From the South Florida Sun-Sentinnel:

Florida officially recorded 123 fatalities from last year’s hurricanes, but the federal government has paid funeral expenses for at least 315 deaths, including those of a man who shot himself and a stroke victim hospitalized more than a week before the last storm hit.

In one case, a Federal Emergency Management Agency worker tried unsuccessfully to persuade a coroner to count among the hurricane casualties a “morbidly obese” heart patient who purportedly was “scared to death.”

“If you were to call around to all the medical examiner offices, people would say, `No way did we have as many deaths as FEMA is saying,’” said Dr. Stephen Nelson, head of Florida’s Medical Examiners Commission. “It’s just an incredible number — a difference of 192. This is the Free Funeral Payment Act.”

[...]

Funeral eligibility is “not based exclusively on medical or coroner reports,” FEMA’s statement said. “FEMA may contact organizations like the Red Cross, hospitals, coroners’ offices, police and fire departments, and/or ambulance companies for additional details.”

[...]

The Sun-Sentinel found five families whose relatives were included in the official death count but did not receive FEMA funeral assistance.

One of them was Dutch Cole, whose body was found floating in the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach after Frances. A resident of a nearby assisted living facility and blind in one eye, Cole liked to help boaters launch their vessels at the local boat ramp, said daughter Wanda Cole of Marietta, Ga.

FEMA turned down the family’s request for help with Cole’s funeral, she said.

“They said it was a waiting list,” Wanda Cole said. “Due to the fact we was in Georgia, they couldn’t help us.”

I realize natural disasters tend to tug at the heartstrings, but why is the federal government paying for the funerals of hurricane victims in the first place? Why is a hurricane death any more worthy of federal assistance than a car accident, house fire, or random murder fatality?

You accept the risk of death by hurricane when you choose to live on the coast. I’m not sure why taxpayers should foot the bill for your funeral. The apparent arbitrariness of what constitutes a “hurricane-related” death just makes policy all the more absurd.

John Stossel has exposed how the federal government insures coastal homes at artificially low premiums. It pays when those homes get wiped out by hurricanes and, when the rebuilt homes get wiped out too, pays to rebuild them again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 at 11:43 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.