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Fayetteville mayor touts city's relief center Thursday, Sep 29, 2005 By Alison Vekshin Stephens Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Fayetteville Mayor Dan Coody told Congress on Wednesday the city's actions to quickly set up a relief center for Hurricane Katrina victims should serve as a model for how communities respond to future disasters. With little help from federal authorities, Fayetteville pulled together a system to care for evacuees who began pouring into Northwest Arkansas following the disaster, Coody said. Local public and private officials established a supply distribution center and base for non-profit groups at an old Tyson Foods warehouse. "What I have to offer is how Fayetteville responded in hopes that we can take this experience and make this a national model for other small communities and regions across the country," Coody told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The panel convened to hear the experiences of communities that have taken in large numbers of Katrina evacuees, including Coody, Mayor Melvin Holden of Baton Rouge, La., Mayor Robert Massengill of Brookhaven, Miss., and Robert Eckels, county judge of Harris County, Texas, home of the Houston Astrodome. Coody said federal officials were of little help. "It was two and a half weeks before we even heard from" the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coody said. "We had been hearing rumors they were in the area." Officials from the agency that is being blamed for the slow response to the hurricane finally stopped by a couple of weeks ago, he said. "Five or six FEMA people came in -- good folks, they were firemen," he said. "They really wanted to do a good job. They were completely out of the loop." In his testimony, Coody described how city and county officials converted an old 126,000-square-foot Tyson Foods warehouse into a distribution center of donations of food, toiletries, clothing and other supplies, some of which were shipped to Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., sent engineers to create a warehouse system and provided warehouse equipment. More than 100 volunteers, city employees, Wal-Mart employees and county work-release inmates sorted through the donations. "Centers such as ours could be strategically located, grounded in public-private partnerships, and be ready for activation on a moment's notice," he said. Coody said the city council has allocated $100,000 in emergency funds for the effort, but the city has applied for reimbursement from the federal government. "I do think we should be reimbursed," Coody said. In 2006, construction will begin on a state-of-the-art police, fire and emergency-response center at the site, Coody said. The center's design will "incorporate what we learned from experience," Coody said. "We will preserve in our facility the capacity to ship and receive large quantities of material when necessary." Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said he had heard accounts of FEMA representatives at Arkansas shelters handing out fliers that did little more than direct evacuees to Web sites. "They didn't have any more resources that they could give," Pryor said. "Clearly, we need to look at that." Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the panel's chairman, applauded Arkansas' efforts. "Arkansas has received more Katrina evacuees per capita than any other state: in excess of 75,000 at the peak, primarily in Fayetteville and the surrounding area," Collins said. "These displaced families are being cared for by one of the poorest states in the nation," Collins said. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked witnesses whether they thought the president should have authority to overstep states rights and activate the military in a law-enforcement role during disasters. "I think the first option, the first priority should be making the system that we have in place work," Coody said. -- 30 -- |
