9/6/08 Hartford Courant: UConn Law Student’s Group A Disaster Response Watchdog

UConn Law Student’s Group A Disaster Response Watchdog

By JODIE MOZDZER |Courant Staff Writer

September 6, 2008

As East Coast communities prepare for storms Hanna and Ike, West Hartford resident Ben Smilowitz is watching the emergency response with an equally attentive eye.

Smilowitz, 27, a third-year student at the University of Connecticut Law School, is a disaster response watchdog.

His nonprofit organization, the Disaster Accountability Project, tracks response recommendations made after Hurricane Katrina, investigates reported gaps in emergency response or preparation and posts updates on disaster response issues in its blog.

It has been Smilowitz’s passion since he said he witnessed deficiencies in disaster response services while volunteering as a site manager for the Red Cross after Katrina in 2005. At sites in Mississippi, Smilowitz said he saw discrepancies between what the Red Cross was advertising it was doing and what was actually being done.

But when he looked for a watchdog organization to report his concerns to, he couldn’t find one.

“I told myself if there wasn’t an organization set up to provide oversight to the national disaster systems, I would create it,” Smilowitz said.

And so he did, in August 2007.

Now Smilowitz spends his time researching emergency response frameworks set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reading articles about any disaster to which an American organization responds and building the foundation of an organization he hopes will someday include several researchers.

The organization is starting to gain credibility, staff and name recognition.

Until recently, there were two volunteer staff members – Smilowitz and Linda Lewis, a policy analyst. There were also several volunteer board members, ranging from local fire chiefs and law professors to the legal director of the Government Accountability Project and the director of the Katrina Research Center.

But starting this semester, there will be three part-time workers from a University of Connecticut work-study program helping Smilowitz do research. The Disaster Accountability Project is eligible for the workers through the Connecticut Urban Legal Initiative, which is acting as the organization’s fiscal sponsor while its independent nonprofit status is pending.

The Disaster Accountability Project got another boost this year when it received a two-year, $30,000-a-year fellowship from Echoing Green, which invests in emerging social entrepreneurs.

“It’s injecting a huge amount of legitimacy and trust to the project,” Smilowitz said.

Smilowitz, a West Hartford native, has been a political activist since his days at Hall High School. He drafted and lobbied for a bill that made students eligible to serve on the State Board of Education, launched petitions against an early school-day start, organized vigils and founded the International Student Activism Alliance to represent students across the world. As a law student, he is president of the student bar association on campus.

Now, he’s networking with people across the country, recruiting them to volunteer or join the advisory board of his latest venture.

Raymond Scurfield, a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast and the director of the Katrina Research Center, said he joined the advisory board after speaking with Smilowitz.

“There’s more than enough that needs to be assessed by parties that are not directly involved [in the disaster response],” Scurfield said. “Officials come out and make statements, say they’ve got things under control. They seldom are forthright about internal problems until they are made public.”

That was Smilowitz’s concern. The problems often did not become public because the people witnessing them had nowhere to turn.

Smilowitz said that in Mississippi after Katrina, there were nurses volunteering who couldn’t administer IVs or give out tetanus shots because of an insurance policy the Red Cross held. And despite donations pouring into the organization, there weren’t enough supplies or sites to accommodate the need, he said.

“They were raising tons of money, billions of dollars, yet they couldn’t do some of the most basic things,” Smilowitz said.

When Smilowitz began relaying some of his concerns to the local press, he said the Red Cross dismissed him from his post. Red Cross officials did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

The Disaster Accountability Project has already taken on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, objecting to a policy that ceases FEMA’s direct distribution of ice after hurricanes. FEMA spokeswoman Alexandra Kirin said the agency still coordinates efforts to have ice distributed through the local or state governments or other federal agencies. But since 2007, it no longer stores and distributes the ice directly.

Smilowitz hopes to set up a network of “monitors” to field phone calls from concerned citizens and response agency employees. Fifty volunteers have signed on, he said.

As the next round of storms approaches, Smilowitz said he is making sure the monitors are ready to take phone calls if they come in.

There have only been 10 phone calls to the hot line since the organization began last summer, but Smilowitz said that’s a good thing.

“We’re hoping we don’t get calls on our hot line because calls mean there are problems,” Smilowitz said.

Contact Jodie Mozdzer at jmozdzer@courant.com.

To learn more, visit www.disasteraccountability.com.