Hurricanes and the FEMA Fiasco

This is a blast from the past as hurricane season will begin in just one month's time (June 1) and the city manager brought FEMA up at Tuesday's city commission meeting.

If you recall, we went through three major hurricanes in 2004 and 2005--Through the course of the three hurricanes (Frances and Jeanne in 2004 and Wilma in 2005 whose eye of the hurricane went over Lake Worth), approximately $26 million in reimbursement for damages was given to Lake Worth from FEMA and distributed to the city from the State of Florida.  Included in all of the wreckage and losses was damage to our Pier shown above.

For a small little city, 5.945.2/sq miles, we suffered the most damage when it came to our Utility. The various damages included (but were not limited to) downed trees, our electric grid, poles, switches, transformers, meters, city buildings.  We on Lake Osborne were without power for 12.5 days and cold showers got to be the norm.  They ended up removing 18,148 CY of debris in 2004 and 19,111 CY in 2005. The City received invoices from all companies as well as linesmen from outside the State that were involved with helping to get our city back on track after the hurricanes in order to restore our power.

FEMA wanted proof for the $26 million and we got involved in a mess trying to prove our claims. The utility department, the biggest culprit, had lost invoices and documents and the city commission didn't feel we should be responsible to pay it all back due to those document losses from so many years ago. Millions were not paid from FEMA's original requested amounts--Read blog and they accepted the City's pathetic plea.

FEMA still is asking for $4 million to be reimbursed to them from the City of Lake Worth  because they don't believe in Lake Worth's rationale to justify all the millions they were given. Carolyn Ansay of Torcivia's law firm is working on the FEMA issue.  She is the former General Counsel to the South Florida Water Management District. She is going through the documentation to make sure that what FEMA has, matches up with our records. The City says that there has been a million dollar discrepancy that has been discovered. 4,000 load tickets (no one explained what a 'load" ticket is--value could be up to $1.3 million) that were submitted have not shown up on the FEMA web site. Torcivia is going to try and settle for $25,000 as he has connections with a former FEMA attorney?