Andrew's $35 billion in losses, along with the $44 billion in losses from the Northridge, Calif., earthquake in 1994, made even some in Washington stagger. A House Bipartisan Natural Disasters Task Force, a Senate Bipartisan Task Force on Funding Disaster Relief and even Al Gore's "National Performance Review" took FEMA to task. The Gore group report noted that "the ready availability of federal funds may actually contribute to disaster losses by reducing incentives for hazard mitigation and preparedness."

 The result was that FEMA underwent another reorganization and announced in 1995 that one of its main goals was to "reduce the loss of life, property and the environment (sic) by 50 percent over the next 25 years." Early in 2001, when that goal and reality were clearly headed in opposite directions, a new administration's first FEMA director, Bush confidant Joe Allbaugh, testified before Congress that federal assistance was "an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management."

 Nothing changed, though. With disaster relief seen as a federal responsibility, local and state governments have a license to be improvident, and even a fiduciary responsibility to local taxpayers not to spend money that Washington will otherwise provide. Bailouts encourage sleep-ins.

 We need to find new ways to offer and fund disaster relief. We also need to examine the cost to the individuals who receive not just emergency assistance, but long-term FEMA support. Just as local and state officials have come to see themselves not as leaders but as lobbyists for more federal aid, so many evacuees ask not what they can do for themselves, but what the country can do for them.