Catastrophe 101

By CATHY BOOTH MIAMI

HURRICANES AS WICKED AS ANdrew are thought to come along perhaps twice a century. Earthquakes shudder on and off, but the big, continent-cracking convulsions tend to space themselves out over generations. Biblical floods are rare, like killer tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and the other cyclical calls to humility in the face of nature's destructive power. But last week it somehow seemed that the clock was running fast: Typhoon Omar menaced Guam, a tornado attacked Wisconsin, fires burned out of control in California, a four- story tidal wave in Nicaragua dissolved whole neighborhoods, and the residents of South Florida spent Week Two picking up the pieces of their damaged homes and disrupted lives.

Catastrophes may come by surprise, but it is no surprise that they come. Their victims cannot expect the government to prevent them or even always predict them, only to know what to do when they arrive. But to many Floridians last week, it seemed as if each time the government has to learn all over again. The debris that Andrew left behind include a whole set of assumptions about how to handle a natural disaster, who should be giving the orders and who should pick up the bill.

"I'm sure people can take issue with the way we've acted," said Colonel Terrence ("Rock") Salt, tears welling up in his eyes after a week of frustration and sleepless nights. "These people have been rained on, they're hungry and they're thirsty. In terms of people without basic survival things, I've never seen anything like it in my life. But we're really trying, really we are." Ten days after Andrew struck, the army's tent cities finally opened and relief supplies were so plentiful that residents became choosy, disdaining cans of lentils and demanding Tide over Cheer. By then it was safe to launch the debate about what needs to change so that next time, the help is there as soon as the storm has passed.

One plump target was the tradition of civilian control of the military. If only the bureaucrats had stayed out of the way, victims complained, the soldiers might have got the job done. As upwards of 20,000 troops flooded into what Dade County officials call the war zone, the army had clearly won new allies -- unlike the haggard representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Soldiers bivouacked on the ground, sharing prepackaged MRES (meals ready to eat) and carrying groceries for tired refugees. Day and night, they put up tents, folded linens and stuffed welcome packages of toiletries for tent cities that will eventually house 17,000 of the county's 250,000 homeless. They also helped channel the extraordinary outpouring of supplies sent south by churches, charities and countless concerned citizens.

The energy and efficiency of the troops were in such contrast to the first sluggish response that the idea was revived of automatically bypassing civil authorities in the case of big catastrophes and sending for the soldiers immediately. "Neither the locals nor FEMA has the capacity to deal with a major catastrophe like Andrew," argues Linda Lombard, the Charleston County councilwoman who battled FEMA for relief money after Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989. "A major disaster is a war. And the people who are in that business are the U.S. military. When is the lesson going to be learned?"

President George Bush indicated that he had already learned at least half the lesson. His decision to send Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card to Florida to mastermind relief efforts suggested that even he didn't think FEMA was up to the job. Florida's senior Senator urges a rethinking of military involvement. "In the post-cold war era, this could be an important new function for the military," says Democrat Bob Graham, "not something done after hours, but as an ongoing significant part of the military task."

Congressman Dante Fascell argues that an advance agreement should make military mobilization automatic when a hurricane kicks into a category 4 or 5 with winds over 130 mph. Governor Lawton Chiles incorrectly thought the disaster declaration, signed by Bush on the day of the storm, was the same as a request for military help. Nobody at FEMA advised him otherwise or nudged the White House when the reality of the damage finally sank in. "I don't think it's wise to declare martial law," says Fascell, "but when we know we have a catastrophe headed our way, we should have a highly visible disaster czar with a definite command structure to deal with it early on, and obviously that's the military."

Yet without declaring martial law, even the military cannot impose its will on a civilian area. Unlike Desert Storm, there is no unified command, no General Norman Schwarzkopf. The Army, for instance, promised to have tent cities for 20,000 up and running by the first weekend after Andrew. But for the next week military and local jurisdictions quarreled over sites, facilities, building codes and, in the case of Florida City -- a city virtually wiped out by the hurricane -- a federal demand to kick in 10% of the cost.

Not everyone is thrilled with the Army's increasing involvement. "There are legitimate worries about military intervention in domestic affairs," says Ralph Lewis, disaster-response expert at Florida International University. At one shelter in predominantly black Richmond Heights, the soldiers seemed more interested in raising the flag while exhausted Red Cross volunteers struggled to feed 6,000 people a day. "I'm trying to use the military as much, but they like to do things their own way," sighed music teacher Thomas Moore, 29, the Red Cross volunteer in charge of the shelter. "It's true the Red Cross is disorganized, but who else is going to take care of these people?"

Certainly not FEMA. Established by Jimmy Carter to coordinate the relief efforts of 27 federal agencies and the Red Cross, it was never meant to be a disaster-response team. One scathing congressional report notes that the agency is widely viewed as a political dumping ground, "a turkey farm if you will." Bush left the agency politically orphaned when he failed to appoint a new director for almost a year after his 1988 election. During that time survivors of Hurricane Hugo and the San Francisco earthquake blasted the agency for arriving late and gumming up assistance efforts with red tape.

FEMA has handled 160 disaster missions in the past five years. When it functions like an insurance agency, doling out grants up to $11,500 for hard- up families, it works marvels. But at the moment of crisis, the agency sometimes lacks even common sense. A relocation-assistance center for migrant workers, for instance, was first based at Miami airport, miles from the poor workers down in Homestead. FEMA's temporary relief centers along the roadways of south Dade are labeled simply DAC: nothing else, no clue to the befuddled homeowner that these are disaster assistance centers.

A delegation of Hurricane Hugo veterans from Charleston has already warned Dade County officials that the worst part is yet to come. "They document you to death. You have to document every nail on every roof," says Councilwoman Lombard sourly. "We had 600 miles of ditch to be cleaned. To document it, we had to walk it. Dade's got 200 miles of canals. Rest assured that FEMA will make them swim it to document it." Though Bush promised total reimbursement for storm cleanup efforts, the island city of Key Biscayne is already % squabbling with FEMA about reimbursement for early debris removal.

Secretary Card is one of those who argue that it is FEMA, not the military, that needs to be doing a better job. "The military is not necessarily the best first response," he said. "But FEMA is much too bureaucratic. We need a more streamlined response that addresses people's concerns more than governmental concerns. People don't understand a DAC or an ERP, EST, DFOS. People at FEMA should be trained in the needs of victims so that if not empathy, they feel sympathy before they get here."

Faced by multiple simultaneous crises last week, the tiny federal agency and its 2,500 employees bristled at all the criticism over the Florida effort. "I can't tell you how much this annoys me," FEMA director Wallace Stickney wrote to employees in a memo last week praising them for a "great job." FEMA official Grant Peterson, sweat dripping from his brow after a visit to Capitol Hill, groused about the bad press. "We've got five disasters on our plate right now," he said. "If there is any morale problem here, it's because people are taking unfair shots at us."

One FEMA official, observing the magnitude of Hurricane Andrew's destructive force and the governmental disorder it caused, had an even gloomier thought. He wondered how Washington ever imagined FEMA could handle its ultimate disaster assignment: preserving the civilian government in a nuclear war. For FEMA, and indeed for the entire government, Andrew has provided an unwelcome lesson, one in humility.

With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Homestead and Ted Gup/Washington