Earthquake: The Road To Recovery : FEMA Software Failure Will Delay Relief Effort : Technology: Agency could not identify which victims’ applications were affected.

A FEMA software failure will delay help for about 33,000 quake victims, officials acknowledged Friday.

Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency could not yet identify whose applications were affected by the delays, how long the delays will be or what caused the failure. FEMA had told applicants that they should expect an answer to their aid requests in seven to 10 days.

However, they said none of the aid applications or inspection surveys were lost in the glitch, which originated at the agency’s central processing office in Redwood City.

“Nothing has been lost,” said Frank Kishton, FEMA’s California coordinator for the Northridge earthquake relief effort. “We certainly know that our seven- to 10-day plan has not been met on these. I can’t say what the delay is or what the dates were that the inspections took place. We have it fixed now.”

According to Kishton, the delay was caused when a “host” computer failed to automatically transfer the electronic data from inspectors’ portable field computers into a central processing unit in the office in Redwood City.

The host computer acts as a link for the office, sending and receiving information from hand-held computers used by field inspectors to survey damaged homes, Kishton said. The central processing unit acts as the main storage unit for the applications and inspections.

FEMA workers use the information in the central processing unit to determine eligibility for federal aid, Kishton said, as well as the timeline for when the checks will be issued. Somehow, Kishton said, the host computer never sent the data from 33,000 field inspections to the central processing unit. The error was discovered during a systems check performed during the past 10 to 12 days, Kishton said.

Kishton said the agency expects to have the data from all 33,000 applicants transferred to the central processing unit by Sunday.

But Kishton was hesitant to label the failure a setback for the computer system, which is being used in a disaster for only the second time. It was first used in last year’s Southern California firestorms.

“This obviously is the first shot with such large numbers,” Kishton said. “In the volume we’re dealing with, we don’t consider it a setback.”

Under the formerly used system, inspectors filled out paperwork in their surveys of damaged buildings and traveled back and forth to the central processing office to receive addresses and data on applicants.

The new system allows the inspectors to receive the applicant’s information electronically, conduct the inspection with software on their portable computer and transmit it on phone lines with a modem.

So far, FEMA has received 320,000 applications for emergency housing or the individual family grant program, 90,000 more than officials said they expected. FEMA has conducted 215,000 inspections with the new system, of which 131,319 cases have received $348 million in assistance from the emergency housing program, Kishton said.

But FEMA inspectors said the damage has already been done as applicants sit by the mailbox waiting to receive money that, in some cases, may have been delayed by more than a month.

“I’ve already gotten four or five calls from people wondering what the hell happened,” said one inspector, who asked not to be identified. “One I got today was (inspected) the 27th of January.”