In a rebuke to warm and fuzzy FEMA, federal Judge Stanwoood R. Duval Jr. (Eastern District of Louisiana) has ordered that the agency’s coverage of hotel bills for Katrina evacuees continue through February 7, 2006.
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Calling the Federal Emergency Management Agency “numbingly insensitive” and “unduly callous,” a federal judge ruled yesterday that the agency must pay the hotel bills of hurricane evacuees until Feb. 7, handing a reprieve to thousands who faced a Thursday deadline to check out or begin picking up the tab themselves.
The payments were to be discontinued as of mid December or early January 2006 depending on proximity to the disaster scene. Covered by this decision are some 42,000 families.
The Judge addressed the many decisions and reversals of the agency.
“It is unimaginable what anxiety and misery these erratic and bizarre vacillations by FEMA have caused these victims, all of whom, for at least one point in time, had the very real fear of being without shelter for Christmas,” wrote Judge Duval, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
Recent decisions by FEMA have undercut the laws authorizing the very existance of the agency.
The judge said he based his ruling on the federal law that authorized FEMA. It requires the government to ease suffering and damage caused by natural disasters. The arbitrary deadline violates
that legislation, Judge Duval wrote, and discriminates against victims based on their economic status.
As welcome as this decision is it may not be enough.
“It’s certainly good news, but it doesn’t fix the entire problem,” said William J. Croft, a retired Army colonel who is heading a housing task force in Louisiana, where apartments for hotel occupants are scarce. “It’s going to take until April to provide enough housing for all the folks in the hotels.”
And then there are the warm and fuzzy words of fearless leader about racism and NOLA aid efforts.
Asked in an interview with NBC News whether the response would have been the same had the destruction occurred on Nantucket or in Chicago or Houston, Mr. Bush said he was aware of criticism that the government acted slowly because he was a racist, and he said such criticism was absolutely wrong.
“You can call me anything you want,” Mr. Bush said. “But do not call me a racist.”
I am barely able to restrain myself. But Laura is not much better apparently.
“And so I want to encourage families to try to settle where they are, to try to make the best of what they have right now,” Mrs. Bush said after a Toys for Tots event in Metairie, La., “but with the goal of moving back to New Orleans, because I know most people want to do that.”
Hmm, this couldn’t be because some would prefer to see a different population mix in NOLA, could it?