Irma is battering its way towards South Florida, where it will be the first category 5 hurricane to strike the state since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Aid for victims of Andrew was infamously slow to arrive and chaotically distributed when it finally turned up. Federal and state authorities waiting for Irma say that they learned their lesson from mistakes made then, and that nothing like that could happen again.
I doubt that: 10 days after Andrew, I was in Homestead, a devastated town 20 miles south of Miami, where I was warmly greeted by local people who initially thought I was an insurance adjuster or a government official come to help them. They were only a little less welcoming when I explained that I was a British journalist, since their expectations of speedy government assistance were realistically low
READ MORE HERE: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hurricane-irma-destruction-south-florida-america-response-disaster-what-happens-now-a7936876.html