T1B

Free money' went to thousands after wildfires

By Sally Kestin
Staff Writer
Posted September 18 2005

LOS ANGELES · Word of "free money" from the Federal Emergency Management Agency spread through neighborhoods here like the wildfires burning in the hills miles away in the fall of 2003.

In the city of Compton, south of downtown Los Angeles, residents encouraged each other to claim that smoke ruined old furniture and broken appliances.

In the Watts section of Los Angeles, public housing tenants called FEMA saying ash damaged their clothes and the paint on their cars.

South of there, in the city of Long Beach, all the residents of a low-rent apartment building got money after one discovered the government would pay for furniture soiled by soot when windows were left open.

"The whole thing is a surprise to me," said Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach, where 1,922 residents received $1.7 million from FEMA for the wildfires. "There were no fires in Long Beach. ... Nobody said anything about this."

For two weeks beginning Oct. 21, 2003, wildfires burned hundreds of thousands of acres and killed 24 people in San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura and Riverside counties. In Los Angeles County, residential property damage was confined to a northeastern enclave called Palmer Canyon that lost 40 homes, county officials said.

In the city of Los Angeles and surrounding urban areas, the fires amounted to little more than a nuisance. For several days, winds carried smoke and, in some areas, deposited ash outdoors -- nothing "that couldn't be brushed with a broom or washed off with a garden hose," said Capt. Mark Savage of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Yet 5,240 residents of those urban areas collected $5.2 million in federal fire aid. The majority of the money, FEMA determined, was necessary to clean the interiors of Los Angeles area homes and apartments.

In Watts, 30 miles from the nearest fire, FEMA gave one applicant $6,450, including $2,344 to clean two bedrooms and a living room.

"I've been in fire service for 25 years," Savage said. "To have ash fallout from that kind of distance, I've never been aware of anything like that that would require any kind of interior cleaning."

In economically depressed areas in and around Los Angeles, residents claimed smoke damaged 110 televisions, 54 vacuum cleaners, 38 air conditioners and 20 microwaves.

"If you're right near a fire, there's a lot of smoke," said Richard Thompson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, Calif. "Otherwise, there's really no effects. It's not going to do any damage to your property. It's not going to cause any mechanical defects in appliances."

Government officials and relief workers documented no ash or smoke damage, even when they went looking. The city of Los Angeles polled about 200 nonprofit agencies when the state offered grants for fire recovery.

"We sent them a little bulletin saying, `Did you have any fire damage?' " said Manet Milner, the city's deputy director of human services and family development. "We didn't get any."

Long Beach Mayor O'Neill considered the fires "out of town."

"I had ash on my car," she said. "I didn't even know you could get [assistance]."

Neither did Meredith Sims, a Long Beach hairdresser and mother of three, until a neighbor told her, "You know you can get FEMA money from that soot in the air," she said.

Sims, 32, said she had opened the windows in her $500-a-month, one-bedroom apartment and got soot on two couches. "Everyone in my building got money," Sims said, adding that she spent her $500 FEMA check on a futon and paying bills.

Sims said her claim was legitimate but many people in low-income areas view FEMA assistance as easy money.

In Compton, a customer at a 99-cent discount store bragged about getting $4,000 from FEMA, said store clerk Anita Rice. Soon, everyone was talking about dragging in old furniture and claiming it was ruined by smoke.

"That spread so fast," said Rice, 45. "I had a TV that was already broke. They said, `Girl, you can get you a brand new TV.'"

Rice said she did not apply. "I just don't want God to come back and get me," she said.

In Watts, a week after the fires were extinguished, a rain and hailstorm flooded fewer than 50 homes, said Lee Sapaden, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management.

When the county opened a relief center, 12,000 people showed up, he said. The Sheriff's Department sent a SWAT team to keep order.

The flooding was not severe enough to warrant FEMA aid. But word quickly spread that the government would pay for smoke or fire damage.

"People were saying, `You can't get it for the floods but you can get it for the fires,'" Rice said.

At the relief center, Sapaden heard residents sharing FEMA's phone number. "Some of the comments being made was, `It's easy money. There's free money available,'" he said.

Rice said she knew FEMA recipients who spent their disaster checks on "cars, new furniture, clothes, nails and hair."

"I think all of [the claims] were bogus," Rice said. "There wasn't no damn fire here."

Cross Traffic wrote:Picked up the Idaho Statesman this morning and they ran part of a Florida Sun-Sentinel report on FEMA waste:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... -headlines

This part pissed me off:

Free money' went to thousands after wildfires

By Sally Kestin
Staff Writer
Posted September 18 2005

LOS ANGELES · Word of "free money" from the Federal Emergency Management Agency spread through neighborhoods here like the wildfires burning in the hills miles away in the fall of 2003.

In the city of Compton, south of downtown Los Angeles, residents encouraged each other to claim that smoke ruined old furniture and broken appliances.

In the Watts section of Los Angeles, public housing tenants called FEMA saying ash damaged their clothes and the paint on their cars.

South of there, in the city of Long Beach, all the residents of a low-rent apartment building got money after one discovered the government would pay for furniture soiled by soot when windows were left open.

"The whole thing is a surprise to me," said Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach, where 1,922 residents received $1.7 million from FEMA for the wildfires. "There were no fires in Long Beach. ... Nobody said anything about this."