Make Big Bucks the Natural-Di$Aster Way

Heroic rescues, food-stamp fraud, heartwarming acts of charity, price gouging a major natural disaster like last month's Los Angeles earthquake can bring out the best as well as the worst in victims. A compendium of bad postcalamity behavior:

LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE

Over 50,000 survivors have applied for food stamps, and rampant cheating is suspected. Relief workers have imposed a 72-hour waiting period to cross-check names and addresses. Complaints are also rising about landlords who refuse to refund rents and security deposits on condemned apartments.

SUMMER '93 MIDWEST FLOODS

Out of 7,349 Kansas City, Missouri, households receiving food stamps, one- third were found to be not entitled. Aid workers were forced to close down the program and later announced an amnesty to persuade impostors to turn in their ill-gotten stamps. Other abuses: a 600% price hike for towing mobile homes to higher ground; flood-damaged, though perfunctorily spruced-up autos pouring into used-car lots.

HURRICANE ANDREW

South Florida saw widespread price gouging in the form of $4 candy bars and $6 cans of baby formula. One store would not sell batteries without the purchase of a TV or radio. A woman filed for an $11,500 loss of household goods, but the address she gave investigators turned out to be in Biscayne Bay. A farmer submitted a photo of someone else's destroyed mobile home and a claim of $19,440; investigators later found his actual, undamaged trailer in Tampa, clear across the state.