Mississippi – PolitiCalypso

Sucker Punched Very Slickly

As any writer of Southern literature would tell you, the central Gulf Coast is a tragic place. It is the final destination of many terrible hurricanes, including Katrina, Ivan, Camille, Betsy, Audrey, Andrew, and a plethora of unnamed hurricanes in the early 20th century that caused devastation equivalent to that of their named brethren. It has been and continues to be the laboratory for the experiments of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which incidentally are at least peripherally to blame for the damage from Katrina in New Orleans. The Gulf of Mexico itself has had a biological “dead zone” for several years from chemical runoff in the Mississippi River. Coastal wildlife, too, is constantly under threat, with various birds and seashore creatures perennially on the endangered species list and the coastal wetlands under assault. The threat of inundation from sea level rises from global warming looms in the future.

And yet, the coast has managed to maintain a certain charm. Visiting some areas is like living in a Jimmy Buffett song. Taking a tour of historical sites—those that have survived the onslaught of hurricanes—brings one into a bygone era of simplicity, a certain kind of elegance (even for the more rustic historical sites), and closeness to nature. Visiting one of the many wildlife sanctuaries on this coast and observing the unique plants and animals that live there can make an environmentalist out of anyone but the most hardened plutocrats, even though (or especially since?) such jaunts are darkened by the inevitable signs indicating that some creature is critically endangered. And anyone who has ever taken a walk on the white beaches of Alabama or far western Florida at night can attest to the subtropical marine beauty of the Gulf. The coast is its own travel advertisement.

Were it not for the hurricanes, and the fact that they have a much higher tendency to make landfall at devastating intensities on the Gulf Coast (and southeast Florida) than the subtropical Atlantic coast, I would consider living as close to the shore as I could manage.

But once again, the Gulf Coast has been sucker punched.

I’m not going to go into depth about the science of this oil spill or the technological requirements of damage control. Mechanical engineering and petroleum engineering are not my specialties, nor have I read much of anything about them in my life, and unlike many bloggers, I’m not inclined to make an ignorant-sounding fool out of myself by pretending that I know something about a topic when all I’ve done is to read about it on the news and maybe check a Wiki article or two. Not to mention that I, quite frankly, no longer believe one word coming out of the mouths of anyone protecting BP, the various supporting industries such as Halliburton (though I haven’t believed them in eight years), or the White House. You simply cannot believe any source except scientists if it has an agenda to protect that relates to the topic at hand, and sometimes even certain scientists lose sight of the fact that they are supposed to accept the truth even if it is not what they wanted. This is going to be an absolute disaster; bits of information are trickling out now to indicate just how thoroughly these entities tried to lie to the American public about the scope of this, and like the spill itself, the trickles are only going to get worse.

It is incredibly hubristic to imagine that one could prevent the truth from getting out about something as large-scale and catastrophic as this, but power knows no boundaries in its arrogance. Though history is littered with the figurative corpses of former power-brokers who thought they could get away with massive lies, each new set thinks it is invincible until put to the test. BP’s reputation is shot. And the White House may well try to do damage control by implementing a temporary ban on offshore drilling, but that does not erase the fact that the president broke a major campaign promise by getting out there and supporting this type of thing in the first place and then sent a spokesman to say that the spill didn’t change his mind. (The time to act like George W. Bush is when you are trying to get a piece of legislation passed in a non-watered-down form, not when you have just witnessed the American Gulf Coast experience a disaster on your watch that could have been either mitigated or entirely prevented. Heck of a job.) People will pay a price for dishonesty.

As for the “progressive” South-haters who will say in so many words that the people of the Southern coast (we’ll ignore the innocent wildlife for now) got what they deserved for voting for politicians that support offshore drilling, well, to dignify this bile with a response is beneath me.

The only remotely positive outcome I can think of is that of disaster-as-catalyst. It is far past time for the world’s economy to get away from fossil fuels. If I believed that God destroyed innocents on Earth in order to teach the survivors a lesson, I would say that the oil spill and the recent tragic coal mining disaster are one heck of a message. As it is, I think it’s just a terrible coincidence. Still, we can always choose to take a lesson from it even if the events themselves have no greater meaning. We are in the 21st century. We should not have our civilization so utterly dependent on the compressed or liquefied remains of prehistoric life forms. Do I think that this will serve as a catalyst to finally get away from the intravenous drip of oil and the crack pipe of coal? Not really. But then, I’m a cynic and a pessimist. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, both about the impact of the spill and about our future.

I do love the Gulf Coast, after all.

Landrieu Gets Angry Over FEMA Report

This just gets better and better. Allow me to pat myself on the back for this observation from the previous blog post:

“[T]hese Congresspeople really didn’t listen to their constituents or care that much about their problems. But when the media does its job, it sure can be a pain in the rear for them, can’t it?”

In the wake of the explosive CBS report on management incompetence and possible corruption in the FEMA office in New Orleans, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has shown her fire. This is a stunning change over the course of exactly seven days, which is when it became public that the stimulus didn’t do anything for Katrina-ravaged areas and several members of Congress were quoted rather nonchalantly saying that the money was tied up. Now that CBS has revealed the origin of at least part of this tie-up, it looks like things may—be still my heart—actually be done about it. Thank you, Katie Couric and Armen Keteyian.

As that story link shows, Landrieu has made it no secret that her fiery reaction today is owing specifically to the CBS report. She has called for the resignation of the manager named most prominently in that report, who has been accused by employees several dozen times of varied ethical violations, including racial discrimination, cronyism, intimidation, and sexual harassment. I think that, despite how bad it looks (and probably is), the guy is entitled to an impartial investigation. But Landrieu covers that ground too, calling for exactly what I have been calling for on this blog:

Landrieu said she expected Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano do complete a comprehensive review of FEMA leadership, and fire incompetent employees.

See, this is how it needs to be done. FEMA can’t be trusted to investigate itself in an honest manner. No government agency can, because there is the obvious conflict of interest. But the department it is a part of can do that. The Secretary has a personal interest in doing it correctly, in fact; it reflects badly on her for there to be ongoing corruption and malfeasance in such a prominent agency of her department.

I must admit that I am astounded that this kind of storm has erupted so quickly. It is rapid intensification to rival that which actually occurred in the hurricane itself, and it’s stunning to those of us who live in the Gulf region relatively close to the damaged areas and have witnessed little but delays and slow motion for three and a half years. CBS may have been looking into this FEMA office long before the news broke a week ago that there was no Katrina money in the stimulus, but not necessarily; the type of research that is spoken of could have been done relatively quickly. Interviewing employees and looking into complaint records wouldn’t take that long. Even if it was a long-standing project for CBS, the timeline of all this is amazing.

A few more stories like this, and I might even drop of some my Katrina-related cynicism.

Why Southern Moderates Should Run as GOP

I’ve never been able to understand why everyone to the left of Pat Robertson chooses to run for office on the Democratic ticket in the Southeast region. It’s inadvisable in this region (except for those positions that are specifically for Democratic districts, like the absurdly gerrymandered Congress) as a personal electoral strategy, because—again, with that noted exception—the Southeast in general votes Republican by default. And it’s foolish as a long-term strategy for anyone who is troubled by the dominance of Religious Right theocratic politics in this region.

Let’s go ahead and get a few things out of the way. First, since this is unfortunately usually associated with Southern politics in some way, the recommendations I offer are not specific to any given race of people—but rather, to moderates of any ancestry. Secondly, I am not talking about voting. I’m talking about those with political ambitions. I’m talking about running for office. Third, I am not necessarily singling out moderates to the exclusion of others, but my advice is addressed to them because I have yet to meet a self-identified liberal who also would consider running on the Republican ticket. If you’re one of those endangered creatures, then you can take this advice too.

I think that a major shift is needed in the way political candidates are recruited in the Southeast. Specifically, I think it is LONG past time for moderates to run in Republican primaries rather than Democratic ones. All too often, we end up with elected representatives who are utter embarrassments, because no one runs for GOP nominations except the Pat Robertson crowd (or hypocrites who pretend to be of that mold) and the South defaults Republican.

The theocratic ideology has no place in U.S. politics or law. I have always felt this way. I recall writing an essay for school at age 15 or 16 explaining why school-led prayer was unconstitutional. My reasons for it are more sophisticated in understanding now, but the views themselves have not changed.

The idealized purpose of law is to set out standards of morally acceptable behavior. Naturally, this ideal often becomes corrupted in practice, but in the exists-only-on-paper view, this is why we have laws. The idea is that moral behavior keeps a society stable. I think that part of the reason why so many Religious Right types don’t get it is that they don’t understand what the source of that morality must be. In the U.S., the moral basis for a law must be secular. Certainly there can be overlap between a religious basis of morality and a secular one, but a law (or potential law) is defensible only if it has a basis in secular morality. For instance, bans on murder and robbery can be defended on a non-religious basis. A ban on, say, same-sex marriage really can’t be defended on a moral basis unless you invoke religious dogma. (Yeah, I went there.) This is the problem with the Religious Right: It wants to have the church involved in governing. Don’t believe those who use the scare tactic that so-and-so wants to “ban religion.” No one with remotely mainstream political beliefs would consider it right to prevent churches from promoting their agenda through private venues. Let them speak on the media, let them use free speech and free assembly to push what they want, but keep their moral opinions out of government unless those moral opinions can be successfully defended without invoking holy texts. And, incidentally, it goes both ways: Keep the government out of the church too unless it breaks a law.

The governing philosophy of the Religious Right—the Religious Right as a political movement—is antithetical to the form of government that we have in the United States. The framers of the Constitution made it very clear. They did not put any restrictions on government interference in economic matters, but rather, left it up to future leaders and citizens to determine how much government involvement in the economy that they wanted. Libertarianism and liberalism are therefore both Constitutionally valid economic philosophies. But for moral matters—social policy and law—it is very clear that religion cannot be the sole basis. The Religious Right as a political movement is arguably dangerous to our form of government, and they have taken over a major political party.

With this point, I return to the original subject of this post. I’ll reiterate it: An antidemocratic ideology has taken over a major political party. In large part, this was caused by a massive recruitment drive in the 1980s and 1990s by Religious Right organizations. Those entities encouraged theocratically inclined people to run for office as Republicans, and over the years, they managed to change the makeup of that party. To reverse this damage will require a lot more than voting Republicans out of office. That is not a true reversal because it does not address the change that really happened, and it keeps that major political party in theocrat hands still. Moderate and non-theocratic Republicans were “primaried” out of office or gradually retired until only the theocrats were left. To undo the theocratic revolution, moderates must regain a voice within the GOP.

Since the South is the GOP stronghold of the nation, it makes sense that the change should begin here. Primaries in general, especially at local levels, have an uncanny tendency to be personal rather than ideological. They are decided quite often by who put out the most signs and advertisements, who has the best network, and who has the best get-out-the-vote operation. Since it usually is not about ideology, moderates stand a fighting chance at being nominated. And the Republican tilt of the Southeast gives them an automatic advantage in the general election. Certainly, some primaries would result in a theocratic person being nominated anyway, but a major change like this would take time to effect. However, the “everyone knows everyone” aspect of local primaries could also result in a weeding out of some of the Religious Right hypocrites who have skeletons in their closets. It’s a win-win.

It’s important to protect the political process from belief systems that are antithetical to our Constitutional government. This could require some people to take actions that they would see as very cynical and manipulative. Southerners who identify as something other than conservative (or even who do identify as conservative but not Religious Right—i.e., libertarians) may have psychological aversions to calling themselves GOP, but if they’re considering going into politics, they will have to deal with real-world strategy soon enough. Might as well begin immediately.

Two Years

Two years ago at this exact day and exact minute, Hurricane Katrina made its first Gulf landfall on the Louisiana coast.

I would like to mark this day by providing a series of links to recent news about the recovery, or what passes for it. First is my series of blogs about the hurricane:

No Environmental Reviews
Disaster Profiteering (highly recommended)
The Working Class
Global Warming
Insurance Malfeasance
Blaming the Victims
Faith-Based Recovery, I
Faith-Based Recovery, II & III
Faith-Based Recovery, IV & V
Faith-Based Recovery, VI

Next, I have rounded up external links to news sources that have pertinent stories.

Katrina: A Reality Check for All Towns — Focuses on aftermath in New Orleans
New Orleans Still Struggling Two Years After Hurricane Katrina — Focuses on health care
Survey: Post-Storm Mental Health Worsens — Gulf Coast in general
FEMA suspends use, sales of ‘toxic’ trailers — However, just so no one forgets the stonewalling they did prior to this:
House Panel Probes Toxic FEMA Trailers

In the midst of all the 2-year anniversary coverage by the media, some of which will be disgustingly smarmy and positive to the point of being an outright lie, let’s not forget about anything attending the tragedy. I intend to mark the occasion later today by viewing An Inconvenient Truth again and considering the environmental aspects of the disaster, both those which followed it and those which I am convinced led up to it (i.e., global warming). The best way to observe the day is to consider what we might be able to do to prevent it from happening again.

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Have they learned nothing from New Orleans?

The Bush administration will allow some development in flood plains without formal environmental reviews.

Predictably (and rightly), the move has enraged environmentalists, who have been advocating for the disappearing wetlands for decades now, mostly in vain. This move allows developers to build on small tracts of land, and it places minimal restrictions on what can be built. Types of buildings to be permitted include residential homes, shopping venues, hospitals, prisons, and schools.

If you were a resident of low-lying Louisiana who had experienced Hurricane Katrina (or evacuated and returned to find your community in ruins), wouldn’t it make you feel nice and cozy to know that your kids’ new school could be built on a filled-in marshland that had flooded before–as long as the school was small and the entire development didn’t take up over half an acre? (In some parts of rural Louisiana, that’s not out of the question.)

(Oh, and is due to be reclaimed by the sea in a few decades because of global warming-induced rising seas, another problem that is not being addressed in the coastal “recovery.”)

And if you were, perhaps, a researcher of endangered species–maybe even the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker–wouldn’t you be pleased to know that developers could pull the same sort of stunt that the timber industry did in the 1940s, when it completely stripped clear the last confirmed habitat of Ivorybills?

Oh, sure, the Endangered Species Act would provide protection for areas where the birds are known to roost. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? They are hard to find, and with recent potential sightings in Arkansas and Florida, there’s a possibility that they might be in pockets all over the Gulf states. However, those two sightings are increasingly being called into question since the scientists involved have not produced good video or photography yet. If other potential areas are wiped out before the birds could even be found, it opens the floodgates for the areas in Arkansas and especially Florida to be given similar treatment.

And, from the same article, this is just disgusting:

Another part of the regulations, approved in coordination with other federal agencies and the White House, waives the formal environmental reviews entirely for coal companies when they bury or reroute streams with their mining wastes.

So okay, if your friendly neighborhood coal company decides to dump waste product in a stream, completely cutting off the flow of water with the trash, no one has to run it through any sort of review process.

I’ll make sure to drink bottled water when I am in Louisiana.

This bit of news was certainly a very unwelcome addition to my e-mail inbox this morning.

I have made this blog mostly about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast, yes, but frankly, I’m tired of having so much material to write about.

Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit—LOTS of Profit.

As readers of this blog have undoubtedly noticed, I’ve been focusing heavily on the recovery process of Hurricane Katrina lately. Much attention has been devoted to the initial response and its shortcomings, but critiques of the reconstruction are harder to come by.

And now… we come to an issue that is not only being overlooked, but appears to have a very strong public relations effort underway to spin it a certain way.

This is a multi-pronged issue, but in a nutshell, it’s this: Big industry is getting free rein to buy up anything it can get its hands on, with encouragement and aid from the government at several levels. In the meantime, coastal residents and local businesses are having to rely on private charities (as well as an Attorney General who will fight for them against people trying to ruin them financially) to get back on their feet.

It’s fairly common knowledge that war profiteering on a truly grand scale is taking place in Iraq while the Iraqis and our own soldiers watch the country degenerate into total anarchy and civil war. This same type of corporate profiteering, often by the same companies, is taking place on our very own Gulf Coast as well, while the residents of the coast are left to fend for themselves.

This issue deals with the great divide between the haves and the have-nots, and as such, it is intimately related to the housing and insurance problems associated with the Katrina recovery. This story is likely to have some overlap with previous entries.
Private charity is a great thing, and it’s stories like this that restore some of my faith in humanity when it falters. However, these stories are deeply, deeply sad. The extent of the devastation in these communities is so great that these organizations, despite their heroic efforts, are swamped. Continue reading “Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit—LOTS of Profit.”

Two Responses, Two Recoveries

UPDATE (4:20 PM EST):
I discovered this report from the Institute for Southern Studies’ “Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch.” It gives an overview of a number of problems facing the Gulf Coast and proposed solutions to them. Unfortunately, it neglects to mention global warming’s impact on sea levels, including the inundation of the barrier islands and the low-lying wetlands that would take place under these conditions. However, the rest of it is sound.

The problems have been identified, and solutions have been proposed. It is time to act. Enough is enough.

It’s no secret that the response to Hurricane Katrina was a fiasco, wherein no one got really suitable treatment but the level of recovery was still dramatically divided by race and class boundaries. Based on some of the stories in the news, which speak glowingly of Mardi Gras or the rehabilitation of the Superdome, you’d be led to believe that these disparities only surfaced during the immediate response attempts, and that things have been hunky-dory since then.

Well, you’d be wrong. The recovery of Hurricane Katrina is plagued with problems, the first of which I have already touched on–it does not consider the coming rise of the sea levels or the inundation of the coast’s natural defenses, which global climate change is predicted to cause. As I’ve said, there are several others: environmental damage, the domination of the rebuilding process by big industry, and the class-based inequality of personal property recovery. Although they are all closely related, today’s blog will only look at the last one. Continue reading “Two Responses, Two Recoveries”

State Farm Poised to Pull Insurance on the Gulf Coast

In the wake of the lawsuit in favor of coastal homeowners who were victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, State Farm Insurance has announced that it will not write any new policies for residents of Mississippi:

Bob Hunter of the Consumer Federation of America said he believed State Farm’s action was a warning to other Gulf Coast states.

“I would say it’s a warning shot,” Hunter said. “The insurance company here, State Farm, is basically saying, ‘If you make us pay what we owe, we’re gonna … take it out on your citizens.'”

And here’s Mississippi’s Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood on it, after the company tried to blame “judicial uncertainty” for its move:

“They [State Farm] created the problem,” he said. “If they would have paid what they owed in the first place, there never would have been a lawsuit filed.”

I could not agree more with either person.

In a printed article that I read this morning, the company is also cited as “assessing how many of the current policies in Mississippi will be renewed this year.”

That’s a red alarm that homeowners on America’s most vulnerable coastline will have their insurance revoked before the 2007 hurricane season kicks off — a season that is forecast to be a repeat of seasons such as 2003 and 2004, after the current El Nino dissipates. If one company is allowed to get away with it, you can rest assured that others will follow in its wake.

Apparently, the company tried to pull this in Florida as well, but — in a series of events that truly blows my mind — was stymied by the new Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist. Credit where it’s due, I guess, although from this article, it appears that he did it for the wrong reasons.

Insurance companies can’t cancel your homeowner policy before December or raise your rates for the next 90 days.

Throwing another hard jab at the property-insurance industry, Gov. Charlie Crist persuaded his fellow Florida Cabinet members to pass an emergency order to that effect Tuesday.

The 90-day rate freeze is intended to make sure companies preparing rate-adjustment requests take into account the steep savings they should get under an insurance law Crist signed last week.

…

The order, which prevents insurers from dropping customers until after the next hurricane season, was approved despite strident objections raised by insurance-industry lobbyists and concerns from state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, who both said the rule could put some companies in too much of a financial bind.

Although Florida does tend to treat its hurricane victims better than the victims of Hurricane Katrina in MS and LA, this whining about profits really rings hollow when you consider that

[a] year and a half after Hurricane Katrina, 35,000 Mississippi households remain at odds with State Farm, and now the company says it won’t issue any new homeowner policies in Mississippi.

Yeah, cry me a river.

I sat through this hurricane. My family’s house in Mississippi took roof damage that still has not been repaired. I have since then moved out of the area, but I follow developments very closely. I have come around to the conclusion that disaster victims and potential disaster victims need a media-savvy group to lobby for them. Their entire livelihood depends on the whim of political power-brokers, and, while the insurance industry is rich and powerful, the small businesses and homeowners have NO voice after the storm passes through.

(Cross-posted on the Daily Kos.)

The Faith-Based Recovery on the Hurricane Coast, Part VI

Part VI: A dire situation

Somehow, emergency management for the Coast—America’s “Hurricane Coast,” incorporating the Atlantic and Gulf—has missed the boat, and badly. As of mid-July 2006, thousands of hurricane victims along the totally devastated Gulf Coast are living in various unsafe forms of housing: damaged homes, FEMA trailers, tents, RVs, etc. If the Katrina and Rita evacuations were a nightmare and, arguably, a failure, one does not really want to consider evacuating thousands of displaced and basically homeless people during a 2006 Gulf of Mexico hurricane—which will almost certainly occur once again. This is much more than ignoring the small businesses and residents of the coastline in favor of big industries, although that has been going on as well. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Hurricane Katrina formed east of Florida in the Bahamas, entered the Gulf of Mexico, and exploded in both size and intensity. Katrina was a product of the Gulf Stream Current and Gulf of Mexico, which have been—along with the Caribbean Sea—considerably warmer in April and May 2006 than they were in April and May 2005. They were actually below average for April and May in 2005, but in spite of that, heated to temperatures that could support three of the six strongest Category Five hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic. With summer fast approaching, these waters will not cool off anytime soon. Most of the Atlantic Basin is warm enough to support a major hurricane, and wind steering patterns are thought to place the entire Atlantic and Gulf Coast in danger this year.

Hurricane season is upon us, with the strong possibility of a repeat of the past two years. Along the coastline from east Texas to the Atlantic coast of Florida, there are few communities that have not been impacted by one hurricane or another since August 2004. Some areas have been struck repeatedly, such as the central Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida (struck by four hurricanes since 2004), and the southern half of the Florida peninsula (struck five times with an additional close shave from Hurricane Rita). That’s a lot of damaged or destroyed homes. That’s a lot of people in unsafe housing, unable to obtain a safe place because their insurance—if they had any in the first place—has denied their claim or stalled paying, and the government is more interested in helping multibillion-dollar industries get “back on their feet.” America’s Hurricane Coast cannot afford a faith-based recovery.

The Faith-Based Recovery on the Hurricane Coast, Parts IV and V

Part IV: A Warning Shot in 2003?

Victims of Hurricane Isabel, a large storm that struck the East Coast in September 2003 as a Category Two, had been neglected and given short shrift by the insurance industry, and had not been compensated for damages a full year after that storm made landfall. Fortunately, that part of the coastline has not received a blow of comparable intensity since then. However, had such a thing happened, their damaged houses would have been much less stable in a subsequent storm, especially if they had experienced significant roof damage. Once breached, a roof is significantly less structurally sound against winds—which have a way, once they reach hurricane strength, of finding gaps and entering the house through the spaces. A strong wind to a damaged roof could easily tear it off the walls, and when it came time to assess damages, the insurance would have records to indicate that the roof was already damaged, and could use that as justification for denying claims. Clearly, the housing problem for hurricane victims after the storm is not easily solved by simply putting something over their heads.

Hurricane Isabel was the first hurricane to significantly impact the United States since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. (Hurricane Lili struck a relatively uninhabited part of Louisiana in 2002 as a Category Two, but it did less than $1 billion in damage and was a small storm that was weakening rapidly even as it made landfall.) One could say, then, that Isabel was the Bush Administration’s first significant test for hurricane recovery. Obviously it didn’t do so hot, especially for an administration whose byline and claim to fame was how well it supposedly was able to handle disasters.

Part V: Fiasco in Florida

The Administration continued to fall down with the 2004 season. Although this did not receive very much press, the state of Florida, which got battered repeatedly in 2004, received the “ignore” treatment as well for its recovery. The president and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, were more than willing to photo-op with victims for campaign purposes, but when it came to doing much to help, they failed badly. As of October 2005, victims of Hurricane Charley—a small hurricane that struck the Florida Gulf Coast on August 13, 2004—were still living in FEMA temporary housing, although that hurricane was very small and did only localized damage (as compared with a large storm such as Katrina). It does not take fourteen months to build a house, but Charley victims were still living in trailers after that long.
One woman was quoted in the news as being concerned that her FEMA trailer would not stand up to Hurricane Wilma, which was threatening the Florida coast at the time. She had good reason to worry: Mobile homes are considered unsafe during thunderstorm winds of 50-60 mph. They have been known to flip and literally fly to pieces during strong thunderstorms, which is why they are so frequently death traps in hurricanes and tornadoes. Weather forecasters actually advise mobile home residents to abandon them and lie in a ditch if they are in the path of a tornado; that is how unsafe they are. Hurricane Wilma ended up making landfall well south of Charley’s impact point, but it struck Florida as a Category Three hurricane with 120 mph winds and exited on the east side of the state as a Category Two with approximately 100 mph winds. The trailers would not have stood up.

Florida’s southern coast is wealthier than the parts of Louisiana and Mississippi that were damaged by Katrina and Rita, which is an obvious advantage. Also, Wilma moved across Florida very rapidly and was primarily a windstorm, rather than Rita and Katrina, which did most of their damage with massive amounts of water. However, even without these complications, reports from after the storm indicated that emergency management was mishandling the cleanup. As an example, storm victims reported being denied access to clean bottled water because the officials “guarding” the water had not been given official permission to dispense it… after 24 hours of sitting there. Although it received much less coverage than the Katrina aftermath, Florida apparently received similar treatment to the central Gulf Coast.

A cursory search of weather-enthusiast Floridians’ personal websites uncovers that many victims of Hurricane Wilma (and some whose homes were damaged in the 2004 Florida hurricanes), like their counterparts in Louisiana and Mississippi, still have not received payment for damages to their homes. They have what they call “blue roofs,” referring to wind-damaged roofs covered with blue plastic tarps. Roofs that, were another strong hurricane to strike, would be much more vulnerable than before to wind, because they had been breached and the holes not patched.

Later:
Part VI: A Dire Situation: What might 2006 hold?