Fema Quotations | Page 3

A FEMA or Red Cross site may be set up one mile away, ... but if your car is flooded out, and you have no dollars, you have to walk to the site in 90-degree weather. Someone has to take the initiative to go and handle the immediate situation.

After everything that has happened with FEMA, is there anyone who believes that we should continue to let the money go to FEMA and be distributed by them?

Some states, such as Florida, are much better prepared than others. It's kind of a no-win for FEMA. The better job a state does, the less FEMA has to do.

Dee brings a wealth of federal acquisition experience to this position and she will be a valuable asset to FEMA and the department.

As Hurricane Wilma quickly approaches American soil, I fear that our federal response to emergencies is still lacking, ... could not gather that much has changed about where FEMA stands today as it stood at the time Katrina struck.

As long as FEMA is under DHS, problems are likely to continue. I'm told that at least three state emergency officials have turned down the job of FEMA Director because it is under the Department of Homeland Security. Everyone says FEMA needs a top-quality director, but how do we get one when the top candidates won't take the job?

This is not solely a response to the tragedy in the Gulf; it is the result of the increasing evidence that FEMA should not be hindered by a top-heavy bureaucracy when needed to act swiftly to save lives, ... After suffering through three direct hurricane hits last summer and watching my friends in the Gulf weather Katrina, I have seen one consistent problem-red tape and bureaucratic obstacles getting in the way of saving lives.

This is one I'm excited about. The entire cost is being covered by FEMA and the Harris County Flood Control District.

This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans.

This past Sunday we got the order from FEMA to ship 1,800 homes to a staging area outside Texarkana, Texas. And those homes began shipping immediately.

There's a lot of heavy lifting required to put an effective fraud prevention system in place by this summer. It will take years. You need to have a mechanism in place and field test it. FEMA doesn't have one.

They're happy to be out on the field again, instead of sitting in a FEMA trailer going nuts.

They have more experience than anybody else in the state in handling the flow of the FEMA money and the projects,'' Goodson said.

There was a lot of red tape, and I ain't got time for that. ... FEMA didn't approve, but we did it for the people.

Absolutely. We've got FEMA shoulder to shoulder with us. We'll turn and we'll act on it just as soon as we get the request.

It seems like FEMA does pay sooner or later. We're as close to getting (a guarantee) as we're going to get.

It was better, but it was still a frustrating, time-consuming experience. FEMA is trying to make improvements.

It was a system that was wide open to fraud. All you had to do was call FEMA on the telephone and lie, and you could get money. It was just a question of how many people were willing to make false statements.

It's like when FEMA wasn't really that creative, and the water was rising and people were stranded, ... Once again, people are being stranded and businesses are starting to die.

It's unfortunate that threats of violence would be made against anyone, as we all work together to recover from this disaster. The first priority is to protect and ensure the safety of FEMA workers. There are a lot of employees working hard . . . to help folks return to their homes and ensure they are receiving the assistance they are eligible for under the law.

Don't blame FEMA. This is our responsibility, ... I'm not going to criticize anybody, and I'm not going to let anybody criticize FEMA for something that is our responsibility.

that in the vast majority of hurricanes, other than those in Florida in 2004, complaints are rife that FEMA has vastly underpaid hurricane victims. The Frances overpayments are questionable given the timing of the election and Florida's importance as a battleground state.

That road actually falls under the care and feeding of the FHWA, and FEMA can't duplicate those funds. It's their bailiwick, I understand, because other than the state highway, it's the only road to Virginia City.

It's not FEMA that's come to the rescue; it's private citizens from around the country who are helping us out.

The authorization code allows FEMA to work closely with individuals or family displaced by the hurricane to ensure that they are completely process to make the transition to permanent housing.

It's been very frustrating to many private-sector businesses: They know there are people out there who don't have jobs, but when they go and offer them positions, people say they are not ready to work yet. People are looking at their FEMA checks and their housing allotment and their unemployment benefits and they are saying, 'Hey, I am going to wait awhile.' They are getting enough assistance that they don't need to go back to work.

It's an absolute abomination. Whether intentional corruption or mismanagement . . . it seems like FEMA is just a money pit.

It's difficult so far to get a total picture of the damage. But we do have a lot of people on the ground and people need to feel very secure down there that the state and FEMA are ready to respond with all those pre-positioned assets that we've been talking about.

I've had one visit from two FEMA representatives, and they have not come back.

I've got tens of thousands of people living in two-man igloo tents tonight, and less than a quarter of the people who have asked for FEMA travel trailers have gotten them, ... And at the same time they can find $140,000 a year to pay this incompetent son of a gun; that's ridiculous.

The U.S. marshals ordered them to take their FEMA shirts off because that was just not welcome,

They were visible until a few weeks ago, until the FEMA project buried them.

They will keep paying, but they are trying to get everyone in transitional housing. For the city of Plano apartment assistance ends March 31, after that they can deal with FEMA directly, we are getting out of the middle.

This is just the FEMA relief part, this is not the whole picture, ... We fully expect the U.S. Department of Education to pay for the costs of educating the thousands of new students Texas is going to have in public schools. That is the request we have in to the federal government.

Once again, FEMA failed to adequately plan for the very type of disaster that occurs virtually every year.

After the media goes home, after FEMA goes home, after the Red Cross goes home, we are left with the problem,

After this event, FEMA is going to be doing a lot of soul-searching,

It's not a case where Florida or Orlando has said they are a point for evacuees to flock to. If they did volunteer, only then would FEMA work with those officials to refer evacuees.

Any time there is a natural disaster, FEMA is trotted out as an example of how well government programs work. In reality, by using taxpayer dollars to provide disaster relief and subsidized insurance, FEMA itself encourages Americans to build in disaster-prone areas and makes the rest of us pick up the tab for those risky decisions. Americans should not be forced to pay the cost of rebuilding oceanfront summer homes.

So far, FEMA has provided rental assistance for more than 500,000 families and housed more than 40,000 in travel trailers.

The FEMA people we first encountered (after Katrina) were not experienced people. And just as you got started with one, two weeks later another would come to replace them. They need to leave their people in place, and those folks need to have real training and experience so we can have some continuity working with them.

The FEMA flights were people who literally were saved from being stuck in the water, many of them literally on roof tops or displaced or (left) homeless by the flood.

The costs are ungodly. But FEMA is willing to do anything it can to get acreage with access to the interstate such as this.

I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and, maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims, ... This story's not about me. This story's about the worst disaster of the history of our country that stretched every government to its limit and now we have to help these victims.

I hope this will help people feel a little more at home here. FEMA has provided them with trailers and three meals a day but it's not quite like home until you fill the pantry.

I mean, it should make us all pause to think that the man who is the poster child of what went wrong with Katrina and FEMA is still on the payroll. Now, it's hard for me to understand that,

I know we had a lot of regularly scheduled production in the pipeline and we haven't produced that many FEMA units because we just don't have the capacity.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit we began a dialogue with FEMA about their anticipated needs and short-term housing.

I'm tired of the FEMA-bashing. All you hear is that FEMA didn't do enough. What people don't understand is that FEMA had a game plan, but when the devastation was so widespread, their game plan kind of went out the window.

I'm happy to place the lion's share of the blame for this on FEMA and the feds. But I think a substantial dollop of the blame goes to the state and local level, and he deserves his share of that.

I'm happy to be called not a Rudy Giuliani ... a scapegoat ... if it means that FEMA that I knew when I came here is going to be able to be reborn.

I'm confident there won't be a FEMA problem.

If the response back from FEMA isn't one we want to see.

If you've got $2,300 from FEMA and you're in San Francisco, you're in trouble.

In some cases folks will think they need an SBA loan and they really need a FEMA grant.

If you wear a FEMA shirt into the office, when you leave work have a change of clothing in your car so when you go into a restaurant you're not wearing FEMA clothing. FPS gave us guidelines, certainly not to make us worry, but to be more aware of our situation.

If you were uninsured or your insurance policy did not cover some of your disaster-related damages or losses, FEMA may be able to help. If your insurance company did not fully cover your losses, take the first step and register with FEMA.

If there was ever an agency in need of oversight, FEMA is it. It's a very big management job, and because of the nature of the work they do, they have only one chance to get it right.

Clearly, he understands now the tremendous challenges we face and how much we are counting on FEMA and the resources of our nation, ... The president, by his statements today, is demonstrating the leadership and accountability needed to get the inadequate federal response to this crisis behind us and move forward with rebuilding Louisiana.

But if you were associated with a fire department, they were the friendliest people you ever met. So we wore our Woodland Fire Department T-shirts, and put our FEMA badges on them.

He's supposed to contact me and keep me informed. All I can tell you is that FEMA put a request in for a fire chief to help rebuild or reorganize fire departments from Baton Rouge south.

He's supposed to contact me and keep me informed, ... All I can tell you is that FEMA put a request in for a fire chief to help rebuild or reorganize fire departments from Baton Rouge south.

Housing provided by FEMA is meant to be temporary. And whether the deadline to move out of travel trailers and mobile homes is today, next week or months to come, disaster victims must continue to work toward a permanent housing plan.

I don't think that any person can fix FEMA. I think FEMA needs a total restructuring. I think it needs to be taken from scratch and redone. The regulations are outdated; the rules are outdated.

I didn't expect the FEMA camp to be as organized and as helpful as they were. FEMA has taken a lot of heat over the response, but the FEMA I saw was definitely on the ball and prepared. They are doing a great job.

By assigning this $100 million project to the Corps within days after Katrina came ashore, FEMA ensured schools could open with temporary classrooms in place and communities could get back to work. While this Corps assignment is complete, FEMA will continue to work with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency on permanent repairs and restoration of facilities.

By all measures, Hurricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster that FEMA has ever been called upon to support, ... Although FEMA pre-positioned significant numbers of personnel, assets and resources before the hurricane made landfall, we now know its capabilities were simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of this storm.

I can't address that. I was not privy to any conversations that might have occurred in the past where FEMA was encouraging any jurisdictions to put people in 12-month leases.

I appreciate his willingness to take on the vital task of leading FEMA during this challenging time.

I don't want to make a big deal out of this, because I understand the situation, ... But we haven't seen a Red Cross person. We haven't seen a FEMA person. We've been totally on our own.

How is it possible that we're getting better intelligence than you're getting? We had a National Guardsman who was talking to us, who was telling us he estimated the crowd at 50,000 people. I don't understand how FEMA cannot have this information.

I cannot stress enough the importance of calling the FEMA Disaster Assistance telephone registration number. This call is the first step in the recovery process for individuals and businesses for who suffered severe weather and tornado damages.

I do know that we have been contacted by FEMA and they are looking for supply for caskets. I do not know how many. We have told them that we would work with them.

I believe FEMA has been a little slow to respond.

Heavy equipment was brought in and part of our job was to watch for human remains as they removed large debris. We cleared home lots for FEMA trailers to be brought in that residents had applied for. We helped move the trailers in and hooked them up. 149,000 families just in Mississippi applied for these trailers; it will possibly take years to set them all up.

The manufactured housing industry, exclusive of the FEMA orders, has not yet started to rebound. Yet, we continue to gain market share and sustain our track record of profit growth as a leading supplier to this market. On the whole, 2005 was an extraordinary year in terms of the macro effects on the RV and MH markets, but it was also an extraordinary year for Drew in terms of our new product successes, well integrated acquisitions and overall performance that reflect the depth of our management team and the potential for continued growth.

The man who is here with, he's helped me. A couple of other people has helped me. I'm waiting on FEMA to give me their part, because the president said you're entitled to 2000 dollars and that check has been mailed.

These guys kind of have a deer-in-the headlights look; they haven't been through this kind of thing and it shows. I'm afraid FEMA has gone backwards in time to the old era of a more traditional campaign-loyalty position.

This has been the first real test since FEMA (U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency) was put under Homeland Security and obviously it didn't work and I think they will want to reexamine how they respond to disasters.

Air reconaissance will give all of us some sense of what the needs are -- whether it's medical assistance, damage assessments, debris removal -- FEMA has the ability to assist with all that,

All those same services will still be available by phone. People can call the FEMA help line, go to the agency's Web site or contact the U.S. Small Business Administration for help with their applications.

The current structure of FEMA is not going to allow anyone to succeed. It just cannot be done.

The current structure at FEMA is not going to allow him to succeed.

The collection of bodies is not normally a FEMA responsibility.

The concerns in the Witt Report that have gone unaddressed and the inefficient response to Hurricane Katrina have given local officials practical reasons not to certify these plans. FEMA needs to acknowledge these flaws and work more closely with our local communities to put adequate emergency preparedness plans in place.

All the rooms were being used by evacuees, FEMA and relief workers.

The job FEMA has done is terrible. I would give it a failing grade.