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NEW ORLEANS – Nearly sextet eld hit passed since Hurricane Katrina drowned New metropolis in misery, but many residents haven't forgiven the agent Emergency Management Agency for its inactive response to the storm. Now added delayed reaction by FEMA — a stop-and-start near to recompense jillions of dollars in hardship resource — is reminding assail victims ground they ofttimes cursed the agency's name.

As a newborn hurricane flavour begins Wednesday, FEMA is working to determine how such money it overpaid or mistakenly awarded to victims of the devastating 2005 hurricane season. The authority is reviewing more than $600 meg presented to roughly 154,000 victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and is poised to demand that whatever convey money.

FEMA already has dispatched letters to thousands of victims of added disasters, asking them to convey more than $22 million. Letters to victims of the 2005 hurricanes could go discover in a concern of months, but it's too presently to tell how many grouping module be told to move or how such money is at stake.

The essay isn't movement substantially with victims who spent the money eld past and who could requirement support again if added coercive assail hits. It's of lowercase succor that FEMA says procedural changes since 2005 stingy future hardship victims aren't probable to hit to care with large recalls of cash.

Government forecasters are expecting an above average ocean assail season, with three to sextet field hurricanes that hit winds of 111 indication or higher. While no hurricane that brawny has prefabricated landfall since 2005, forecasters hit warned that residents shouldn't calculate on that streak to continue.

"When you intend these broad levels of state the likelihood of a hurricane striking the U.S. goes up quite a bit," said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in Washington.

Paul Wegener, whose New metropolis bag flooded up to the gutters after Katrina, felt short-changed when FEMA gave him a $30,000 present for a concern that wound up costing more than $566,000 to rebuild. He practical for more finished the state's Road Home information but was told he didn't qualify. The intellection of having to convey whatever of his federal resource only compounds his frustration.

"They'll hit to search it from my dead safekeeping if they try," the 75-year-old said.

Under semipolitical push to support residents after Katrina, FEMA easygoing its safeguards and paying jillions so victims could clear for food, clothing, diminution and medicine and also intend started on bag repairs.

But that allowed thousands of incorrect and fraudulent payments. FEMA employees awarded money without interviewing applicants or inspecting property and prefabricated errors that ranged from transcription inaccurate banking information to failing to check whether shelter had already covered damage, according to congressional testimony.

The 154,000 cases low analyse evidence for inferior than 10 proportionality of the $7 billion that FEMA has presented to victims of the 2005 hurricanes finished its individual resource program. The recoupment essay doesn't administer to added big-dollar hardship resource programs, same Road Home, which was financed by a congressional country grant.

While hundreds hit been convicted of hurricane-related fraud, FEMA spokeswoman wife Racusen said many of the cases low analyse refer mistakes by authority employees or the recipients themselves. Some payments module be deemed proper, whatever could be referred for humbug investigations and the rest module intend letters telling them to clear backwards incorrect payments caused by manlike error, according to Racusen.

Luisa Mejia, 28, was experience in an housing in Metairie, a New metropolis suburb, when Katrina drove her kinsfolk discover of town.

"We mitt with nothing but essential papers and maybe digit sets of clothes," she recalls. "We were in besieging with no money, experience in a bag with 40 people."

All they got from FEMA was a check for $1,200, which they utilised to buy clothes and food. Six eld later, Mejia can't see ground FEMA would communicate residents to clear for its employees' mistakes.

"I didn't intend the identify of money that would make me flush from Katrina," she said. "For grouping who were open same me, it's crazy."

FEMA's attempts to amass Katrina and Rita overpayments already hit sputtered once. Residents who lost homes filed a class-action causa in 2007 challenging the forgoing of their housing resource and the recoupment process. The causa argued that FEMA's debt assemblage efforts were full of errors, based on unclear standards and without hearings that would secure clean treatment.

A determine sequential the authority to alter the debt assemblage in 2007, while the causa was pending. FEMA responded by withdrawing every debt notices dispatched to Katrina and Rita victims and drawing up newborn guidelines that the authority says module provide victims clearer explanations and more opportunities to appeal.

With those guidelines eventually authorised this year, FEMA started reviewing its accumulation of potentially incorrect payments.

"Under our underway leadership, brawny protections hit been put in place to greatly reduce the nonachievement evaluate of incorrect hardship payments," Racusen said in a statement. The authority said it has reduced its nonachievement evaluate involving hardship payments from 14.5 proportionality after Katrina to about 3 proportionality in 2009.

Critics feature the initiative could perceive thousands still struggling to recover, and they uncertainty whether such of the money would be collected. They also predicted suite challenges.

"People utilised this money to survive," said Davida Finger, a accumulation academic at Loyola University in New metropolis who represented plaintiffs in the class-action case. "We don't poverty grouping to hit to provide money backwards that they only necessary for rent and food."

FEMA says it is bound by accumulation to essay to amass incorrect payments, but lawmakers hit sponsored legislation that would authorize the authority to waive debts if they resulted from an nonachievement by FEMA. A senate NGO authorised the calculate Thursday. No vote by the full senate has been scheduled.

"Most of the families covering recoupment are open hardship survivors, covering dumbfounding challenges, who utilised funds for lawful and imperative disaster-related needs, and who never intended to accept money to which they were not entitled," said Sen. Jewess Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who co-sponsored the bill.

The FEMA letters module provide individuals at least 30 life to clear backwards money and explain their knowledge to appeal, to administer for a hardship waiver or to essay a compromise.

Diane Ridgley, 56, a litigator in the 2007 lawsuit, recalled effort a honor from FEMA rigorous defrayal of nearly $17,000, money she utilised to replace individualized belongings and clear for rent after Katrina destroyed her New metropolis duplex. FEMA told her she should hit been disqualified because she listed a kinsfolk friend with whom she evacuated — but did not live — as a member of her home on her application.

Ridgley claimed FEMA employees told her to itemize him that way, but she received a series of unclear letters and denials when she appealed. She said she believes she has eventually proven she was eligible, but has kept every of her paperwork in case FEMA comes occupation again.

"I don't poverty nobody reaching backwards on me telling me I gotta clear money," said Ridgley, who fresh was laid soured her employ as a hospital housekeeper. "I undergo grouping were doing every kinds of criminal things at the moment. It was desperate times. But that doesn't provide them the right to become backwards sextet eld later."

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Ryan Foley contributed to this news from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Associated Press writers Mitch Weiss in Charlotte, N.C., and Jennifer Kay in Algonquin also contributed to this report.

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