Hurricane Victims Filing for Unemployment

[DaveSZ]

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040817_1739.html


Hurricane Victims Filing for Unemployment
Hurricane Charley Victims File for Unemployment As Services Slowly Resume; Disaster Aid Rolls In

The Associated Press


PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. Aug. 17, 2004 — Still smarting over the loss of their homes, Hurricane Charley's victims turned out by the hundreds in 90-degree heat Tuesday to cope with the storm's latest blow to their lives the mass shutdown of businesses that has left them without jobs.

"Charley laid me off," said Rose Vito, a 57-year-old telemarketing assistant in red-plaid pajamas, lined up outside the Employ Florida mobile benefits station in Port Charlotte's Harold Avenue Recreational Center parking lot. "Without phones and computers, they can't function."

None of the choices on the unemployment form suspension, temporary layoff, discharge/performance seemed to fit her situation. So in the space that demanded a "reason for separation," she wrote: "Hurricane Charlie."

For thousands of Floridians, Tuesday was a day when services cut off by the rampage of Charley's 145-mph winds last week were being gradually and sporadically restored. Federal disaster assistance money began flowing, state officials cracked down on price gouging and postal workers handed out mail.

-more

[Massacure]

1. This is going to burn Bush when the August enemployment numbers come out.

[mhollis]

2. Florida and strategery...

I note that Shrub's daddy lost Florida. Many Floridians blamed Bush for FEMA inaction after Andrew. Clinton revamped FEMA's rapid response team. In NYC few mayors survive when blizzards are not plowed away quickly enough to suit New Yorkers and I think you'll see Shrub down there a lot being "compassionately conservative."

Presently the state polls strongly for Kerry with a lot of people very concerned about the follies that lead to a Shrub defeat that was overturned by the US Supreme Court (defying our Constitution while doing so). The election will be close but this hurricane may deny the state to the forces of evil.