FEMA sending reps to city month after shelter’s closing

A FEMA mobile disaster relief center will arrive at the Vicksburg Convention Center Wednesday, a month after evacuees from Hurricane Katrina were moved from the building.

According to a press release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, officials with the agency and from the U.S. Small Business Administration and an undetermined state agency will aid individuals with disaster assistance applications.

The officials are scheduled to be set up outside the Mulberry Street center through Saturday and again on Monday.

The agency’s announcement comes a month after the convention center emptied its evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated much of the Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama coasts on Aug. 29. In the three weeks the center operated as a shelter, local officials tried in vain to secure a human presence from FEMA.

Today’s announcement came as a surprise to local law enforcement officials, who scrambled to devise a strategy for maintaining order in what could become a steady stream of individuals.

&#8220You’d think they would have notified law enforcement when they decide these things,” Vicksburg Police Chief Tommy Moffett said this morning.

Moffett said he was unaware of the decision to send a mobile disaster relief center to Vicksburg until notified by media outlets.

&#8220We must not rate high on their list of priorities. It’s a terrible way to do business,” Moffett said.

Mobile disaster relief centers will also be sent to Leake, Neshoba and Yazoo counties. Moffett planned to notify law enforcement officials in those areas, he said.

All mobile and fixed-site DRC’s are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. All are closed Sundays.

According to the press release, a mobile DRC will be in operation outside the convention center daily through Saturday and again from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday.

In other Katrina-related news, Gov. Haley Barbour said Monday that he is going to Washington this week to lobby Congress and the Bush administration for specific proposals to help Mississippi recover from Hurricane Katrina.

Barbour said that Congress has already set aside $62 billion to respond to Katrina in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

The Republican governor said he believes Mississippi’s &#8220fair share” of that money is $19 billion.

The governor said one thing he will ask Congress to do is authorize Mississippi to spend part of that money to help people who don’t have flood insurance, but whose homes were flooded or washed away by Katrina.

He said it is still early in the process, and he does not know whether Congress will authorize that kind of spending.

Barbour estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people who were homeowners might get some kind of help under his proposal. He did not have a dollar figure of how much each homeowner might receive.

U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., has introduced a bill that would allow home and business owners who were without flood insurance when Hurricane Katrina struck to receive compensation retroactively through the National Flood Insurance Program.

Barbour said he and Taylor are both working toward the same goal for uninsured Mississippians, but they are taking different approaches to the issue.

Barbour also said that he thinks Mississippi will need about an additional $18 billion over the next 10 years for Katrina recovery.

Most of that would be needed in the next two years, Barbour said.