By BRYON OKADA
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
The nondescript federal building behind the Lowe’s off Loop 288 is populated with regular folks clacking away at computers, doing regular desk jobs. This is part of FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The part you don’t see on TV.
Here, at FEMA’s Texas National Processing Services Center, and at a handful of other federal-aid call centers around the nation, more than 2.4 million cries for help have been logged in the past several weeks.
*My house is gone.*
*I have nothing left.*
*Where is the federal aid?*
*What’s the holdup?*
*Isn’t this America?*
There were 8,625 calls for federal aid from Gulf Coast hurricane victims Monday. The going rate this third week of October is 8,000 to 9,000 a day.
The mountain of applications -- 2.4 million -- is daunting, especially as Hurricane Wilma takes aim at Florida.
“I really, honestly, don’t watch the news anymore,” says Phyllis Paton, applicant services manager at the Texas processing center. “It’s too hard, when you work this hard for this long, to go home and hear it.”
You know: It.
The public was dismayed at FEMA’s failure to deliver fast-acting comfort to the Gulf Coast. As a result, FEMA has replaced -- for now -- the Transportation Security Administration as the federal government’s most-vilified agency.
Within FEMA, questions arose.
Why could FEMA not rise above its new position as one of 22 agencies shoehorned into the Department of Homeland Security and perform as it did in the past?
How did the botched coordination of the response and evacuation efforts become confused with FEMA’s recovery efforts?
At the call centers, the recovery effort is about handling one cry for help at a time.
In her cubicle in the Denton office, program specialist Michelle Salisbury is staring at an applicant’s rejected forms.
It is one of the estimated 10 percent of applications for federal aid that are rejected by FEMA’s computerized processing system.
In most cases, a computer takes information obtained through an interview with the applicant and automatically processes the request. But when a discrepancy occurs, the application goes to an employee like Salisbury.
“This one’s simple,” Salisbury says. “The EFT [electronic fund transfer] number is wrong.”
It’s a common processing error that holds up applications, FEMA officials say, and understandable given the situation.
Can you remember your bank’s routing number from memory? Could you remember it standing in a flooded street or in a fetid shelter, on a cellphone with a lousy connection, having just lost your home and maybe your loved ones?
“A lot of times they guessed on the numbers,” Paton says. “Or they transposed the numbers. Or we did. We’re all human.”
Salisbury makes the necessary change and processes the application.
On some occasions, Homeland Security officials gave applicants erroneous information, FEMA human services specialist Rodolfo Corra says.
“The information was not parallel with how the program works,” Corra explains.
Still, the application process has gotten faster over the years, officials say.
Just imagine the oh-so-bureaucratic slowness in 1989, Paton says, before tele-registration. Applications for the Loma Prieta earthquake in northern California and Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas took about eight hours to complete, with a slew of lines and face-to-face interviews.
If everything works as it should, the current process takes about 15 minutes, over the phone, handled remotely.
There has been some relaxing of efforts this week. The call-center staff ballooned from 800 to 12,000 right after Hurricane Katrina hit. Now there are 6,111 employees -- a mix of FEMA, off-season Internal Revenue Service employees and private contractors -- on the job.
There had been a plan to close the temporary centers this week, but now those centers are on standby, courtesy of Hurricane Wilma.
IN THE KNOW
FEMA’s recovery efforts
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has four call centers -- in Denton, Virginia, Puerto Rico (for Spanish speakers) and Maryland -- taking applications for federal aid. After Hurricane Katrina made landfall, an additional 19 centers were opened nationwide.
963,096 applications have been received online -- 40 percent of the 2,404,854 total applications.
There are 422,769 applications from Texans as a result of Hurricane Rita. (An additional 330,319 applications from Louisiana were submitted after Rita.)
For federal-aid application information, go to www.fema.gov (http://www.fema.gov) .