still stinking after all these years

the story of fema's inneffectiveness has been told repeatedly. the democrats even tried to take advantage of the agency's tarnished reputation. but fema's missteps has not often been presented quite like this [bugmenot login]

The box that Jose Luis Porras Jr. refers to is a mobile home. He's glad to have a roof over his head, "but check it out," he says. "Is there any other shape to call it?"

The home is in a village of 152 trailers, divided into two clusters on the outskirts of this border town west of San Antonio. The Federal Emergency Management Agency assembled the village in the fall of 1998 to house the hundreds of evacuees, like Porras, whose houses were destroyed by a tropical storm that drenched this normally arid corner of Texas.

The village was meant to be temporary.

Seven years later, the village remains, with no plans to dismantle it. And, most disheartening for Porras, he and his family remain, along with a dozen other evacuee families who have no means of getting out.

Porras, 41, has been following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and news of the FEMA trailer villages being built for Gulf Coast evacuees. His counsel in one sentence: Beware the word "temporary." [emphasis added]

this story cannot be true...
because the then-fema director James Lee Witt who was appointed by bill clinton, dubbed a "miracle worker" by such a neutral source as clinton policy advisor bruce reed (also a DLC bigwig), supposedly turned around fema from its abysmal performance

In Washington, the common joke was that every storm brought two disasters: one when the hurricane arrived and the second when FEMA arrived.

however, several families have been stuck in housing intended for 18 months for seven years

¶ - nitish @ 12:45 PM