strib: Another flood, another FEMA

[question everything]

Another flood, another FEMA

Ashley Shelby
Published September 13, 2005

In 1997, in what many consider to be the biggest mistake in the modern history of the National Weather Service, the city of Grand Forks, N.D., was nearly wiped off the map in a catastrophic flood.

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Due to a complex mistake in the National Weather Service's hydrological model, amplified by freakish behavior of the river itself, the city of Grand Forks was nearly destroyed. It was, at the time, classified as the eighth-worst natural disaster in U.S. history. By failing to correctly predict the flood crest, the federal government, many outraged and heartbroken Grand Forks citizens said then, had failed them -- and had ruined their lives.

But before this resentment could fester, Bill Clinton, FEMA Director James Lee Witt, and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala rolled into town. Witt's team had, in fact, had been in Grand Forks in the weeks leading up to the flood, urging homeowners to enroll in the federal government's National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA officials were familiar figures in town. Before arriving in Grand Forks, Clinton had authorized FEMA to provide 100 percent of the direct federal assistance for all of the emergency work undertaken by federal agencies in the disaster zones (the normal reimbursement rate is 75 percent).

The National Guard had been mobilized months earlier -- its ranks full and available to the people it served -- and was responsible for a huge percentage of preparedness activities before the flood. It was responsible for executing the remarkable evacuation of Grand Forks (until New Orleans, the largest evacuation of an American city since Atlanta in the Civil War) and provided immediate search and rescue support as the floodwaters deluged the city.

James Lee Witt's FEMA performed like a well-oiled machine in Grand Forks and the entire Red River Valley after the flood, though many citizens grumbled about red tape and the endless lines they had to stand in to sign up for aid. Maybe it was "big government," but FEMA did not hesitate to move in as soon as the National Weather Service warned the people of the Red River Valley that they'd see more water than they'd ever seen in their lives (much like the National Hurricane Center's extraordinary warnings that Katrina could cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards").

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http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5610904-2.html

Ashley Shelby, author of "Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City," lives in New York.

[KitchenWitch]

1. Another great OPED from my local paper

I love the strib!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Uh, I already posted this article about halfway down the page

:P

But it is very good.