disrupts summer classes at University of Iowa By Marilyn King
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Epic flooding forces the evacuation of thousands in IowaBy Amy Lorentzen, Associated Press | June 13, 2008 CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - The Cedar River poured over its banks in the city yesterday, forcing the evacuation of nearly 4,000 homes, causing a railroad bridge to collapse, and leaving cars underwater on downtown streets. Officials estimated that 100 blocks were underwater in Cedar Rapids, where several days of preparation could not hold back the rain-swollen river. Rescuers had to use boats to reach many stranded residents, and people could be seen dragging suitcases up closed highway exit ramps to escape the water. "We're just kind of at God's mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start," Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said. Days of heavy rain across the state have nine rivers across Iowa at or above historic flood levels. Residents were already steeling themselves for floods before storms late Wednesday and early yesterday brought up to 5 inches of rain across west-central Iowa. "We are seeing a historic hydrological event taking place with unprecedented river levels occurring," said Brian Pierce, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Davenport. "We're in uncharted territory. This is an event beyond what anybody could even imagine." Governor Chet Culver has declared 55 of the state's 99 counties state disaster areas. No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa, but one man was killed in southern Minnesota after his car plunged from a washed-out road into flood waters. In Des Moines, officials were urging residents to evacuate more than 200 homes north of downtown because of concerns that the Des Moines River would top a levee. Some residents also were ordered to evacuate homes along rivers in Iowa City and Coralville. In Cedar Rapids, flood waters neared the tops of stop signs, and cars were nearly covered in water. It wasn't clear just how high the river had risen because a flood gauge was swept away. "We're going door to door to make sure people don't need to be rescued, because right now they can't get out on their own," said Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids Fire Department. "It's just too deep." |
Indiana National Guard Postures for Additional Flood Support
American Forces Press Service
INDIANAPOLIS, June 10, 2008 – The Indiana National Guard is preparing to continue a long flood fight across the southern part of the state.
Flooding resulted when more than six inches of rain dumped into the Wabash Valley on the evening of June 6 and well into the morning of June 7.
Guardsmen and equipment are moving to counties in southwestern Indiana, and officials are working with the county emergency management director to ensure they know the most efficient means of requesting Indiana National Guard support.
More than 900 soldiers and airmen from across the state have been activated, and more than 90 vehicles are being used.
Sand bag machines are prepositioned in Vincennes, Linton, and Terre Haute, and the Indiana Guard is moving two sand bag machines to Elnora. Guardsmen also are moving sand bags from Terre Haute to Elnora.
Officials said the Guard will work with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security to coordinate missions in support of the local responders in affected areas. Some 200 soldiers from 38th Infantry Division are in Elnora to assist with sand bagging operations.
The Guard has moved water trailers to Hope, Saint Bernice, Paragon, Nineveh, Hymara and Columbus.
Joint Task Force 81 is preparing to deploy from its headquarters here to southwestern Indiana. The unit will provide command and control to units deployed for the flood emergency. A command assessment team from the joint task force will help southern communities prepare for the water that is flowing toward them.
Guard officials said they’re working with the Vigo County Emergency Management Office to determine the needs in that area, where 25 soldiers are helping local law enforcement agencies with presence patrols.
Officials also are working with Green County leaders to assess the city of Worthington, which has been cut off by flood waters. An Indiana National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter delivered food to Worthington on June 8.
(From an Indiana National Guard news release.)
Katrina report slams CDC
Investigators: Agency failed to protect victims from fumes
By ALISON YOUNG
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/01/08
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed in "almost every respect" to protect Hurricane Katrina's victims from dangerous formaldehyde fumes, despite knowing the trailers the government gave them were contaminated, according to a new report by congressional investigators.
Citing what they called "fundamental failings," confusion and poor science at CDC's environmental health arm, the House Committee on Science and Technology's investigations subcommittee today will hold a hearing to examine the Atlanta agency's response.
"They certainly didn't act with any urgency when they knew that people living in those trailers were exposed to a pretty serious health risk," U.S. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the subcommittee chairman, said Monday.
In February —more than a year and a half after CDC was first asked about formaldehyde dangers inside Katrina victims' trailers — the agency announced that thousands must move as soon as possible because of the threat.
CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said Monday the agency's staff did a lot of good work responding to Hurricane Katrina. "Unfortunately, there were also some opportunities missed testing these trailers," said Skinner. The agency has changed some procedures as a result, he said, and welcomes today's hearing as a way to learn more.
The subcommittee's report is especially critical of the performance of Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It portrays Frumkin as doing little to respond to the concerns of a top agency toxicologist, Christopher De Rosa. Records show De Rosa repeatedly pushed for actions to protect people living in the trailers. Frumkin and De Rosa are scheduled to testify at the hearing.
In February 2007, after bypassing a review by De Rosa, ATSDR gave Federal Emergency Management Agency a report examining only the risks of short-term exposure to formaldehyde — when risks of long-term exposure are well known to the agency, investigators said. Based on the report, the investigators said, FEMA officials told Congress and the public there was no health risk if residents opened windows and vents.
When De Rosa became aware of the report, he pushed top agency officials to correct its misleading nature.
Last fall, De Rosa was removed from his job as director of ATSDR's division of toxicology and environmental medicine.
Among the key questions the hearing will explore, according to the report: "How can the public and Congress trust an agency ... that treated one of the most important public health issues of the agency's recent past so wantonly, with so little urgency, insight, sound scientific [advice] or concern?"
NYTimes.com
February 15, 2008
By LESLIE EATON
The federal government pledged Thursday to intensify its efforts to move Gulf Coast hurricane victims out of trailers and into apartments or hotels after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally confirmed that many trailers were contaminated with high levels of formaldehyde.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which issued about 144,000 trailers to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, has been widely criticized for its slow response to extensive evidence that many trailers contain unsafe levels of formaldehyde, an industrial chemical classified as a probable carcinogen.
About 38,000 families are still living in the trailers and mobile homes, federal officials said Thursday at a news briefing, including more than 7,000 in trailer parks that FEMA had already vowed to close by May, before hurricane season begins again along the Gulf. Most of the other trailers are parked next to flooded houses that families are trying to repair.
FEMA will now hasten to move families living in trailers into apartments or, if necessary, into hotels, said R. David Paulison, the administrator of the agency.
But many details of the new effort remain unclear. For example, the agency has not yet decided whether to force out people who have the trailers parked on their own property. Nor does the agency have a program to help families that have incurred medical bills because of formaldehyde exposure, Mr. Paulison said, adding that the agency would look into that.
But the agency appears determined not to repeat its mistakes with the tinny white trailers, which have become an emblem of government incompetence and inadequacy in New Orleans and Mississippi.
“We will not ever use trailers again,” Mr. Paulison said, though larger mobile homes might still be used for temporary housing and were sent to victims of recent tornadoes.
But some mobile homes in the Gulf Coast produced high formaldehyde levels, Mr. Paulison said, and it was unclear on Thursday how FEMA would house victims of future disasters.
Almost from the time families started occupying the trailers, complaints began to surface about respiratory and other health problems associated with formaldehyde exposure. The Sierra Club started reporting what it said were dangerous levels of the chemical in trailers after it began testing in spring 2006.
More than 7,000 families have asked to leave their trailers because of concerns about formaldehyde, according to FEMA; not quite half of them have moved into hotels or apartments.
Congressional critics of FEMA and advocates for the families living in the trailers said they were concerned that there was not enough appropriate housing available to accommodate them.
“We’re on a collision course between dangerous levels of formaldehyde in the trailers, which is very real, and a lack of wherewithal in terms of safe places for these children,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health Fund, which has been doing extensive work at the group trailer sites.
Children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are the most vulnerable to problems from formaldehyde exposure, said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the disease control centers. About a third of the 519 trailers and mobile homes tested by her agency had levels of formaldehyde that could be expected to cause symptoms in such people, Dr. Gerberding said.
In one out of 20, the levels were high enough that they might cause symptoms in the general population, she said, warning that levels in the trailers were likely to rise as the weather warms up.
The C.D.C. is still investigating why the formaldehyde levels are so high in the trailers, and whether the problems are associated with particular brands, she said.
By JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press Writer
7:28 PM CST, February 12, 2008
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.
Some of the thousands of trailers sitting unused since they were purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2005 for Gulf Coast hurricane victims may finally be put to use -- to help victims of last week's tornadoes, officials said Tuesday.
Some members of Congress have accused FEMA of playing down the danger of possible formaldehyde contamination in the trailers -- more than 6,300 of them stored at the Hope airport -- but an agency spokesman said Tuesday that the trailers are safe.
The decision to use some of the trailers for Arkansas and Tennessee twister victims comes after requests by state officials and members of Arkansas' congressional delegation, who have criticized the trailers in the past as a sign of federal ineptitude after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
David Maxwell, head of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, said his office told FEMA immediately after the tornadoes that the victims would need some of the trailers.
FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said Friday on a tour of the damage that the agency would prefer putting storm victims in rental property, although he acknowledged that could be difficult in rural areas.
"Knowing rural Arkansas and the areas that were hit, there's not a lot of rental property," Maxwell said. "Then you're stuck with mobile homes."
Maxwell said the number of trailers released would depend on the number of people who called FEMA and requested help, as opposed to simply releasing a blanket number. FEMA already hired a contractor to prepare and possibly move the trailers to people in need, he said.
Tennessee state officials estimate the tornadoes destroyed 517 homes and 61 mobile homes, and estimates in Arkansas suggest about 300 homes were destroyed, likely including a number of manufactured or mobile homes.
FEMA still hasn't reached a firm number of how many mobile homes will be used from Hope and other storage sites around the country, spokesman James McIntyre said Tuesday. The majority of mobile homes stored at Hope were unused and in good shape, with a small percentage refurbished after being used in hurricane relief operations, he said.
Arkansas and Tennessee will receive FEMA mobile homes first because they already were declared federal disaster areas, McIntyre said. Requests from Alabama and Kentucky are still pending, he said.
Phil Parr, who is leading the federal response to the storms in Arkansas, refused to offer any estimates on how many mobile homes would be used or when they would be installed. That would affect "the mind-set of people" seeking aid, he said.
"We're moving as quickly as we've ever moved before," Parr said.
About 250 federal employees will staff an administrative headquarters in Little Rock now open for business in an old factory, Parr said. On Tuesday, workers still stood on ladders looking into ceiling wires, and telephone switchboards stood open.
After Katrina hit in 2005, FEMA purchased 25,000 manufactured homes built at a cost of more than $850 million. Many of them went unused while many hurricane victims remained homeless. All together, FEMA has about 75,000 trailers and mobile home in various locations across the country.
Congress ordered FEMA to stop selling or donating the houses last year after discovering problems with formaldehyde, but McIntyre said FEMA determined its mobile homes in storage at Hope were safe to use.
The mobile homes are about 80 feet long and have two or three bedrooms, McIntyre said.
Tornadoes killed 13 people in Arkansas on Feb. 5, with 12 along the path of just one twister. In all, 56 people died in four states.
Katrina Lawsuit Vs. Army Corps DismissedBy CAIN BURDEAU and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN NEW ORLEANS — Saying his hands were tied by law, a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina, but rebuked the agency for failing to protect the city. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled Wednesday that the Corps should be held immune over failures in drainage canals that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. He cited the Flood Control Act of 1928, which protects the federal government from lawsuits when flood control projects like levees break. |
The lawsuit led to about 489,000 claims by businesses, government entities and residents, seeking trillions of dollars in damages against the Corps.
The fate of many of those claims was pinned to the suit and a similar one filed over flooding from a navigation channel in St. Bernard Parish. It was unclear how many claims could still move forward.
Kathy Gibbs, a Corps spokeswoman, said "the Corps agrees with the dismissal of the case" but declined further comment because other lawsuits over Katrina damage are pending.
Plaintiffs lawyers said they would appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but conceded that overturning Duval's ruling would be difficult.
The judge issued a stinging condemnation of the Corps, saying the agency "cast a blind eye" in protecting New Orleans and "squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system ... which was known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations."
But, Duval said, "it is not within the Court's power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States' power to address the failures of our laws and agencies."
Breaches at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals allowed floodwaters to inundate large areas of the city. Plaintiffs lawyers knew they faced a daunting task because the canals were, over time, used as flood control projects by the Corps.
They tried to bypass the immunity issue by claiming that the Corps used the canals as drainage projects and that the levee failures were brought about by canal dredging.
"I knew we had an uphill battle, but we had to do it," plaintiffs lawyer Joseph Bruno said. "It's an outrage. Read the opinion: The judge reads through all the negligence by the Corps, but says he had to rule the way he had to."
The ruling was another blow to the residents of New Orleans, where loathing for the Corps continues unabated.
"This cost people's lives and property," said Gwen Bierria, 66, who is still living in a government-issued trailer and is among the tens of thousands of people who have filed claims against the federal government for damage from the levee breaches.
"Anybody that calls themselves the Army Corps of Engineers should be embarrassed," she said.
Activists said they would not give up on holding the Corps accountable.
"We will stick with our mission of education that this was the worst engineering failure since Chernobyl," said Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group that has lobbied for overhauling the Corps.
Since Katrina, calls for a makeover of the Corps have gained momentum, and the agency, which has acknowledged mistakes, has re-evaluated its procedures for picking and designing projects.
Duval agreed that legal and bureaucratic change is required.
"The byzantine funding and appropriation methods for this undertaking were in large part a cause of this failure," the judge said, referring to the politics-riddled process Congress has for funding Corps projects.
The Flood Control Act is counterproductive, Duval said, because it negates incentives for good government workmanship and creates an environment where "gross incompetence receives the same treatment as simple mistake."
NYTimes.com
November 6, 2007
By LESLIE EATON
NEW ORLEANS — If rebuilding anything in this storm-scarred place could possibly qualify as simple, surely it would be the administration building in City Park.
The two-story structure, built in 1992, does not have any of the features that can complicate restoring public buildings. No special historic, environmental, cultural or political significance. No history of poor maintenance or other damage (aside from the five feet of water that filled it after the levees failed). No need to be merged, moved or reimagined in response to changes after Hurricane Katrina.
Yet after almost two years of federal inspections and studies and reviews filling more than 90 pages, the administration building has been neither repaired nor replaced. And there are dozens of similarly incomplete projects at the park, hundreds in the city, thousands across the state of Louisiana.
In fact, the federal government has agreed to pay $2.3 billion so far for rebuilding Louisiana public works like schools, sewers and police stations. But so far, only $650 million — 28 percent — of that money has been spent. In Mississippi, only 27 percent has been spent of the $1.1 billion of federal tax dollars set aside to replace government infrastructure there.
There are many reasons for the slow pace of rebuilding, including antagonism between state and federal officials, and the difficulty some local leaders have had deciding exactly what to rebuild and where and how. New Orleans, in particular, released a detailed rebuilding plan only in October, and City Hall often appears understaffed and overwhelmed.
But increasingly, critics are pointing to flaws in the process the Federal Emergency Management Agency uses to pay for repairs under the “public assistance” program.
Intricate, inflexible and open-ended, the process seems to value perfect paperwork over speedy resolutions, local officials here say, and requires endless haggling over every acoustic ceiling tile and paper-towel dispenser.
“The staggering amount of time and effort and cost associated with this is just phenomenal,” said Robert W. Becker, the chief executive of City Park, which is about one and a half times the size of Central Park in New York City. “We could have made so much more progress if we had a different process.” In the meantime, Mr. Becker has been working out of a trailer.
Federal officials also express frustration that the money has been spent so slowly, but they defend the process as necessary to prevent fraud and to ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely. “It is hard work, but in the end it pays off,” said Robert L. Josephson, the chief spokesman for FEMA in Louisiana.
Through the public assistance program, the agency reimburses state and local governments for their repair and rebuilding costs; the money is distributed by the state, which can be asked to return it if FEMA decides it has not been used properly. To avoid that, the state has imposed its own layer of audits and regulations, another source of red tape.
The current disputes have mostly involved the details of more than 17,000 project worksheets FEMA has prepared for long-term recovery projects since the hurricanes hit. (A “normal” disaster, according to the agency, involves about 1,000 worksheets.)
In particular, state and local officials contend that FEMA has routinely underestimated the amount of damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the costs of repairing or rebuilding everything from an elementary school classroom to a sports stadium. That in turn has led to shortfalls when bids come in.
They also say the agency has repeatedly reversed itself and been reluctant to put anything in writing, and has interpreted the rules too narrowly.
“We’ve been shackled by FEMA’s approach,” said Col. Perry J. Smith Jr., acting director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, which administers the program for the state.
Federal officials, of course, see it differently. “They need to take a look in the mirror and work with us instead of pointing the finger all the time,” said Jim W. Stark, director of the Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office at FEMA.
Noting that the federal government would ultimately pay any costs it deemed reasonable, Mr. Stark said state and local governments should start spending the money available to them, without waiting for every t to be crossed. And he cited success stories like the repair of the Superdome and the relocation of a Lower Ninth Ward nursing home.
“It would be nice if all applicants could pick up that template,” he said. “I don’t quite understand why they can’t.”
But even successful — and very grateful — applicants find dealing with the program to be complicated and labor-intensive. “It is a process, not an encounter,” said Lawrence E. Stansberry, chief executive of St. Margaret’s, the nursing home Mr. Stark mentioned, which just reopened in the old Bywater Hospital. Mr. Stansberry said he had had to find a lawyer, a consultant and a lender with FEMA expertise.
For the city government, the problem has been money, said Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer. Legally, the city cannot put contracts out for bid without identifying the money to pay the contractor, she said, which was a particular problem when FEMA’s repair estimates were millions of dollars below the city’s.
Recently, the state agreed to set up a revolving fund that the city can draw on until it is reimbursed. City officials still worry that FEMA officials could change their minds and take back money they have obligated, Ms. Sylvain-Lear said. “But we are going to take the risk.”
FEMA officials say they have seldom done that, and say they do not understand why state officials keep raising the prospect. Donald E. Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, said he had tried to speed things up by asking local officials in the hardest-hit areas to name their top five priorities. He also plans to put information about rebuilding projects on the Internet, so citizens can learn the status of local projects and figure out “where the hang-up is,” he said.
Even critics concede that federal officials have been trying harder to help. At City Park, Mr. Becker said he no longer had to contend with FEMA about why it agreed to pay for two hinges — but not all three — on the doors in his old office building.
On the other hand, he has mixed feelings about the agency’s recent decision that the building, now gutted, is too damaged to be repaired, and will have to be replaced.
“If they told us this in the beginning, I’d have had an architect assigned a year ago,” he said. “We could have been much further along. Now I have to put my employees in trailers for another two years.”
NYTimes.com
October 25, 2007
As bad as the California fires look on television and as horrible as they are for families with homes in their path, the wildfires are doing much less damage than Hurricane Katrina two years ago, and they are going to cost only a fraction of the $41.1 billion that insurance companies paid out for the hurricane.
Nearly 1,500 homes have been destroyed so far by the fires, and hundreds more have been damaged. Financial analysts and insurance experts are estimating the potential costs to insurers to be about $1 billion.
But the property insurance industry — with more than $513 billion in capital — can take that kind of a loss in stride. It reported more than $450 billion in sales of policies last year, and a record profit of nearly $65 billion.
So right now, from a business standpoint, “the losses look pretty minimal,” said Loretta L. Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York.
For families who lose their homes, of course, rebuilding will be a lengthy struggle, as insurance companies haggle over what is covered and what is not. With concentrations of dozens of homes destroyed, it is also going to be difficult to get contractors to start rebuilding. Costs for materials like plywood and roofing tiles are likely to skyrocket, as they did after Hurricane Katrina and other storms.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, I don’t care who you are,” said Andrew Barile, an insurance consultant who grabbed passports and bank statements and a handful of clothes and, with his wife and son, evacuated his five-bedroom home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., at 8 a.m. Monday.
Settling claims, however, is generally expected to be more straightforward than after Hurricane Katrina. In that storm, much of the damage was caused by flooding, which is not covered by most home insurance policies. Thousands of homeowners argued in lawsuits that the flooding they experienced had been caused by hurricane winds and that their policies should pay, leading to lengthy court fights. The courts have general ruled in favor of the insurance companies.
Fire, on the other hand, was the first coverage contained in the first home insurance policy hundreds of years ago, and it is clear that insurance companies must cover it. But Randy Maniloff, a lawyer in Philadelphia who specializes in defending insurance companies, said many homeowners would probably find that they did not buy enough coverage to rebuild their homes.
After the worst recent outbreak of wildfires destroyed several thousand homes on the edge of San Diego in 2003, homeowners filed hundreds of lawsuits, Mr. Maniloff said, claiming that their agents and insurance companies should have advised them to buy more coverage. But this past April, he said, the first trial involving those cases ended in favor of the insurance company.
Before the fires, insurance experts said, insurers were competing with one another for customers in California and offering many options as incentives. Now, some experts say they expect the insurers to tighten their standards by not selling or renewing policies in some areas with high risk of fires.
But Robert P. Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, said he expected few if any changes in the availability and price of home insurance in California.
“An event of this magnitude is already built into the rates,” he said. “The risk is already reflected in the price of coverage. People in the high-risk areas already pay much more for coverage than people who live in areas that are not so prone to fire.”
Insurers will have to pay more for evacuations caused by this disaster than they did after Hurricane Katrina. While many homeowners had to rely on the federal government to pay for hotels, meals and other extra daily costs resulting from the evacuation, California law requires insurers to pay such costs. In all other states, insurance companies have to pay only for so-called additional living expenses when there is damage to a home.
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