Charleston Mayor Attacks Storm Relief Efforts as Lacking Urgency for Victims

Mayor Joseph Riley Jr., bolstering an attack by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), angrily accused federal disaster officials Wednesday of lacking urgency in helping victims of Hurricane Hugo.

A day after Hollings called the officials “a bunch of bureaucratic jackasses,” Riley pounded his fist and declared: “I don’t think the sense of urgency and hurriedness that the community needs and demands is there.”

The blast at the Federal Emergency Management Agency came six days after the hurricane boomed ashore, killing 18, leaving an estimated 70,000 others homeless and causing more than $2 billion in property damage in this area alone. Overall, the hurricane has been blamed for 51 deaths in the United States and the Caribbean.

Riley, an articulate Democratic lawyer with gubernatorial ambitions, charged that Bush Administration officials had brushed off requests for dozens of military power generators needed in several areas to pump overflowing sewage systems.

Relief Loans

The mayor also protested that FEMA had set up only two offices in the sprawling three-county area to process applications for relief loans and grants, and said that the sites could not be reached by public transportation.

“This is a crisis. We don’t want it to drag on,” he said at a news conference.

In Washington, FEMA spokesman Carl Suchocki rejected the criticism, saying: “We’re doing it with all due speed. All the emergency needs are being met as soon as possible under the conditions.”

Even as Riley lashed FEMA, he praised private businesses and citizens from across the nation who have donated a flood of supplies and manpower, enabling both this city of antebellum homes and the surrounding Low Country to struggle back up.

“The light is clearly at the end of the tunnel and we’re going to get our city back very soon,” Riley said.

With electric power crews from Florida to New York lending a hand, more and more lights came back on Wednesday. With 6,000 National Guard and Army troops and Marines clearing trees, more roads were made passable for relief supplies to be delivered. And with 36 trucks arriving from numerous states bearing everything from dry ice to diapers, most people’s basic needs were being met.

Historic Ft. Sumter

Even Ft. Sumter, the historic harbor fortification where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, began to dry out. A Coast Guard flyover of the fort found the storm had flooded it, but the walls appeared to be sound.

Truck driver Bobby Williamson showed up from Greensboro, N.C., with a load of canned food, baby formula, diapers, clothing and toys.

“I was watching the news and saw what desperate shape these people were in,” he said. “The Lord just moved me and I started making calls.”

Despite these positive developments, however, the homeless--most of whom had found shelter with friends, relatives and others--faced a long road of grieving and rebuilding.

Moreover, it was feared that some bodies had not been found in collapsed buildings and that some survivors who had been swept away by walls of wind-whipped water had not been contacted. One family was found huddling under timbers Wednesday in a crushed house near McClellanville.

A federal search team of dogs was dispatched to sniff for anybody who might have been missed. Previously, the dogs had been deployed in such places as earthquake-torn Mexico City and war-ravaged Beirut.

“It’s still critical out here,” said Gene Woods, an official in rural Berkeley County. “We’re in dire need of ice, food and safe water.”

As part of the federal relief effort, Susan Engeleiter, head of the Small Business Administration, flew in to help set up offices where storm victims could apply for low-interest federal loans to rebuild businesses and homes.

“This is like a war zone,” Engeleiter said after touring some of the hardest-hit areas. “We have a $400-million annual budget and are prepared to use as much as necessary.”

Meanwhile, businesses continued to lend a hand. Two computer companies from California’s Silicon Valley flew two technicians in by corporate jet to devise a program for matching the mass of offered services and goods with the thousands of specific pleas for help.

A television station and radio outlet, in a joint broadcast, stole a march on the computer effort. The stations provided a call-in clearinghouse for those who had things to either offer or ask for.

A woman caller said she needed a power generator to help care for her mother, a victim of Alzheimer’s disease.

A man said he needed someone to help remove an overturned tree stump that had disrupted his sewer line.

A woman offered a free case of baby formula; a man had 25 loaves of bread available for pick-up; another woman wanted to know where she could take clothes and toys she had gathered from neighbors.

Although supplies were finally streaming into outlying areas after days of being concentrated in metropolitan Charleston, some people had a hard time finding them.

In Hollywood, a small community largely inhabited by poor blacks who had been pushed inland by resort developments along the coast, three young women drove from a fire station to a church to a school, looking for meat, canned goods, diapers and milk. But supplies had just run out at each place, and the three had to settle for bags of ice being given away at a supermarket.

‘Messed Up’

“People who have already got lights shouldn’t be coming to these centers,” said Margaret Brown, the mother of a 9-month-old and a 3-year-old. “I’m burning candles and kerosene lamps . . . My place is real messed up.”

A passer-by, hearing the three women comment that they had no money, gave them $30. They hurried into the supermarket.

Meanwhile, hospital emergency rooms were inundated, largely due to a rash of auto and chain saw accidents. With most traffic lights still out and many tourists arriving to look at the devastation, accidents proliferated at intersections. For a time, officials considered extending the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew still in effect to cut traffic so that utility crews could move around more easily.

Health officials, concerned about a growing overflow of damaged sewers throughout the area, pleaded that residents flush toilets only once every five uses.

Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr., calling the damage “beyond anybody’s imagination,” estimated that it could total as much as $4 billion in South Carolina.

A survey found that the hurricane had destroyed $1 billion worth of commercial timber in the state, a severe blow to its third largest industry. Officials calculated that the lost lumber could have built 660,000 homes, enough to house the city of Philadelphia.

The timber count did not include the massive number of trees damaged in residential areas.