Smoke, soot from wildfires meant `free money' for some.

Publication: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal

Byline: Sally Kestin

LOS ANGELES _ Word of "free money" from the Federal Emergency Management Agency spread through neighborhoods here like the wildfires burning in the hills miles away in the fall of 2003.

In the city of Compton, south of downtown Los Angeles, residents encouraged each other to claim that smoke ruined old furniture and broken appliances.

In the Watts section of Los Angeles, public housing tenants called FEMA saying ash damaged their clothes and the paint on their cars.

South of there, in the city of Long Beach, all the residents of a low-rent apartment building got money after one discovered the government would pay for furniture soiled by soot when windows were left open.

"The whole thing is a surprise to me," said Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach, where 1,922 residents received $1.7 million from FEMA...

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