FEMA AWOL in 90's Worst Disaster

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was missing in action when the Great Heat Wave of 1995 struck Chicago, killing more than 700 mostly poor, black and elderly victims who perished as city and state medical officials complained they were overwhelmed by the greatest disaster to hit the U.S. in the last 112 years.

"On the first day of the heat wave, Thursday, July 13, the temperature hit 106 degrees, and the heat index � a combination of heat and humidity that measures the temperature a typical person would feel � rose above 120," reported Eric Klinenberg, author of "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago."

By Saturday � just three days into the heat wave � the Cook County Medical Examiner's office was overwhelmed. "I've never seen so many dead people in a short period of time," Chicago paramedic Tim Walsh told the Associated Press.

After the first week of the disaster, the AP reported:

"Hospitals were jammed with the sick and the morgue was overloaded with the dead, with dozens of bodies arriving in a somber procession of blue-and-white police vans. Before [the week] was over, more than 450 people, mostly elderly and sick, would become victims of the summer of '95."

As the magnitude of the disaster unfolded, President Clinton seemed dangerously oblivious.

With Chicago's poor, black and elderly dropping like flies, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported: "President Clinton seemed unperturbed, going for a mid-morning jog and then playing 18 holes of golf in a threesome that included Judge Richard Arnold of Little Rock."

After Chicago had suffered through eight deadly days of the killer heat wave, the president finally responded.

"The current heat wave has been very severe, especially in the Midwest, resulting in hundreds of deaths," Clinton told reporters on July 21. "Chicago has been the hardest hit. This heat wave is an emergency that demands a response from the federal government."

But Clinton's aid package turned out to be laughable by Hurricane Katrina's standards - $100 million to be distributed among 19 states. Illinois received a paltry $15 million.

Chicagoans were lucky to get that much. The Clinton administration had proposed cuts in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, from which the heat relief money was drawn - only to be overruled by Congress.
Clinton's vaunted Federal Emergency Management Agency, under the allegedly able direction of disaster expert James Lee Witt - was nowhere to be found. A Lexis Nexis search of more than 800 media reports on the killer heat wave turned up just a single mention of the agency.

With the city's death toll topping out at 739 - and hundreds more dead in neighboring states - Chicago's Budget Director, Diane Aigotti, told the Chicago Tribune that she didn't expect much from FEMA.

"We're putting the numbers together now, and the $2 million figure is what we're expecting as reimbursement from the feds," she explained.