Clean-up crews add to US wildfire victims’ woes
SANTA ROSA: One year after a devastating series of wildfires ripped through Northern California wine country, destroying thousands of homes, the US Army Corps of Engineers’ first experience cleaning up after a wildfire has turned into an expensive bureaucratic mess and California’s top emergency official suspects fraud played a role.
In October last year, state and local officials lacked the resources to quickly clear stillsmoldering and toxic debris from 4,500 homes destroyed by a wildfire in and near Santa Rosa, so the army was called in.
The army was in charge of awarding US$1.3bil (RM5.38bil) in cleanup contracts to three contractors, which hired dozens of smaller companies to haul away the debris and dispose of it in landfills.
The hauling companies were paid by the ton. The more they hauled, the more they earned.
The first complaints started almost as soon as the first dump truck was loaded in November.
Homeowners said workers were digging too deep and taking too much dirt from their lots. They also said perfectly fine driveways, retaining walls, sidewalks and the like were damaged or removed.
By summer, nearly 1,000 homeowners had flooded the army, state and local officials with complaints.
After its contractors hauled away two million tonnes of debris, the US Army Corps declared its mission accomplished and left without responding to homeowners’ complaints, Sonoma County supervisor Shirlee Zane said.
“These folks were traumatised by the fire and then traumatised again by the cleanup,” said Zane, who represents Santa Rosa’s hardesthit neighbourhoods.
In August, Zane and a contingent of Sonoma County officials trekked to the state capital in Sacramento and persuaded the California Office of Emergency Services to fix what the army would not.
Director Mark Ghilarducci said the Office of Emergency Services has spent millions repairing the damage, and more work remains.
In a letter sent last month, Ghilarducci demanded that the army reimburse the state and return to California to fix the lots still in need of repair.
He said it was “probable” that unscrupulous contractors committed fraud, citing “egregious oversight” by federal officials.
Corps spokesman Mike Petersen said no evidence of fraud had been reported and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was preparing a response to Ghilarducci’s letter.