Institutional Racism by FEMA and Parsons Brinckerhoff Alltech

     In 2004 in the Los Angles area all inspectors working that disaster were told not to write any damages what so ever for the FEMA disaster applicants. Thus they all received denial letters for FEMA assistance.  In 2005 in Prichard Alabama a Parsons Brinkerhoff Alltech broadcast stated the same and gave the surrounding street borders of a Black area. 

    This is Institutional Racism at its worse depriving FEMA Applicants of help because they happen to be poor and or black.

  FEMA is a bureaucracy.  FEMA inspectors are supposed to give an independent inspection of the damages.  In years past this was possible.  How ever with the advent of ACE computer estimating, this provided the FEMA bureaucracy a system to do Monday morning quarterbacking of the inspections with ease. 

The mechanics of the system are the root of the problem. With the present ACE system, contractor review and FEMA review, no inspector will ever give an independent inspection. 

 Hence this is the problem.

  The ACE inspection system records building and contents damages. The inspector does the inspection and turns it in.  First the contractor does it Monday morning quarterback review.  If the damages to the dwelling are not sufficient to justify the contents damage, then the contractor returns the inspection to the inspector to correct.  This ratio of building damages to contents damages is totally subjective.

  For example the contractor has stated in flooding that if the flood level is not over a foot deep do not record damages to beds.  The theory is that a bed should not be damaged with less than 1 foot of water because the mattress on a standard bed is over 1 foot off the floor.  The problem is that in many poor sections of a community, including black communities, these folks cannot afford beds.  They generally have mattresses on the floor.  When you have any flood water, the mattress is ruined.  The inspector cannot award the bed replacement because the contractor has set up these subjective guidelines of damage level to contents damage.  Clothing is another example.  FEMA and the contractor have made it nearly impossible to award clothing.  Poor people put their clothes on the floor for lack of dressers. FEMA and the contractor cannot understand how a person could lose their clothing with only one inch of water.  The poor generally live in run down rental properties that had many pre existing problems. This is all they can afford. Provisions within this FEMA inspection system provide for not recording deferred maintenance.  This simply put is problems with the dwelling that are not storm related. You have a inspection process that equates building damages to contents damages and fails to take into consideration deferred maintenance. You have a situation where wind blows through leaking windows, damages beds, bedding, clothing and what ever.  You cannot award the proper contents because you do not have the storm related building damages. 

    This all ties together because of the way the review process is handled.  When FEMA has a question about an inspection it returns the inspection to the contractor as a FCOR inspection.  The contractor is graded by FEMA in part based upon the number of FCOR corrections FEMA sends back.  The contractor then grades the inspector on the number of FCOR inspections he has on a particular disaster.  The inspector is paid on a per inspection basis.  The contractor does not pay the inspector for any FCOR inspection and if the inspector has only a couple corrections the inspector looses his inspection performance bonus with the contactor. .  This means in many cases thousands of dollars per job.  As a result of the pay system and the FCOR system you end up with what I would term a sterile inspections, a perfectly 100% clean inspection.  This is an inspection that meets the pre determined computer program profile. This inspection has no basis in truth in regards to the actual contents damaged because it cannot.  An inspector would be foolish under the present system to do an accurate truthful inspection.  He would get them all returned to him from the contractor or FEMA, lose money on the inspection, loose his bonus and soon lose his job.  When you have a system that does not allow for any independent judgment you end up with the mess you have now.
 

    The solution is to return to a system where the inspector can do what they are supposed to do, an impartial, independent inspection.  The present system fails to take into consideration certain factors that generally apply to poor households.  Building damage does necessarily align perfectly with contents damage.  In a perfect world they do but when you factor in older rental properties and other factors that are predominantly poor issues they do not always align themselves.  A poor person that evacuates uses what little money they have to evacuate.  They have no money to return after the disaster and when they do everything is ruined and moldy.  FEMA then comes along weeks later and cannot understand how clothes get ruined by just a little flood water.  Well the truth is the beds and clothes are on the floor, it took a week to get back home, they have no washer to wash the clothes and no means to get them to a distant laundry that was not flooded.  The result is everything is lost and no FEMA assistance because the damages do not fit the established FEMA profile.  No provisions exist to give the proper award and stay within the profile.  The examples cited her are just the beginning of an inspections system that started out as independent and objective and turned into a instructional profiled sterile inspection. The inspection process has  been so degraded that orders are now given by the contractor not to give away money in certain areas.  The contractor reviews FEMA damage area profiles and makes a determination that no damages could have occurred and hence orders inspectors not to give away any money, it does not fit the FEMA profile. 

    The most blatant example of this was Los Angles.  Inspectors were ordered not to give money away in certain areas because the area did not fit the FEMA profile.  When residents of this area started getting FEMA denial letters, they would stop the inspector on the street and be angry.   This was interpreted by FEMA as the inspectors being threatened.  The FEMA answer was to withhold the denial letters until all inspections were completed and the inspectors were out of the area.  This denial and accosting inspectors in poor neighborhoods has become such a problem that police patrols are now regularly increased in these neighborhoods during times the inspectors are doing the inspections.  The unfortunate part of this is that the justified anger of people for being wrongly denied assistance cannot be understood by those above.  The bureaucracy cannot understand such a simple issue.  People get mad when you deny them the aid you promised for the losses that they truly had. 
 

    The contractor is paid by FEMA for ever inspection done. The contractor has learned that the best money is made by having the inspector submit perfect sterile inspections.  The only thing the contractor cares about is what it is going to take to get the inspection to pass the FEMA profile.  Its all about money and profits for the contractor, to hell with the applicants.

  I view the actions of FEMA and the FEMA Contractor Parsons Brinckerhoff to be Racists and that they have acted in collusion with each other.

Possible Resolution and Solutions

• To solve this problem means to return back to an independent and fair inspection of the of all applicant’s true damages.

• To implement a one hour course on Cultural Sensitivity to all FEMA inspectors, FEMA personal involved with the FEMA IFG and Contract Managers in Alltech and PaRR.

• To investigate all those in FEMA and FEMA’s Contractor that had any role in ordering  FEMA Inspectors not to record damage in certain areas for the possibility of them committing a hate crime against the black communities.

• To review the Contractors cadre of Inspectors that are called out ( not just the ones they have trained which is over 75,000 Inspectors ) to see if it complies with the equal opportunity act. ( I think you shall find it short of Afro-American workers) PB had a conference in Ft Worth for it’s FEMA Inspectors out of 600 that attended there was only two black people. I know this as I attended and sat beside them.

• To immediately suspend the contract with the existing FEMA Contractors (Alltech and PaRR) for gross violations of American Law that is well documented on www.FEMASbest.com

Chad Beckwith Smith

PAFI President