FEMA refines plans for season

[Aquawind]

See... from bad comes some good..lol maybe..we will see alrighty..

FEMA refines plans for season

Agency uses lessons learned from 2004 in rethinking distribution, partnerships

By Joan D. LaGuardia
jlaguardia@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on May 3, 2005

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is refining its partnerships with emergency medical, shelter and temporary housing teams to prepare for this year's hurricane season.

Based on lessons learned in four disastrous 2004 hurricanes, FEMA is rethinking how it stores and distributes response and recovery supplies, including mobile homes, FEMA chief Michael D. Brown said in Orlando on Monday.

Approximately 28,600 victims of hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne still occupy 11,400 FEMA-provided travel trailers or mobile homes.

With the 2005 hurricane season only 29 days away, Brown said county emergency response teams will help those people prepare for the next round of possible storms.

"We will treat those folks the same as we treat any other people who live in mobile homes and other manufactured housing," said Wayne Sallade, Charlotte County's head of disaster response.

About 550 FEMA trailers remain in Charlotte County. At peak use, 16,000 Floridians lived in 13,500 travel trailers and 2,500 mobile homes provided by FEMA.

In 2004, FEMA first used Emergency Group Sites, which are clusters of travel trailers quickly erected with self-contained utility systems, as an interim sheltering solution.

Brown said it was a success, and FEMA will expand that solution to move people more quickly out of hurricane shelters and into temporary housing.

"Creating those emergency group sites is so much better for people in the long run than having them in shelters," Brown said. "It gives them privacy, it gives them a chance to keep their families together as a unit as opposed to maybe being spread out among different facilities."

FEMA used Housing Strike Teams that united service providers from FEMA, Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through their efforts, FEMA housed more than 13,000 families in fewer than 90 days.

For 2005, Brown said, FEMA will develop multiple standing Housing Strike Teams.

Brown, undersecretary for Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response in Washington, D.C., said FEMA continues to review its 2004 performance to make improvements.

The agency will adopt new storage and distribution systems for ice, water, ready-to-eat meals, cots, bedding, blue tarps and other supplies.

"We thought that we were being so smart by going to Lakeland and putting things there and having the DFO (Disaster Field Office) in Orlando only to realize that suddenly Frances is going to go through Orlando," Brown said.

"We have to be a little bit smarter about pre-positioning as much as possible, keeping a little bit of our ammunition dry back a little further away from where we expect landfall to occur," he said.

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 30424/1075

Paul