Hurricane relief criticized

HAMPTON, Va. – Utility crews had restored service Sunday to more than two-thirds of the people who had been without power since Hurricane Isabel struck, but price gouging and a general lack of information were starting to wear down residents in the hardest-hit areas.

Shawn Williams of Newport News, Va., went to the local Red Cross office to get water for his three young daughters, but all the office had was rice, meat, gravy and pineapple. His money reserves were running low, and he was disgusted to find a local gas station demanding $2.50 a gallon.

Terri Ellis, who was a claims adjuster in Miami in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Andrew, said Virginia’s response to Isabel has been abysmal. Ellis vented her frustration Sunday at weary Red Cross volunteers, unable to control her anger at being told to call emergency numbers.

“They say, ‘Call the emergency management office.’ When I get home, I have no phone,” she said.

The city had its own complaints about the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We’ve asked FEMA for generators. We haven’t gotten them,” Newport News Mayor Joe Frank said Sunday. “We’ve asked them for water, we’ve asked them for food, we’ve asked them for ice. So far, we haven’t seen any of that.”

Frank said the city had to hire trucks to bring ice from Tennessee and Alabama.

FEMA director Mike Brown was on the defensive.

“We’ve distributed 650,000 tons of ice down to that area,” he said Sunday. “I just find it difficult to believe that we’re not meeting someone’s needs – if indeed they’ve been articulated to us.”

Linda Butler left a candle burning in her storm-darkened Hampton home because she didn’t like to sleep without a light. In the early morning hours Sunday, as she lay in bed reading by flashlight, Butler heard a loud noise in the bathroom. By the time she got there, it was engulfed in flames.

“I lost everything,” Butler said as she stood amid the ruins of the one-story, two-bedroom home she rented. “Everything I’ve ever owned.”

The single mother and her 17-year-old daughter, Chamika, escaped with their lives and three kittens, but little else.

“I work so hard for the few things that I have,” said Butler, who earns $8 an hour as a cook.

The storm severed electrical service for more than 6 million customers from the Carolinas to New York. By Sunday morning, that figure had been whittled to about 1.8 million.

President Bush plans to travel to Virginia today to get a briefing on storm damage and recovery efforts.

At least 34 deaths are blamed on the storm, 19 of them in Virginia. North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware were declared federal disaster areas.

About a dozen Navy ships sent out to sea to get them out of the storm’s direct path and keep them from being battered against docks returned to Norfolk on Sunday, joining 24 vessels that had sailed back into port the day before.

The federal government in Washington will be open for business today after being shuttered for two days because of Isabel.

The Mexican government issued a warning for the southern tip of Baja California on Sunday as Hurricane Marty churned closer to land. Marty was about 130 miles south of the tip of Baja, with sustained winds of 80 mph. It was upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane earlier Sunday.