COLUMN ONE : A True Master of Disaster : For James Lee Witt, the worst of times have been the best of times. In his first year as FEMA director, he has revived the ailing agency and brought relief to catastrophe victims across the country.

In his tumultuous first year as the federal government’s disaster czar, James Lee Witt has survived a baptism by flood, wildfire, earthquake, ice storm and, most recently, tornado.

More important, he has rescued the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the edge of disaster, disarming lawmakers who suggested disbanding FEMA after its inept performance during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Inheriting an agency beset by criticism and sagging morale, Witt has begun to reform FEMA even as he has scrambled to cope with the nation’s recent plague-like string of calamities. He has converted FEMA from a catastrophe itself into an operation that is able to coordinate disaster relief with striking cohesiveness and effectiveness.

“I can’t say enough good things about that guy,” said Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who represents the area at the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake and rarely flatters the Democratic Clinton Administration. “He’s down to earth and he’s a doer. There’s no stuffiness about him, no ego about who’s getting credit or who’s doing what.”

This agent of change is a soft-spoken, self-made man from Wildcat Hollow, Ark., who happens to be the first head of FEMA in its 14-year history with emergency management experience. He responds to cataclysms with a high-profile, hands-on style and a single-minded determination to assist victims as rapidly as possible. And, he enjoys extraordinary access to a President whose confidence he gained while they battled floods and tornadoes together in Arkansas.

Witt, who took charge of FEMA last April, has repeatedly demonstrated his mettle during Midwestern floods, Southern California fires, the tornadoes that cut a swath across the South last month and, most dramatically, amid the chaos caused by the Jan. 17 quake.

After the temblor, Witt seemed to be everywhere. He visited Red Cross shelters in the San Fernando Valley. He met with community leaders in South-Central Los Angeles. He toured Fillmore’s stricken downtown. At each stop, he shook hands and expressed empathy and listened.

“It was just incredible,” Witt said of the first frantic days. “When I visited the parks and Red Cross shelters, people were coming up to me and they were just grasping for something to give them hope and make them feel they’d be safe. There were several nights when I didn’t sleep much. It really bothered me from a personal standpoint and it reinforced how critical it was for us to do whatever we could to help them and to do it as quickly as possible.”

Three days after the quake, Witt faced the nightmarish prospect that FEMA’s progress in the past year would be unraveled by the long lines of distraught and desperate victims who overwhelmed government aid workers. He was furious when he found that people had stood outside one application center in Northridge all day, only to be given an appointment to return three weeks later.

A red-faced Witt, clad in his trademark blue Windbreaker, blue jeans, ostrich-skin boots and white shirt, fumed to aides: “This is absolutely unacceptable. How come I wasn’t notified this was going on? We can’t have this.”

Within two days, 1,800 workers--some bilingual--arrived from around the country. More disaster and telephone registration centers were opened and the FEMA application form was streamlined. A potentially explosive crisis was diffused. And FEMA was awarded high marks by local officials as well as quake victims.

Three months later, about 2,450 employees work seven days a week to process a record-shattering 500,000 aid requests. Complaints about computer glitches and ill-informed telephone operators have cropped up, but overall reviews remain positive.

Witt, 50, came to Washington with the new Administration. He had served as Arkansas’ director of emergency services for the last four years of President Clinton’s tenure as governor--handling 38 tornadoes, snowstorms and floods. Before that, he was a judge in rural Yell County--an administrative post that included disaster relief.

During his decade as a judge, Witt and his two sons would hop into his beloved ’85 Chevy pickup in the middle of a stormy night to check the roads and bridges. He carried his duties so far that he’d get up from dinner to assist an elderly resident who needed groceries or a lift to the doctor, his sons recall.

In Washington, Witt took over an agency struggling with a dual purpose: to integrate the federal emergency preparedness and response duties dispersed throughout various departments and to ensure that the government could continue to operate after a nuclear attack.

FEMA was notorious as a dumping ground for political appointees. Outside reviews found that it lacked a clear mission, failed to respond quickly to disasters, had no strong link to the White House, was mired in bureaucracy and did not coordinate well with state and municipal governments and other federal agencies. And it became a political embarrassment for President George Bush when it mishandled Hurricane Andrew relief during his reelection campaign.

When Witt entered the $133,600-a-year job, his relationship with Clinton gave him a special standing with the White House that his predecessors lacked. Witt can reach the President directly and has the clout to oversee higher-ranking Cabinet officers at disaster sites.

His timing was good as well: The end of the Cold War freed him to shift FEMA’s focus and resources from the classified national security operations to natural hazard response.

Upon his arrival, Witt was well aware that the ghost of Hurricane Andrew haunted the agency. After winds of 145 m.p.h. caused 40 deaths, seriously damaged 75,000 homes and inflicted $30 billion in damage in South Florida, FEMA was painfully slow to dispatch relief and, even then, appeared woefully ill-prepared. Miscommunication and confusion prevailed.

“The morale was very low,” Witt recalled. “FEMA had taken a severe bashing with Hurricane Andrew and other things. Employees were literally ashamed to tell people they worked for FEMA. They’d say they worked for the federal government.”

In an immediate effort to boost morale, he stood at the entrance to the agency’s headquarters near the Capitol on his first day and shook the hand of every arriving worker.

He reorganized the agency, eliminating two layers of bureaucracy and giving employees on the national security staff dual roles in disaster preparedness or response. He met with state directors and vowed an end to the “us-versus-them” mentality that had characterized relations between state disaster chiefs and their FEMA counterparts.

And he adopted a new motto--”People helping people”--with the intent of driving home to his 2,216 employees that their prime responsibility is serving disaster victims.

His new ethos was quickly tested. When the Mississippi River overflowed last July, Witt was anxious to get to the scene. Eschewing the perks available to him, he took a commercial flight. When he missed a connection, he endured a midnight bus ride to Madison, Wis. Later that day, he announced that two dozen counties were federal disaster areas.

When wildfires raged through Southern California less than four months later, Witt arrived quickly--the same day Clinton declared the region a federal disaster area. The FEMA director made two trips to the state and remained to coordinate aid for a total of six days.

Witt flew into Los Angeles the evening of the quake and stayed for 16 days--often working nights. “He came in with his boots on,” said a city official.

Some past critics of FEMA say Witt has renewed their hope in the agency’s potential.

Cynthia Robbins is director of Urban Recovery Legal Assistance, a Los Angeles public interest group formed after the 1992 riots that sued FEMA over its handling of disaster aid. She and other advocates periodically talk to FEMA officials about how to make the agency more responsive to their communities.

“We really welcome the opportunity to have an ongoing dialogue,” Robbins said. “There are a lot of challenges to meet. It’s not whether or not problems will arise but what mechanisms exist to improve the response. Unequivocally, the communication is dramatically improved.”

Witt has also taken steps to speed the process of rebuilding after a disaster. Disputes over reconstruction of damaged structures have dragged on for five years or more. This has slowed rehabilitation of San Francisco City Hall and Stanford University’s main library after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and created protracted conflicts with Florida officials after Hurricane Andrew. Witt has recently moved to resolve these disagreements.

This new approach could have tremendous impact in Southern California, where 3,500 public facilities owned by Los Angeles County alone cracked, crumbled and collapsed during the January quake. Damage estimates for public buildings thus far is $1.3 billion.

Witt has given the state a green light to reinforce and retrofit buildings up-front rather than waiting up to two years for FEMA approval of grant applications.

A man of action rather than introspection, Witt will invariably recall tales of the dislocated and the grateful when asked to discuss the satisfaction he derives from his job. Quite simply, Witt says, this is what drives him: “I really do love my job ‘cause I feel like I’m helping people.”

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The Witt family goes back four generations in Wildcat Hollow, a remote, mountainous region.

The son of a farmer, Witt grew up in a home without electricity. His education ended with high school. He married young, had two sons and started his own small construction business. He is a longstanding member of the First Baptist Church in nearby Dardenelle.

Amid the dirt roads and the poultry farms, Witt still owns 220 acres to which he retreats to hunt and fish. He’s a good shot with a Browning .270, friends say, and a veteran of bass fishing tournaments. This week he returned to relax by bush-hogging--clearing brush and heavier undergrowth by pulling a device that resembles a giant lawn mower behind a tractor.

Witt is a trim, unprepossessing man with clear, blue eyes and a straight-arrow appearance. In contrast to his reputation as a dirt-under-the-nails commander at disaster scenes, in Washington, attired in his customary dark suit and tie, he is so low-key and self-effacing that he could easily pass as a captain in the capital’s army of drab bureaucrats.

Friends and family say they expect Witt to remain at FEMA as long as Clinton is President, then to come home and possibly run for office--perhaps a U.S. Senate seat.

For now, Witt faces the challenge of making long-term changes to reduce disaster costs and ensure that his reforms will outlast his tenure. He says he hopes to limit future destruction through improved construction methods as well as expanding flood and earthquake insurance to lower the staggering calamity bills to the government.

He recently told a House subcommittee that he plans to upgrade joint training exercises with state and local disaster operations. He’s looking at incentives to encourage states to establish their own disaster relief funds--as he and Clinton did in Arkansas.

Some, such as California Emergency Services Director Richard Andrews, say that Witt still must build “a team around him that shares his desire for change.”

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs a subcommittee that oversees FEMA’s budget, pointedly told Witt at a recent hearing that “FEMA has a long way to go to really institutionalize and make permanent the changes you have begun to make.” She also said there remains a need for “a long-term strategic plan.”

Mikulski has sponsored a bill to overhaul the federal emergency operation. Among other things, the measure would create a special disaster response office in the White House headed by the vice president--which an aide said Witt considers an unnecessary shift of authority.

Mikulski’s bill would also slash the number of FEMA political appointees, upgrade the National Guard’s role in disaster response and create interagency strike teams to do damage assessment.

“I sense major resistance from some quarters in the disaster response community to change, and from within the agency itself,” Mikulski said.

Despite FEMA’s improved emergency response, Mikulski warned Witt that, if she cannot make headway in restructuring the agency, she might move to fold it into the Department of Defense.

Witt said that his own reorganization efforts will address many of Mikulski’s concerns.

He’s made a believer out of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). She had been frustrated with FEMA’s red tape after the Loma Prieta quake but was impressed with the can-do approach Witt brought to the wildfires and Northridge quake.

“It’s not that he’s made the agency perfect,” Boxer said. “But he wants to cut through bureaucracy more than any person I’ve ever seen.”

Witt, typically, is quick to share credit with the other federal agencies and particularly California’s well-equipped emergency services program. And, already, he’s looking ahead.

“We did learn a great deal in California,” Witt said, shortly after returning from his latest relief mission to the tornado-battered South. “The most important thing is that we came back with things we need to do.”