Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Oct. 9, 1995, edition 1 / Page 7
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®ljr Satly ®ar Federal Emergency Management Shows New Face in Response to Hurricane THF ASSnriiTFn PBCCS 1, t?i .. . THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, D.C. Soon after Hurricane Marilyn struck St. Thomas, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt arrived on the island, followed by a procession nf military transport planes carrying relief supplies. That stream of cargo jets was evidence ofFEMA's transformation from an agency once locked in a Cold War mind-set into one dedicated to prompt disaster relief. The FEMA-coordinated response to Hurricane Opal further illustrated the change. The morning after Opal tore RESIDENCE HALLS FROM PAGE 3 flicts. “Usually I’m pretty good about com promise and all that sort of stuff,” said Karen Goodman, a resident of the quin tuple and a sophomore from Todd. “But after about five exams, living with four other people gets hard ... and sometimes you just really start to bite people’s heads off.” To help keep the room running smoothly, the roommates tried to arrange the room into two different sections, a sleeping and living area and a study area. But the system has its flaws. “See, we have two phone lines in our room, and one of them is in our study area,” Goodman said. “That is already a problem when someone wants to study.” i—.l— comprehensive UCAT and DAT preparation in the Triangle / 8-10 students per class / 100 hours of live instruction (MCAT); 60 hours (DAT) / FREE tutorial help / graduate-level instructors with expertise in specific areas Hurryl Space is limited. Courses start In October and January. MOSeuect Test Prep EDUCATIONAL SERVICES. INC. faff .\ 11i BACHS LUNCH A series of free noonday concerts at the Chapel of the Cross Chapel Hill, North Carolina Fall Series 1995 Tuesdays, 12:30 p.m. October 10 Wylie S. Quinn, 111, organ October 17 Thomas Warburton, organ October 24 James Ketch and Monica Umstaedt Rossman, organ and trumpet October 31 Nancy Nelson and Bo Newsome, organ and oboe November 7 Timothy Baker, organ November 14 John Herrmann, organ Bag lunches are welcome in the Church. Beginning October 17, Maggie's Cafe & Espresso Bar will provide box lunches for $5.00. Details will be available at the first concert. through the Florida panhandle, a phalanx of top federal officials gathered in Talla hassee to plan relief efforts. “I have never seen the kind of assistance that we got from all the federal agencies," said Gov. Lawton Chiles. Once obsessed with what national secu rity officials referred to only as “the project," FEMA used to spend sl2 on nuclear war contingencies for every $1 it spent on disas ter relief. Corridors inside headquarters were sealed with combination locks. Supervi sors reprimanded employees for opening Jenna Blevins, a freshman from Char lotte living in a four-person room in Spen cer, said studying was one of the difficul ties in their room as well. “It’s really hard to study in here sometimes,” she said. “We’ve set aside a couple ofhours a day for us to all study, but it’s still difficult.” Blevins also said being thrown together with four near-strangers—her roommates are also freshmen was a fairly nerve racking experience. “There are times when you don’t want to worry about so many other people’s feelings,” Blevins said. “But we just keep Sh v,. Jh| W ni t£gZ<- : j SHE HHgJ Hoj **,^,*^&g£* STATE & NATIONAL office blinds to the sunlight: The enemy might be peering in. Providing relief to victims of floods, hurricanes and earthquakes was almost an afterthought. But anew administration and scorn heaped on FEMA for its sluggish response to a series of calamities in the early 1990s changed it from a Cold War relic to what Witt calls “an all-hazards agency.” Witt, 51, was Arkansas’ state emer gency management director under then- Govemor Bill Clinton. Clinton tapped the former ‘'onstruction company owner to working things out as we go along.” Everyone agreed there were benefits to living with several other women. “We do get (to have) two phone lines into our room,” Dogenhart said. “And that is very nice. And I really like living here. It keeps things interesting; it keeps you on your toes.” Four- and five-person rooms are also far larger than most University residence hall rooms. But residents said this large size had become one of the biggest drawbacks. “People are also always dropping by, asking to come in and see our ‘big’ room,” head FEMA, urging Witt to reset agency priorities. “He told me, ‘We want to set up the same kind of system as we had in Arkan sas. We want to be responsive,”’ Witt said. The agency’s hurricane relief fund was budgeted for only $856,000 when Witt took over; he boosted that to $3 million, 80 percent of which is disbursed to state and local officials for planning and prepara tion. Communications, computer modeling and other equipment reserved for the nuclear mission was made available for Goodman said. “It gets on your nerves sometimes.” According to Rick Bradley, assistant director of student services for the Depart ment of University Housing, problems in the four- and five-person rooms were mi nor and the women living there got along fine. Even so, Bradley said University hous ing officials worked to keep the number of such rooms low. “We have two four-per son rooms in Spencer and only one five person(residencehallroom),” Bradley said. “That’s a handful when you provide hous ing for thousands of students.” any emergency. Witt emphasized coop eration between government agencies and placed experienced relief workers in jobs once doled out as political plums. Witt’s down-home manner and his ex perience rushing to flooded farms and con solingtomado victims seem to be just what the agency needed. Known as “James Lee” to colleagues and employees alike, he looks at home in the midst of a hectic relief operation, sporting a baseball cap, dunga rees andabig brass “Arkansas” belt buckle. After Hurricane Marilyn hit the U.S. Virgin Islands, he queried staff on the 30 SESSIONS 3QDAYS 30 DOLLARS! 942-7177 , * if m * Expires Dec. 31,1995 %>W'tywi “NewHotßulbsl”W j <<7/ • J 3 miles from campus, 15-501 S. & I motmmJrr S/G& Smith Level Road at Star Point | "rain or shine " ‘good for up to 3 purchases. Monday, October 9,1995 whereabouts of relief shipments and nego tiated distribution schedules with local authorities. The morning after Hurricane Opal, he phoned sheriffs along the Florida Gulf Coast for information from die hard est hit areas, not wanting to wait for a staff briefing. By all accounts, morale has improved greatly since a 1992 American Federation of Government Employees survey found that four-fifths of FEMA employees thought the agency was poorly managed and more than half wished they worked elsewhere. 7
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