Inaccuracies Abound in FEMA's Flood Insurance Program(Flawed Maps)

[RamboLiberal]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1183849&page=1

Hundreds of thousands of hurricane flood victims along the Gulf Coast are only now realizing they were misled by the government on their need for flood insurance.

State floodplain officials tell ABC News that the floodplain maps, created by FEMA and used by the federal government, are both outdated and inaccurate. They also say the government has known of the inaccuracies.

Based on those maps, residents of parts of St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana were told that they did not need federal flood insurance. They lived in sections of the parish that fall outside FEMA's designated Flood Hazard Area.

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To make matters even worse, homeowners who called the FEMA helpline to ask whether they needed flood insurance were actually forwarded to a private answering service located in Tallahassee, Fla. Operators there had no expertise in floodplain mapping or flood insurance.

"Most of them, as far as work experience, had fast food, Wendy's, pizza places," said Robert James, author of the FEMA Call Center Assessment, 2005.

[Lisa]

1. Who was staffing the FEMA helpline?!!!

"a private answering service located in Tallahassee". That's great. Just great. No legal experts, insurance people, hydrologists, or anybody else who would have some technical background and know how to navigate through the paperwork?

[RamboLiberal]

2. I want to find out what the MickeyD Helpline started

Be interesting to see if it was under Clinton or Chimpy! Even if it was Clinton, the damn Repuke congress who wouldn't properly fund agencies may bear a lot of the blame.

[Lisa]

4. I just heard from a professional mapmaker who worked on the Coast

... right after the storm hit. She reported that the FEMA map/GIS people showed up a week late, and didn't know how to use the software (one of them even was clutching an "Introduction to ArcInfo" book). The FEMA people shooed them out of the HQ (until then it had been an assortment of undergraduate students, a couple of reps from the software company, and some profs who'd taken leave from their classes to help). Then they had to ask the volunteers back in, to show them how to use the computers and where to find the data! These were supposed to be the experienced, paid professionals.

Meanwhile, the "geek squad" was frantically cranking out maps for the military, coast guard, Red Cross, local governments -- showing the flooding damage, where the shelters and equipment were located, etc. The first responders gave up asking FEMA and wanted the maps from them instead.


Based on what that cartographer saw, I wouldn't be surprised if the pre-Katrina floodplain maps WERE messed up.


p.s. my landlord does some emergency planning work -- he pointed out that it's no wonder the new incarnation of FEMA focuses on the PR/spin aspects ... you pick a campaign hack like Brown, and that's all they know about crisis management. Influencing the media and affecting "perceptions".

[philb]

3. FEMA is run by political appointees with no technical background in Emerge

ncy Management, who focus on media manipulation and spin rather than emergency prevention and emergency response. They also shifted most of their resources to Homeland Security/Terrorism- which is a miniscule problem compared to natural disasters.

The Federal Flood Protection programs is misguided and mismanaged. And lots of money has been paid out to "friends" with little oversight.
I personally think its not appropriate for the general body of taxpayers to subsidize payments to mostly rich people who live and work along dangerous coastal areas, where no one should build permanent structures to start with. Building should be inland, with beach areas open to public use and tourism, but where people go elsewhere after play is done.

But if you are going to have an expensive program, it should be resonably managed by people with public concern and backgound in the area they are dealing with.

FEMA blocked evacuation and relief aid to New Orleans Katrina victims
http://www.flcv.com/femabloc.html