Posted on 12/08/2004 2:44:36 PM PST by Jonathan Rude
Hurricane Frances made landfall more than 100 miles north of Miami-Dade County earlier this year. But that didn't stop thousands of residents there from getting nearly $28 million in federal disaster aid.
Top winds reached only 47 mph in Miami-Dade County during the Labor Day weekend storm, so damages were limited to some fallen power lines and uprooted trees, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency and other disaster relief officials.
Yet residents used their relief checks to buy more than 5,000 televisions allegedly destroyed by Frances, as well as 1,440 air conditioners, 1,360 twin beds, 1,311 washers and dryers, and 831 dining sets.
(Excerpt) Read more at krtdirect.com ...
See also the Carl Hiaasen article on this same subject posted yesterday.
And nearly 3 months after Ivan ransacked Pensacola, I still have a blue tarp on my roof and am still fighting with my POS insurance company. I have not seen a single dime yet and have in excess of $20,000 damage to my home.
I had a house washed away (insured) and the oceanfront lot valued at $125k washed away by a hurricane(non-insurabable).
After several weeks of talking to FEMA and filling out mounds of paperwork and dozens of phone calls with them I was persented
with a check covering two nights of motel expense. That's it.
Who is your insurance company? Doesn't Florida have an insurance commissioner to whom you can complain? Insurance companies don't sell policies in a state without the state's permission.
When Bubba was prez, he appointed his uncle, Buddy the Fixer, to be head of FEMA. You can see a clip of Buddy, the man whom Bubba named his dog after, at the end of the movie, "Twister". Ever since Buddy has taken charge of FEMA, it has been a mess. The people in North Carolina were ticked off, too, when FEMA came to 'rescue' them. They may have been better off if those FEMA vans never showed up. The entire organization needs to be scrapped. All we need is the US Treasurer to coordinate with the victims' insurance companies. They can pay the companies a fee for checking things out. People making false claims should be heavilly fined. And whalla! No more problems.
The same thing happened in North Carolina when Hurricane Isabelle hit in 2003. The N.C. county that got the most FEMA money was not hit by the hurricane and did not lose power. A lot of this FEMA money went to low-income residents of housing projects, whose residents saw it as a good opportunity to get new appliances and furniture. This was reported on local radio and TV.
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