Texas officials: FEMA 'insensitive' after Ike

Texas officials accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of slow response and insensitivity on Monday, saying the agency has failed to provide timely help to town officials and Hurricane Ike victims who need temporary housing and money. "It's a tragedy, what's going on down there," Jack Colley, the state's director of emergency management, told the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee during a hearing on hurricane recovery. Colley suggested that FEMA should be removed from the federal Department of Homeland Security and placed under presidential oversight. "They have been extremely insensitive, in our opinion, to the concept that somebody cannot drive 100 miles a day to keep their job," said Kevin Hamby, general counsel of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. "They don't seem to care much if we lose these communities down there." Hamby said that more than six weeks after the hurricane, fewer than 200 trailers are available for people to live in on their property while their homes are being repaired. Hamby said that Federal Emergency Management Administration officials had promised 300 trailers a week. The state agency estimates that 3,000 to 6,000 trailers are needed. FEMA spokesman Simon Chabel defended the agency, saying it was acting quickly and responding "in a way that's compassionate." "We've put out more than $250 million paid to help people find temporary housing," he said. "We're working as quickly as we can to help them put their lives back together." Chabel said 262 mobile homes currently are occupied and another 350 are awaiting connections to sewage and power. The federal agency has offered to pay for displaced residents to stay in hotels and motels, but few rooms are available in hard-hit areas. Chabel said more than 6,000 displaced Texas residents of the nearly 19,000 interviewed by FEMA have found housing. But State Sen. Tommy Williams pointed to a FEMA official's comment last week that anyone living in a tent or a car was doing so by choice, the Houston Chronicle reported in its Monday online editions. "It's amazing to me that a federal official could be so uninformed and so insensitive," Williams said. Ike came ashore near Galveston on Sept. 13, forcing evacuations of more than 1 million people from the Texas coast and killing at least 37 people statewide.