And since we're talking about hurricanes and second-handers...

What the hell...?

FEMA may cover hotel costs for hurricane evacuees

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The federal government says it will pay the hotel expenses of some of the nearly 2 million people who fled their homes ahead of Hurricane Gustav, but exactly who will be eligible for assistance and how much it will cost taxpayers was uncertain.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency planned a telephone news conference Thursday to answer questions.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday in Baton Rouge that FEMA would pay hotel costs "to make sure that people don't feel economic pressure to return home prematurely, before it's safe."

He said FEMA would pay hotels directly, so it was unclear whether those who had already paid for rooms and checked out would be eligible for reimbursement.

With two other hurricanes threatening the East Coast, the decision to pay for hotels could make it easier to evacuate residents during the next disaster. But doing so would also burden the agency with huge expenses.

The news that hotel costs might be reimbursed came too late for people who have been sleeping at public shelters, such as those in a convention center in Birmingham, Ala. Some of those evacuees said they would have preferred a hotel if they had known FEMA money would be available.

"You can just get cat naps here," said Aaron Clark, 63, as he sat under a shade tree outside the center. "We didn't get breakfast this morning because they said something was broke down. It's just surviving, that's all it is."

FEMA officials in Louisiana urged residents affected by the storm to register with the agency and to save receipts that document their spending during the evacuation.

"We'd need receipts, and we'd need to know whether the area they were evacuated from is one of the mandatory evacuation areas," said Ed Conley, a FEMA spokesman.

Conley was asked, as an example, whether a family could be reimbursed for hotel expenses after leaving New Orleans on Sunday, checking into a Tennessee hotel, then returning after two, three or four nights.

"That's exactly the family we want to get in touch with us," Conley said.

But he was uncertain what the agency would offer such a family, in part because various other factors - including the family's insurance coverage and whether their house was damaged - could come into play.

Also, the minimum number of days that would be covered had not been determined, and it was unclear whether food and fuel costs incurred while on the road would be covered.

A Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman said Thursday that the agency had received a handful of calls in recent days from evacuees asking for gas money to return home. The state is referring those people to FEMA and the Red Cross.

Some evacuees also wondered whether FEMA would cover their lost wages and other expenses after they return to New Orleans.

In the Birmingham shelter, Carlos Pavilus of New Orleans said he would give anything to be in a hotel.

"I'm so tired of smelling tennis shoes and diapers. We have no laundry. We have nothing," Pavilus said.

OK, let's get one thing straight. Everyone who lives in the hurricane areas lives there by choice. The rest of us didn't make them live there, any more than we force people to live in earthquake-threatened homes on scenic cliff sides or on the Montana plains where blizzards make life hard every winter. So why exactly should we be paying the costs associated with these people's geographic residency choices? (I'll also point out that people in Montana don't run to us every time it snows and demand money from taxpayer coffers the way that these "professional victims" in New Orleans do. Wonder why that is?)

There's not an endless supply of money in the Treasury. In fact, every dollar there had to be taken from someone, and any dollars handed out to people to cover nice hotel rooms will have to be replaced by--you guessed it--taking more money from other people.

This is wrong on many levels. I know that Democrats routinely do this sort of thing, because a person (or government) who robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul come election time, but I vote Republican in the hope that this crap won't happen. Hey, it sucks that a bunch of people have to leave the places that they chose to live because of a storm that they knew could come, but reimbursing them for their costs out of MY pocket and the pocket of every other person smart enough not to live in the hurricane-prone areas just isn't right.

I had no problem collecting needed supplies and raising money to voluntarily help people after Katrina, but when the government starts taking my money without even bothering to ask... screw it. My largess and sympathy for these people who have now had to be evacuated twice in three years just because they desire to live there is now at an end. I respect their choice to live where they want, but fundamental fairness dictates that any costs or risks associated with that choice be borne by the people who made the choices, not by the rest of us.