FEMA/upcoming hurricane season

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Apr 29, 5:16 PM EDT

FEMA tweaks its plans as hurricane season approaches

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to rethink the way it stores supplies as hurricanes barrel toward landfall, and the way it houses people immediately after massive storms hit, said agency director Mike Brown.

The plans are among several changes the agency is making as it prepares for the coming hurricane season. Many of the changes are based on lessons learned when four hurricanes struck Florida last year, Brown said.

One of the greatest lessons was how to preposition items like ice, water, ready-to-eat meals, sleeping cots, bedding, blue tarps and other supplies the agency distributes after a storm.

"We thought that we were being so smart by going to Lakeland and putting things there and having the DFO (Disaster Field Office) in Orlando only to realize that suddenly Francis is going to go through Orlando," Brown said. "We have to be a little bit smarter about prepositioning as much as possible, keeping a little bit of our ammunition dry back a little further away from where we expect landfall to occur."

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That could mean keeping some supplies across the border in Georgia and rushing it into the state after a storm passes, he said.

Craig Fugate, director of the state Division of Emergency Management, has also asked FEMA to improve communication about the supplies. He said the agency did a good job getting supplies in quickly after the storms passed, but not in providing details of their arrival.

"There was no way to see where a lot of this stuff was until it got there," Fugate said. "All they would say was, 'It's coming.' They couldn't say where, when and how."

Brown and Fugate also agreed that improvements need to be made in providing temporary shelter for people whose homes are destroyed. They said people need to be moved out of hurricane shelters more quickly and given a place to stay until temporary housing, such as mobile homes or apartments, become available.

FEMA plans to expand use of what it calls emergency group sites, or EGS, which can consist of clusters of travel trailers that can be quickly set up with water and electricity.

"Creating those emergency group sites is so much better for people in the long run than having them in shelters," Brown said. "It gives them privacy, it gives them a chance to keep their families together as a unit as opposed to maybe being spread out among different facilities. It's just the whole comfort level. And when people are more comfortable, they tend to be a lot more rational, they tend to be able to think and make decisions."

Fugate added that the temporary shelters help the many schools used as storm shelters reopen quicker by moving people out sooner.

Increasing the number of FEMA teams going into counties to help local officials properly assess what their needs is another priority, Brown said. That takes pressure off of local officials who may have problems determining the best way to approach recovery.

"When you're responding to a disaster - I've seen this in every disaster in this country - people sometimes overreact or underreact in identifying what their asset needs are," Brown said. "To the extent that we can reach into those places and have people there to help evaluate what their needs are, it makes us more efficient and helps us better respond to what they actually need in those counties."

In addition, FEMA will try to streamline property inspections, make sure inspectors are better trained and improve technology brought into disaster areas so that the agency can more quickly assess damage and provide housing.

U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, who has been critical of FEMA's slow response getting aid to some counties and some questionable assistance payments in other counties, said the agency did do a "phenomenal" job in its immediate response to the storms.

"We learned a lot from four storms hitting Florida," said Foley, R-Fla. "Those are all good, basic reflective actions being taken. The prepositioning is critical and I think they're doing the right thing be strengthening the process."