When I first came to TPM I wrote a lot -- perhaps ad nauseum -- about the contrast between FEMA and insurance company response to Hurricane Hugo -- in Charleston, SC, in1989 -- and to Hurricane Ivan, which pulverized Pensacola, FL in 2004, a year before Katrina decimated New Orleans. 

In 1989, FEMA trucks with relief supplies as well as professionals ready to offer seasoned expertise were in place, in multiple locations, within twenty-fours hours. Insurance agents exceeded FEMA's performance, in dollars and cents if not in timing, arriving for on-site inspections within three days, checkbooks at the ready to settle claims on the spot. 

In 2004, however, FEMA was AWOL for over eight days -- eight days (!) during which, without power and with water systems tainted, there was no ice and no bottled water in 100+ degree heat. Finally, when FEMA supplies arrived, they were inhumanly rationed (from only two locations) to a bag of ice and a gallon of water per family per day.... lest, according to free market principles, there be a temptation to "resell them for profit". When FEMA personnel  finally arrived, they worked from only one location; furthermore, they were poorly-trained if kindly volunteers..... because the seasoned experts had been downsized. But they were better than the insurance agents, who again exceeded FEMA, if this time negatively; in many cases, no on-site inspection occurred for weeks and, in some cases, months. Almost all adjusters were independent adjusters from elsewhere, sub-contracted to the insurance company in question. As a further delaying tactic, claims were re-assigned to new adjusters repeatedly (in my case, nine times) which required starting the paper trail from scratch. And no money -- no matter which company, or what the policy said -- was forthcoming for over a year, despite the facts that most policies had emergency expense clauses, people could not live in their houses, and therefore had double living expenses. Payouts were finally made only to those policyholders who agreed to accept 70% or less of reimbursement due. There are still those who have received nothing, five years later, because they "stubbornly" refused to take less than they were owed.

So what did people do in the immediate aftermath of the storm and during the year that followed, to simply survive? 

Neighbors who had been at war with each other banded together, sharing not only meager resources but also backbreaking labor. Neighborhood watches were formed to try to contain marauding bands of looters, not least of whom were maverick clean-up crews from elsewhere. Sometimes this backfired -- fearful, stressed-out residents called the police on their neighbors out-of-town family members or friendsarriving to help, etc..

The bottom line, in 2009,  is this: the Bush/Cheney/insurance industry cabal betrayed its Gulf Coast citizens in 2004, after Ivan, which was ignored nationwide because Pensacola's backwater status drew no media focus. Learning nothing, the administration betrayed New Orleans a year later -- N'Ohrlins --a city so intrinsically tied to our image of ourselves as cool, mellow  originators of music, a city at once so laid back yet so sophisticated as a culture that media attention was immediate, if misdirected, their attention focused on the problem, but not the solution, so desperately needed by so many.

Years have passed. Thousands of homeowners have been foreclosed. Stores have closed. Businesses of all kinds have gone under, or decamped to more accommodating climes. No wonder, then, that for those left behind, alcoholism is up, hope is down, and endurance is stretched beyond human absorption.

HEADS UP, America -- it's hurricane season again, the dangerous core of which is mid-August through the end of September. And so the question is this: is the Obama administration's FEMA ready, fully re-trained to do better? Has the insurance industry been reprimanded, regulated or contained in any meaningful way?

 I would have assumed so, until healthcare reform evolved as it has, to date.

So, this year, is it hurricane business as usual? By which I mean insurance BUSINESS, as the priority, as compared to the health and welfare of the people to whom they allegedly have contractual obligations.

Caveat Emptor, dear family, friends and former neighbors -- all of you who still live in hurricane zones. Hope may spring eternal, but change we can believe in has yet to be demonstrated. 

Therefore, remember a survivor's mantra: love thy neighbor as thyself, no matter what.