Wilma: A lesson learned?

With lines at distribution points growing thousands deep and criticism getting louder, Gov. Jeb Bush arrived in post-Hurricane Wilma southeast Florida armed with a confident message.

“My heart goes out to people that have lost a lot, and they can rest assured that the state government and the federal government will be working to provide support,” Bush said in Miami on Oct. 25, a day after Wilma’s cross-state strike, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In private, the governor sounded less assured.

“This Wilma is a bitch,” Bush typed that evening in an e-mail to a longtime political ally.

Pardon the governor for his salty language. Of the eight hurricanes that slammed into Florida during a 15-month span in 2004 and 2005, Wilma, it seems, caused him the most trouble of them all.

There were stronger and more catastrophic storms, but Wilma still tore holes in Florida’s well-rehearsed emergency response plans like no other hurricane in recent memory.

The Daily News reviewed approximately 1,400 e-mails that zoomed in and out of Bush’s inbox between Oct. 22 and Nov. 1 last year, two days before and seven days after Wilma hit the state. Printed out, the documents are slightly more than a foot thick.

The communications they contain offer a rare look inside the mind of one of the most celebrated and reviled politicians in Florida history — and a potential future presidential candidate — at a crucial point in his governorship.

And they show a fully engaged Bush challenging his top emergency manager to improve a response that was, by Bush’s standards, “not good enough.”

Hurricane Wilma became the first hurricane to smack into Collier County dead-on in 45 years when it made landfall just south of Marco Island before dawn on Oct. 24. The 120 mph winds blew out the windows of condominiums as far away as Naples and drowned Everglades City beneath several feet of water.

Defying expectations, the storm lost little steam as it raced across the state. In Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, winds reached a sustained 100 mph, knocking out power to millions on the densely populated coast.

Southeast Florida residents gathered in long lines for water and ice at distribution points set up by the state and federal government. Some waited for hours for shipments that never came. Their complaints turned into unwanted nationwide publicity that called to mind, albeit on a smaller scale, the furor that followed the federal government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast.

In Wilma’s case, the supplies were in place, but the trucks carrying them were diverted for lengthy refueling trips or their drivers simply got lost.

“Here is the other side from the team,” Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate explained in an Oct. 25 e-mail to Bush. Emergency workers had to refuel 280 empty trucks at the South Florida Fairgrounds in Palm Beach County and moved them to the distribution sites within 30 to 45 minutes, he wrote.

“Not good enough,” Bush replied 14 minutes later. “We knew where the sites were to be set up.”

In another e-mail exchange the following morning, Bush told Fugate that the delays in ice and water deliveries to Broward and Miami-Dade were “not acceptable.”

“Hopefully,” Bush added, “today will be a better day.”

“If not, I’m at your pleasure on my continue(d) usefulness to you and the state,” Fugate wrote back. Fugate’s spokesman, Mike Stone, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Over the next few days, in a series of public appearances across storm-torn South Florida, Bush repeatedly placed the blame for the lumbering response squarely on his shoulders. Here’s why:

“I was trying to protect (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), which has done a better job here in Florida,” the governor wrote Oct. 27 to a female supporter who had urged Bush not to apologize to “those people crying the blues.”

The tack worked, said Scott Morris, FEMA’s director of long-term recovery in Florida.

“Everyone was looking for any chink in the armor in Florida at the time,” Morris said Wednesday. “I was so impressed when he took the blame for that. He didn’t have to do that and he did. ... That took a tremendous amount of heat off us.”

As Wilma approached the southwest coast, the state and federal government set a goal of putting food, water and ice at distribution points within 24 hours after the hurricane passed.

“We darn near pulled it off, but we probably set the bar too high,” Morris said, adding that workers eventually handed out more commodities in the first two weeks after Wilma than what was distributed during the entire 2004 storm season in Florida.

“He was trying to fall on the sword to be a good soldier,” University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett said after Bush’s e-mail was read to him.

FEMA, along with Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, were still stinging from criticism over the government’s sluggish response to Katrina’s crippling blow to New Orleans and southern Mississippi. A week before Wilma’s arrival, Jeb Bush argued in front of a congressional panel that states should lead the response to emergencies.

True to his word, Bush was deeply involved in Florida’s response to Wilma.

When a government consultant told Bush via e-mail that a downed power line was halting rail traffic south of Lake Worth in Palm Beach County, the governor responded: “I am on it.”

Tracy Duda Chapman, vice president and general counsel for A. Duda & Sons, a large agricultural company, alerted the governor to the devastation at the company’s work-force housing complex in Belle Glade southeast of Lake Okeechobee. About 100 mobile homes were gutted.

“I did have a contact with FEMA and they were helpful, but there are very defined rules on who qualifies for a FEMA trailer,” Chapman said Wednesday. “All of our people would have had to apply for housing.”

Bush relayed the message through bureaucratic channels that led to a mobile home dealer in George that had some mobile homes available for sale.

A. Duda & Sons has raised thousands of dollars largely for Republican candidates, including $18,000 for the 2006 election cycle, according to opensecrets.org. Chapman said she doubts her company’s past contributions influenced Bush’s response.

“I think Gov. Bush is a very caring and conscientious person. Regardless of whether we gave a contribution or not, he would have responded to the needs of rural communities,” Chapman said.

In the days after Wilma, Bush’s prominent well-wishers included Christian pop musician Michael W. Smith (“Been praying for you with all that is going on with the hurricane damage.”), former Florida House Speaker turned powerful lobbyist John Thrasher (“Another great job on the hurricane.”) and Tampa TV news reporter Don Germaise (“... You are a great leader to say the buck stops at your office for the slow emergency response in south Florida.”)

“Even a guy like Jeb Bush needs the people around him to let him know how they think he’s doing,” said Thrasher.

A large majority of Floridians apparently think he’s doing all right. At the end of the 2004 hurricane season, 80 percent of respondents in a Quinnipiac University poll approved of the state’s response to the storms; after 2005, that approval rating fell to 69 percent.

“It shows that Floridians were relatively less satisfied,” Jewett said. “But in most public opinion polls if you can get 69 percent of people to agree on anything, you’re thankful.”

Bush, his aides say, has a BlackBerry “glued” to himself virtually all the time and responds to most of his e-mails. Given the large volume of responses, few messages stray beyond a sentence or two.

Thrasher, the recipient of Bush’s “bitch” remark, said: “That’s Jeb.”

Bush’s press office said the governor wouldn’t have time to respond by telephone to questions for this story. And Bush didn’t return a message seeking comment over e-mail.

But Kristy Campbell, a Bush spokeswoman, did. In an e-mail, she elaborated on Bush’s calling Wilma a “bitch” this way: “The governor is not a fan of hurricanes unless they are University of Miami students suited up for a game.”

- - -

Excerpts from e-mails:

From: John Thrasher (former Florida House speaker, now a lobbyist)

To: Jeb Bush

Time: Oct. 25, 9:32 p.m.

Hope this finds you and your well. Another great job on the hurricane. I’m watching the world Series. Great pictures of your mother and brother sitting to the right of home plate! Take care and see you soon. JET

From: Jeb Bush

To: John Thrasher

Time: Oct. 25, 9:42 p.m.

this wilma is a bitch.

- - -

From: Craig Fugate (Florida Emergency Management Director)

To: Jeb Bush

Time: Oct. 25, 7:43 p.m.

Governor, here is the other side from the team. As a result of empty fuel tanks, Connie Nunn (manager of the South Florida Fairgrounds staging area) had to refuel every truck before sending them out. Trucks continued to roll in through noon today with empty tanks. As each truck came in, Connie checked them in, refueled them, (gave) the driver the POD (point of distribution) address, and moved them out to a POD within 30-45 minutes. He had over 280 trucks to move.

From: Jeb Bush

To: Craig Fugate

Time: Oct. 25, 7:57 p.m.

Not good enough. We knew where the sites were to be set up.

- - -

From: Marty Fiorentino (a consultant)

To: Jeb Bush

Time: Oct. 27, 11:54 a.m.

CSX (a rail company) needs help with FP&L (Florida Power & Light). City of Miami is about out of Chlorine — running out of drinking water. FP&L has a power line across our tracks just south of Lake Worth. Can’t get them to respond. ... I know everyone is swamped, but thought your office could get this to the right place.

From: Jeb Bush

To: Marty Fiorentino

Time: Oct. 27, 5:12 p.m.

I am on it.