Water-Soaked Test for Relief Agency : FEMA, tarnished after riots, faces flood disaster

The rising Mississippi River poses yet another challenge to the controversial Federal Emergency Management Agency. Can FEMA, widely criticized for its performance after the Los Angeles riots, deliver ample and timely government assistance to thousands of desperate Americans?

Floodwaters have done at least $2 billion in damage to farms, businesses, houses, water and sewage treatment systems, roads and bridges in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

FEMA’s role is critical. The agency is in charge of coordinating the federal response, doling out emergency assistance to disaster victims and defraying local governments’ expense for emergency actions such as debris removal and repairs to public facilities like water treatment plants, sewer lines, schools, roads and bridges.

FEMA also underwrites the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers residences and businesses. Thousands of those policies are in effect in the soaked region. That tab could soar if help is slow in coming.

FEMA scored low marks in 1992 for its sometimes chaotic response to the riots here. That left many people frustrated: desperate business owners, employees who had lost their jobs and poor tenants who had lost housing.

Nearly half of the victims who applied for emergency help got nothing. They could not meet FEMA’s unrealistic requirements for proving their claims because the riot fires had destroyed their documentation. To reduce such a high denial rate, FEMA officials must develop more flexible guidelines concerning records.

Similarly, in response to Florida’s Hurricane Andrew, FEMA plodded along so slowly that local officials began to ask: Where are the feds? A critical Congress blamed the poor response on political appointees who cared more about perks than delivering help.

President Clinton has promised timely assistance. Vice President Al Gore toured devastated areas of Illinois and Missouri on Monday. He was accompanied by the new FEMA director, James Lee Witt, who has some disaster experience from his four years at the helm of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

In the flooded regions, farmers have lost crops, business owners have lost livelihoods, families have lost homes and local governments have lost municipal infrastructure. Federal help, probably a lot of it, will be needed. It will be a major test of how much FEMA has learned as a result of its less-than-stellar performance in Los Angeles last year.