Carolinas Make Ready for Big Storm

What's FEMA waiting on to name regional director?

With the first storm of 2006's hurricane season having barely brushed our area, everyone along the Grand Strand is on notice to be prepared.

The continuing fallout - the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently received a new black eye - from last year's Gulf Coast hurricanes surely serves as a reminder that individuals, businesses small and large, local and state governments all must be ready for the disaster everyone hopes and prays will not come our way.

In both Carolinas, state and local government emergency services folks are working hard to avoid repeats here of some of the Gulf Coast tragic failures. Kudos to Brunswick County's Emergency Services Department for attention to special-needs residents. People on an already prepared list will be contacted in advance of a storm. If necessary, county workers will transport special needs residents to state shelters. Seven community colleges are designated shelters.

In South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control has moved inland its special-needs shelters. Horry County's will be at Homewood Elementary School in Conway rather than at Horry-Georgetown Technical College on U.S. 501. If needed, a secondary special-medical-needs shelter will be set up at Loris Wellness Center.

Horry County residents planning to go to the shelter are to call ahead when evacuations are ordered to advise emergency workers they are coming and provide their own transportation. Shelters are a last resort, and caregivers and medications are to go with residents using the shelters. We wonder if all of Horry County's special-needs residents have transportation.

Both states require group health care facilities to have evacuation plans on file. State and local planning for hurricanes has had impetus from some of the experiences with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Only last week, The Associated Press reported that FEMA was snookered out of as much as $1.4 billion after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Taxpayers became victims of the storm victims, with FEMA paying for season football tickets and an extended vacation in Hawaii among many other items. The General Accounting Office concluded that perhaps 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals was bogus.

While that says as much about the unethical actions of the victims as the federal government's response to the storms, it does nothing to rebuild public confidence in FEMA.

Meanwhile, FEMA still has not named a new regional director in Atlanta, which is responsible for eight Southeastern states including the Carolinas. The Atlanta regional directorship is filled by Deputy Regional Director Mary Lynne Miller. She is, by the way, one of three acting regional directors, the other two being in charge of FEMA regional offices in Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif.

With FEMA since 1983, Miller has worked in a number of high-level positions. She was named deputy regional director in Atlanta in 1999. She has a degree in geology from Georgia State University and worked as a floodplain management coordinator for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

On her impressive vita is FEMA's only participant in the yearlong Women's Executive Leadership Program.

One has to wonder why in the world she - or someone equally competent - has not been named the regional director.