Sun-Sentinel called for Brown's resignation
a year ago
Sun-Sentinel
'Sun-Sentinel': Katrina Only Latest of FEMA Foul-Ups
Aya Kawano
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: September 16, 2005 5:15 PM ET
CHICAGO A two-day investigative series that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
will publish starting this Sunday says that the wretched performance of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during Hurricane Katrina is the rule
rather than the exception for the agency.
The series comes down hard on FEMA from the first graf: "The federal
government's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina is just the latest in a series of
missteps by a national disaster response system that for years has been fraught
with waste and fraud."
FEMA's bungling during Katrina came as no surprise to the Sun-Sentinel, says
Editor and Sr. Vice President Earl Mauker.
"We actually called for [Michael Brown's] resignation a year ago," he said,
referring to the FEMA head who resigned earlier this week.
The Tribune Co.-owned Fort Lauderdale paper has been on FEMA's case since
last year when its computer-assisted investigation turned up massive fraud and
waste in the wake of Hurricane Frances. FEMA, the paper found, had paid
millions of dollars in claims in Miami-Dade County -- even though the hurricane
made landfall 100 miles away.
"It was absolutely incredible. In Miami, the hurricane never hit, it never
came on shore, and we found FEMA paid out $31 million for a storm that never
came ashore," Mauker said.
The Sun-Sentinel followed up that revelation with continuing reporting of
FEMA waste. The paper says the agency paid for funerals for people whose deaths
had nothing to do with the hurricane. It reports that FEMA inspectors receive
little training -- and that a shocking number of them have criminal
records.
With this coming investigative series -- titled, "FEMA: A Legacy Of Waste --
the newspaper expands its examination far beyond Florida.
"We found the same waste in Detroit, Baton Rouge, Cleveland, Los Angeles,"
Mauker said. One example: After a season of wild fires and mudslides in Los
Angeles, FEMA paid $5.2 million in disaster relief to families in Watts, far
from the affected areas.
"There is a huge pattern of low-income urban neighborhoods, when they find
out there is a FEMA-declared emergency, they file," sometimes faking damage to
collect, Mauker said.
The series estimates that between 1999 and 2004, FEMA squandered $400
million in money spent "for storms that never occurred or for issues that were
miles away from" a disaster site, Mauker said.
Sun-Sentinel investigative journalists actually started out looking to track
how homeland security funds were being spent for ports and other sensitive
areas. "We started looking on the computer, and saw all this federal money
going to all these places, and wanted to know why," Mauker said.
"Michael Brown was nothing but defensive" as the newspaper was doing its
reporting, Mauker said. "We had to file all kinds of lawsuits."
Reporters overlaid maps of the various storms and disasters with maps of
where FEMA money was spent. The newspaper tracked some one million claims,
Mauker said.
The series will be available online atwww.sun-sentinel.com beginning Sunday,
Sept. 18.
Mark Fitzgerald (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P's
editor-at-large.
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