BREAKING NEWS: Local power company to be reviewed by...

[Josephine96]

former Fema director.. Boy this story keeps getting better and better lol

Former FEMA Director Hired To Review KUA

POSTED: 11:59 am EDT August 27, 2004
UPDATED: 12:12 pm EDT August 27, 2004

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- In Kissimmee, 140 residents are left to fight over who will be the last to get their power back. KUA is the only local company still working to restore power since Charley ripped through Central Florida two weeks ago. There's now word that the city has hired former FEMA director James Lee Witt to review how KUA handled the outages in the days after Charley.


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Witt will be used for his FEMA connections to get Kissimmee as much disaster relief as possible. But, more importantly, Witt will also be used to conduct an independent internal review of how KUA handled its emergency response after Charley.

KUA power crews are back out Friday, trying to put the final nail in Hurricane Charley's coffin. It's a monumental task. A job we spotted crews doing Friday morning took over an hour and only got three homes back online.

Spotty power outages have plagued the company, now two weeks later. So has mounting criticism from county leaders.

The city of Kissimmee wants its own answers, as well. The city has taken on the services of former FEMA director James Lee Witt for the asking price of $45,000. It's a bargain compared to the quarter-million dollars Orlando is paying Witt.

The former FEMA director comes on with two tasks: help maximize Kissimmee's disaster dollars from the feds and find out if KUA dropped the ball in the days after Charley.

source:www.wftv.com

[Stormchaser16]

Ridiculous if you ask me

[mitchell]

The city of Kissimmee wants its own answers, as well. The city has taken on the services of former FEMA director James Lee Witt for the asking price of $45,000. It's a bargain compared to the quarter-million dollars Orlando is paying Witt. The former FEMA director comes on with two tasks: help maximize Kissimmee's disaster dollars from the feds and find out if KUA dropped the ball in the days after Charley.

Having worked in about 8 disaster operations, its sad to say that FEMA's disaster relief application/reimbursement procedures are so complicated that it acually makes sense for Orlando to pay JL Witt's consulting firm $250,000 of YOUR dollars to help cut through the red tape, find the loopholes, and maximize YOUR tax dollars going to the local recovery efforts in the fom of Federal disaster relief.

[Josephine96]

I still think that this review is a good idea.. KUA definitely has some issues.. everyone else had power almost a week before us here