Top FEMA Official In For 'Long Haul'

FEMA's top Gulf Coast official says the federal government is stockpiling supplies and is ready to give disaster planners guidance ahead of the new hurricane season.

"I'm here for the long haul," Gil Jamieson, deputy director of Gulf Coast Recovery, said in a telephone interview Sunday in advance of a tour with FEMA Acting Director R. David Paulison.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency officials were to huddle Monday with emergency planners in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to review trouble spots in evacuation and response plans.

FEMA is doing its own share of legwork by stockpiling MREs, water, cots, blankets and other emergency supplies at government sites in the Gulf Coast, he said.

The region has glaring problems that could make disaster planning much harder for the Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1.

Many bridges, in some cases the only evacuation routes, are still under repair or out of service. Basic services such as hospitals, banks, nursing homes and local governments have been badly damaged and are struggling to stay open.

Jamieson said the population shifts caused by Hurricane Katrina, with some areas exploding and others nearly disappearing, will force planners to think differently about their response plans.

Jamieson, a longtime disaster planner who's been at FEMA since it was created in 1979, was given charge of the agency's Gulf Coast response after he served as deputy to Vice Adm. Thad Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard. Allen led recovery efforts in the days after Katrina hit.

An interagency task force has been set up to coordinate the multitude of federal agencies and organizations such as the American Red Cross that lend assets during disasters, Jamieson said.

"Homeland Security, FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, the Department of Transportation — we're all looking at it as a team," he said.

Meanwhile, a study being released Monday says metropolitan New Orleans could regain up to 126,000 jobs that were lost because of Hurricane Katrina over the next three years if housing is available for employees.

The study was conducted by James A. Richardson, a professor at Louisiana State University. He says the housing issue is crucial to the city's economic recovery. The area lost 190,000 jobs between August and December.

Although the region has 70,000 houses to repair, 35,000 families are living in FEMA trailers.