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Situation with FEMA is on the verge of being a...

Situation with FEMA is on the verge of being a crisis

Print - FPinfomart - Biloxi-Gulfport Sun Herald - Wednesday February 27th, 2008

Hurricane Katrina redefined our world - and many of our words.

Since Aug. 29, 2005, we have been very careful about describing anything as a "crisis" in an editorial.

We have referred to "the catastrophic crisis" that was Katrina itself.

We have noted the need for better crisis management[/HI] and more crisis counseling.

But since that terrible storm, we have christened only two topics as being of crisis proportions:

The lack of affordable housing.

The loss of affordable insurance coverage.

We now think that South Mississippi is on the verge of another crisis, and this one will be caused by FEMA.

Katrina created challenges; FEMA is creating obstacles

As the overseer of the National Flood Insurance Program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is forcing inexplicably harsh standards onto our rebuilding efforts.

At least we can determine no explanation for them.

Following Katrina, FEMA representatives carefully and convincingly explained the need to realistically reassess the risk of living in certain areas of our communities.

We appreciated that this reassessment would produce some pain and dislocation among our residents. Still, we believed that FEMA was being responsible in its efforts.

Indeed, we were so convinced of FEMA's obligation to accurately ascertain the degree of danger faced by structures in low-lying areas of South Mississippi that we encouraged local governments - both cities and counties - to adhere to FEMA's new requirements on the elevation of buildings in the flood plain.

But after taking more than two years to develop these new maps, FEMA officials themselves have spent only hours introducing them to South Mississippians and have given our communities only 90 days to challenge their findings.

This has floored some of our cities.

This gritty city survived 300 years of storms

Bay St. Louis, for instance, is looking at an insurmountable challenge in which, for three-quarters of its former developed properties, rebuilding at FEMA's new elevations will be too expensive or too impractical.

If this is not at least verging on crisis, we shudder to imagine what would be worse.

FEMA has promised to send representatives here to explain how this mapping process resulted in such dire consequences.

We urge them to sit down with us as soon as possible.

We believe that we have been responsible in our dealings with FEMA. We certainly did not join in the bureaucracy-bashing that took place in the weeks and months after Katrina. Frankly, we had more pressing issues to deal with.

But we never suspected that our efforts to rebuild and replace what Katrina damaged and destroyed would be made impossible or impractical by FEMA itself.

If that is not the case, then FEMA needs to quickly and decisively make its case for why it isn't.

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