'A BIG FAT ZERO'

Posted: Saturday, September 3 at 08:00 pm CT by Mike Brunker

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Relief workers, who have been advising Katrina’s outcasts to stay put at evacuation centers until workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived to start the disaster assistance process, were biting their tongues on Saturday after the feds paid a call that can only be described as perfunctory.

Red Cross officials at the shelter at the Forrest County Multipurpose Building, home to approximately 1,100 refugees from the storm, declined to comment on the visit other than to confirm that FEMA officials had put in an appearance.

But sources familiar with the brief stopover say the FEMA officials made it clear they had no plans to open a claim center in or near Hattiesburg and instead instructed the staff to post flyers directing those who require disaster assistance to phone the FEMA hot line -- 1-800 621-3362 -- and to have documentation on hand. Alternately, claimants can file online at www.fema.gov.

The problem for those at the hurricane shelters in Hattiesburg without cellular phones is that they have limited or no phone access. And some of those are ill and in no condition to grab a shuttle bus downtown and stand in a payphone in the broiling sun to get the claim process rolling.

That, the sources say, guarantees that some of those most sorely affected by the storm will have to wait even longer for federal assistance.

"It was a big fat zero," one relief worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the FEMA response to the situation in Hattiesburg.

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