More Trouble For Warr

Mayor Brent Warr and his wife, Laura, were originally indicted in November on 11 counts of Katrina fraud, but court records show those charges were sealed while the investigation continued.

The second indictment against the Warrs, unsealed last week in U.S. District Court, contained 16 charges against each of them. It supersedes the original indictment.

One conspiracy charge and four insurance fraud charges were added to the second indictment, issued Jan. 22. The second indictment remained under seal until the Warrs appeared in court Wednesday, entering not guilty pleas.

The 11 original charges involve $150,000 in homeowner assistance funds and $9,558 in FEMA funds the Warrs received for Katrina damage to their beachfront home. Those charges have been incorporated into the second indictment.

Prosecutors contend the Warrs lied to secure the federal funds, claiming the home as their primary residence when they actually lived in a house that belonged to Brent Warr’s grandmother while the beach home was being renovated.

Illinois impeached a gover5nor over allegations, what will Gulfport do?

The Mississippi Stockpile

FEMA is spending $28 million a year to store travel trailers and mobile homes at five Mississippi sites while the agency determines whether they’ll be reused or sold as scrap.

The work is not very far along and could run through 2011, based on renewal options for leases on the land. The cost covers land leases, utilities, security, operational costs and training at five South Mississippi sites, four of which are full and on “caretaker” status. Trailers are still being hauled to the fifth site, Hickory Grove, a hamlet near Hattiesburg.

The trailers will be auctioned by the General Services Administration, the agency charged with management of government property, on its Web site, gsaauctions.gov. GSA planned to launch sales this past week of trailers from two of the sites, Carnes and Lumberton, but no trailers had appeared on the auction site as of Saturday afternoon. A GSA spokesman, Gary Mote, said the agency does not know how much money the scrap trailers might fetch.

AL: Flood Insurance Plan Doomed?

The federal flood insurance program, which covers tens of thousands of Alabama properties, is set to expire next week and it’s not clear what Congress is going to do about it.

As new claims pour in from Hur ricanes Gustav and Ike, the program remains in a deep financial hole stemming largely from payouts after Hurricane Katrina three years ago. Lawmakers, meanwhile, remain at odds over how to remake it in an era of more destructive – and more costly – storms.

Under a bill introduced last week by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., Congress would simply punt the problem into next spring. Instead of expiring Sept. 30, the program would stay in business unchanged until the end of April.

But while stopping short of outright opposition to that proposal, a spokeswoman for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said via e-mail that the flood insurance program “should be reformed, not merely extended” so that policyholders can be sure of its ability to pay off claims.

Like many federal endeavors, the flood program has to be periodically reviewed and updated by Congress. If lawmakers did allow it to lapse ? as happened briefly in the early 1990s ? existing policies could not be renewed and new policies could not be written, said Butch Kinerney, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the program. The agency would continue to accept and pay claims on policies already in effect, he said.

LA: New Housing Strategy

Fearing that federal recovery dollars for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike won’t fully cover residents’ crucial home repair needs, Louisiana officials are devising a new state strategy for housing relief.

Their fundamental concern: making sure that billions of dollars already spent on homes damaged by Katrina and Rita in 2005 won’t go to waste.

Nothing akin to the state’s massive Road Home recovery program for Katrina and Rita exists for Gustav and Ike. Victims of this month’s storms have their private insurance, but named storm deductibles of 2 percent to 5 percent are sure to leave gaps for those facing major repairs

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stepped forward with more extensive home repair aid than it offered after Katrina and Rita, but it’s capped at $28,800 for each household and is designed only to make houses or apartments livable again. The FEMA process will, however, assist property owners in applying for low-interest Small Business Administration loans, which are designed to restore homes to pre-storm conditions.

That program, funded by about $10 billion channeled through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was supposed to combine with private insurance settlements to recover the value of owner-occupied homes destroyed or badly damaged in the 2005 storms. It has paid more than 117,000 homeowners, but the unprecedented effort took more than two years to pay the bulk of the applicants and three years on, tens of thousands are still waiting for payment, in many cases having appealed an earlier decision.

LA: The Folly Of The Promise Of The Corps Of Engineers

When the Army Corps of Engineers promises to protect southeast Louisiana from flooding triggered by a “100-year hurricane,” the all-too-common assumption is a storm that will occur only once a century.

But that misunderstanding can contribute to a world of bad decisions, from homeowners feeling secure enough to drop flood insurance to members of Congress refusing to finance a higher level of protection.

In reality, “100-year hurricane” is merely shorthand — poor shorthand, in the view of a growing number of community activists, scientists and government officials — for a storm that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Such a storm could hit every year, or not at all for a century.

“The phrase ‘100-year-flood’ doesn’t communicate to the public or to policymakers the real risk of flooding. They think it means a flood that occurs once every 100 years, when in fact, there’s something like a 60 percent chance of experiencing it in your lifetime.”

The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East has also added its voice to a chorus challenging the federal government to devise a more easily understandable explanation of risk. The authority’s plea followed a similar one from the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency.

Findings on Katrina Trailers Went Undisclosed, Maker Says – washingtonpost.com

Findings on Katrina Trailers Went Undisclosed, Maker Says – washingtonpost.com

FEMA knew of the high levels and the company figured that the findings were not important.

LA: FEMA Unveils Parrish Flood Maps

A toll-free help line, 1 (866) 751-3989, operates Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., to answer citizens’ questions, Thomas said.

Parish and municipal officials at the open house said residents also can call their respective local government offices to have questions answered.

Old flood maps in St. Tammany were in the process of being updated by FEMA long before Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, FEMA issued new advisory elevations for new construction and the rebuilding of structures more than 50 percent destroyed by the storm. The advisory elevations, issued for areas south of Interstate 12 in St. Tammany and adopted by local governments, require new construction to be built about a foot higher than required under the old maps.

The new maps propose elevations largely similar to the ones in the advisory, local officials said. “It stays about the same in most of the parish,” said Alan Pelegrin with the parish’s flood zone office. “In some places, it fluctuates a foot or two.”

In most of Mandeville, however, the new maps reduce the minimum elevation by 3 to 4 feet from those required in the advisory, according to Chris Brown, the city’s flood plain administrator.

In Slidell, city engineer Donna O’Dell said there are no drastic changes in the proposed new maps. However, some areas that previously weren’t delineated as flood-prone are now designated as flood zones, she said. The city is compiling a list of addresses that now are in flood zones in the new maps, she said.

MS: House Bill And Housing Funds

Just two weeks after a critical joint House committee hearing, the House on Wednesday approved a bill to break a federal impasse on rebuilding public housing after a disaster.

The bill, which was done on a bipartisan basis and passed on a voice vote, removes a conflict between FEMA and the Housing and Urban Development Administration over funding. The Public Housing Disaster Relief Act, (H.R. 6276), would remove the HUD program to make way for the FEMA funding.

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Travis Childers, R-Miss., who was a floor manager of the bill, said it represented “a common sense approach” to remove the barrier that “has stalled federal dollars” from being used to rebuild the Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

House Financial Institutions Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said, “This is no special deal for Louisiana and Mississippi. This simply provides public housing’s fair share.”

AL: Locals Plan To Cover The Ice Debacle

State and local emergency officials said they are looking into plans to provide ice following a hurricane after federal officials said earlier this year that they would no longer supply it.

FEMA head R. David Paulison surprised many coastal leaders when he announced in April that the agency would only distribute ice for medical emergencies or life-threatening situations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has traditionally provided ice to disaster victims, particularly in areas with power outages.

FEMA should reconsider, U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said in a Friday letter to Paulison. The agency’s new policy of leaving the job to state and local governments “would add layers of complexity, bureaucracy and delay to what should be a simple and straightforward task,” Taylor wrote.

Alabama leaders are now two weeks into hurricane season and are not sure how people would keep cool if a storm knocked out power.

After Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina wiped out power lines in south Alabama, residents waited for hours at distribution points to pick up ice along with water and ready-to-eat meals.

“Some people making these decisions have clearly never been in south Alabama on a summer day,” said Leigh Ann Ryals, the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency director.

Ice isn’t just needed for comfort, said Walt Dickerson, Mobile County’s emergency director.

Some medications need to be kept cold, he said. And unlike food and water, residents can’t save up enough ice to last through more than a few days without power.

FEMA Denies Asssistence

While Jackson residents may have received denial letters from FEMA in the weeks following the April 4 tornadoes and storms, they may still be able to get aid. Some residents were denied aid by FEMA because they were already insured.

“By law, we cannot duplicate what insurance already covers or pay for deductibles,” said Michael L. Parker, FEMA’s federal coordinating officer in a statement. “But in some cases, if insurance did not cover all your losses, we may be able to help. Residents who need help making ends meet can visit the FEMA/State Disaster Recovery Center at Willie Morris Library on Old Canton Road to discuss insurance claims and advice after getting their insurance settlement papers.

FEMA will cover hotel costs while homes are uninhabitable or inaccessible if insured victims’ policies do not cover temporary living. Other items such as septic tanks and wells, not usually covered by insurance companies, may be covered by FEMA.

MEMA director Mike Womack believes that they should try to talk with FEMA workers about help. “Even if you have insurance coverage, don’t wait for a settlement before registering with FEMA,” he said. “If you wait for your insurer to act, it may be too late to register for federal assistance. The filing deadline is July 27.”