June 01, 2007
Bracing For The Next Katrina
On the first official day of the 2007 hurricane season, FEMA is talking tough.
David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the AP this morning that despite predictions for bad storms this year, his staff is prepared with supplies ready for quick movement and new plans in place.
But a few dark spots for FEMA have appeared in recent days.
Two activist groups representing the victims of Hurricane Katrina have filed a lawsuit on behalf of nine residents still living in FEMA trailers. The suit alleges that Pascagoula County on Mississippi's Gulf Coast is unfairly trying to evict the residents, who say they can't afford to leave the trailers.
CongressDaily (subscription) reports that in the post-Katrina era, FEMA has awarded more than 4,000 no-bid contracts -- one of the highest figures ever disclosed for any government agency. The House is currently working on legislation to mandate competition on future contracts.
Even a year after Hurricane Katrina, Americans were still smarting over FEMA's performance before, during and after the storm. Eight in 10 respondents to a CBS News/New York Times poll (subscription) from last summer said the federal government's response could have been much better. Only about a third said federal agencies were doing everything they could a year later to help people affected by the storms.
And a new Mason-Dixon poll of Gulf Coast residents shows they're probably not prepared for the start of the hurricane season. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they haven't taken steps to shore up their homes against hurricanes, and most don't have a family communication plan or a survival kit.
Although it wasn't official, the season already saw some activity this week. The threat level from Tropical Storm Barbara could bring significant rainfall to the Mexican coast, but forecasters say it could also head out to sea and it seems unlikely to cause extensive damage. But Barbara is the second named storm this month, and only two other years -- 1956 and 1984 -- have seen May storms serious enough to get their own designations. (AP released a list of this year's storm names.)
That jives with the dire-sounding predictions for 2007.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting an above-average season due to the decreased effects of El Nino and warmer-than-average temperatures on the surface of the oceans. Agency scientists predict 13 to 17 named storms, seven to 10 storms that will become hurricanes and three to five hurricanes that will register as Category 3 or higher.
AP cites a researcher at Colorado State University, who estimated similar figures to NOAA's, as putting the chance of a big storm making landfall in the United States at 74 percent; the chance of one hitting the East Coast is 50 percent, he said. The usual likelihood is just more than half that.
(Photo credit: NOAA)
Posted at 1:17 PM
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