When a community is stricken by a disaster, the one thing they expect from their government is consistent, prompt response. Regrettably, for the mostly African-American residents of the two- square miles devastated by a tornado Friday night May 30th, the response they’ve received from Indianapolis’ government has been inconsistent, sluggish and belated.
To be fair and accurate, Indianapolis’ first responders ā our firefighters, police and emergency management personnel ā did respond quickly, efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, the rest of Indianapolis’ governmental agencies have been extraordinarily slow in their response and service to the devastated neighborhood.
I saw this embarrassment first hand this past Sunday.
I traveled to the parking lot of the Community Alliance for the Far Eastside (CAFĆā¦) offices at 38th and Post Road where Mayor Greg Ballard would make one of his rare public appearances where he told media in advance, at a street party promoting the city’s Peace in the Streets initiative.
As I drove out there, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to see part of that tornado ravaged neighborhood I hadn’t seen before, especially the single family homes, which were damaged.
The small, weathered ranch homes in this neighborhood were built right after World War II to accommodate returning soldiers and their new families. The homes are modest, not like the starter homes built today. They’re assessed between $45,000 and $90,000, way below the average assessment.
The tornado did plenty of damage with some houses totally destroyed, others in various states of damage. But that wasn’t the only disaster in the neighborhood. As I drove through, I saw plenty foreclosed and abandoned homes littering the neighborhood, which debilitates home values and neighborhood stability.
But what really caught my attention was along the curbs; piles and mounds of tree branches and limbs torn from their trees during the storm. Residents had placed this debris along the curb as the city requested. Four days after the tornado, Department of Public Works (DPW) trucks and employees had begun swarming the neighborhood picking up debris residents put out at the curb.
But Sunday, 17 days after the storm, and 12 days after the city started cleaning up debris, I saw piles and piles of tree limbs, branches and other debris the city had yet to pick up.
What was going on, I wondered? What had happened? Had the city allowed this ravaged neighborhood to go to seed?
What I learned reinforced my strong feeling that despite great first response, Indianapolis government’s response to the tornado disaster has been disjointed, uncoordinated, hind end backwards, with an emphasis on doing things on the cheap.
Here are the facts. Last Friday, with no advance public notice or warning, DPW ended its special clean up of the tornado zone. In an e-mail, DPW PR flack Steve Hardiman said that residents must now cut their debris into “3 feet square bundles” and wait for their monthly heavy trash day. Or residents, many of whom are severely cash strapped because of the disaster, must spend money they don’t have hiring someone to haul away their tree debris.
DPW bragged that they hauled away “593 tons of debris” from the neighborhood. But Hardiman admitted that “As the scope of the damage was more extensive than most realize, there is more tree debris to be removed from this area.”
DPW’s solution? End their special removal schedule and leave residents to get rid of the remaining tons of debris themselves.
Why? The desire to cut corners and save money.
In a disaster, you don’t worry about cost; you get the job done, regardless of overtime and cost. The federal government repays cities for many of their costs involved in disaster clean up and recovery. But the Ballard administration’s top officials seemingly care more about the bottom line than serving Indianapolis in a disaster.
In past disasters, DPW has always been ready to help with the clean up. DPW employees know what needs to be done and are ready to spend the hours to do it. But disaster clean up and response isn’t an eight hour day/five day week job. Unfortunately the DPW head is a parsimonious penny pincher, more concerned with rebuilding budget balances than rebuilding neighborhoods; more concerned with saving cash than cleaning up.
Other storm ravaged Indiana cities aren’t worrying about their budgets. They’re getting the job done. Not Indianapolis. Here, three weeks after a disaster, the tornado ravaged majority-Black neighborhood looks like hell.Another major failure was an extreme lack of coordination and leadership from the mayor’s office itself. Top city officials had no clue how many disaster victims had been helped, what services had been provided. It didn’t help that key administration officials were out of the office; unheard of during major disasters.
Another failure was not disseminating timely disaster and recovery information to the community. Including leaving local media in the dark and not utilizing the city’s own formerly award winning Web site.
DPW’s Hardiman said residents could obtain help and info from a non-city government Web site www.helpmarioncounty.org which provides residents with disaster information and ways of linking volunteers and resources. This poorly designed Web site isn’t government run. Instead it’s sponsored by “JWS Group,” an unknown entity. No one knows their relationship with city government.
As of my deadline, the city’s official Web site, www.indy.gov continues to be devoid of disaster relief information. Not even a link to FEMA or the Red Cross.
Johnson County and the City of Franklin governments were hit hard by the floods, but despite the devastation, Johnson County’s government Web site has FEMA’s emergency number, while the City of Franklin’s Web site contains plenty of disaster and recovery information.
So does the State of Indiana’s Web site, as do the Web sites of many of the city’s media, including Black media.
But Indianapolis government’s Web site has nothing.
Which sums up the Ballard administration’s response to this storm after the first initial response.
And African-Americans, among others, suffer.
It’s Indy’s Katrina! Shameful!
See Ć¢ā¬Ėya next week.
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or by e-mail at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
