Must read: "Who Destroyed FEMA?"
 

The following article was posted by a fellow Pelicanite in the topic titled, <b>"Bush and co. are horrible ... I am sooo ashamed"</b>.

But I decided to extricate it from the topic because I want as many people to read this article as possible.

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Who Destroyed FEMA?

By HENRY BREITROSE

Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

About the author:

Henry Breitrose is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University.

the article comes off as partisan. Do you have other FEMA objective info ?

There's detailed articles on the topic in the NY Times and Washington Post. Not perfectly objective, perhaps, but worth reading. If you can't find the links, I'll dig them up and post.

That'd be good, John.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301653.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02response.html

And articles on the finger-pointing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/04/AR2005090401337.html

As well as a link I posted in another thread

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/

By the way, it is perfectly clear that Joe Allbaugh, FEMA head from 2/01 to 3/03, got the job via political patronage (Bush campaign manager in 2000 and in gubernatorial race, no disaster management/emergency response experience at all). So did current FEMA head Michael Brown (Allbaugh's college roommate, lawyer whose prior experience was as Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horses Association, also no experience at all in disaster/emergency response.) I really have no idea why FEMA isn't run by someone with some relevant experience, e.g. police or military or emergency services.

Brown has really been putting his foot in his mouth - e.g on 9/1 he was upbeat about the relief effort (things going "relatively well"), blaming the victims, and saying he had to be careful about getting rescue personnel to the city earlier ("Otherwise, we would have faced an even higher death toll"). http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/ But firing people is viewed as an admission of failure by the current Administration, so Brown's job is probably safe.

Thanks John!

ditto

Amazing...

WSJ

http://interactive.wsj.com/dividends/retrieve.cgi?id=/text/wsjie/data/SB112562889661629997.djm&d2hconverter=display-d2h&template=dividends


http://interactive.wsj.com/dividends/retrieve.cgi?id=/text/wsjie/data/SB112546519831627644.djm&d2hconverter=display-d2h&template=dividends

There are lots of competing interests for federal dolars and attention. I guess it just depends on how much you are willing to spent to always be ready to bail out folks who choose to live in places where natural disaster is likely. People/local governments need to be held responsible for the choice they make...and they should be the ones who take care of mergency planning/management for problems unique to them/their area. Living on the coastline, below sea level is a choice you can make, but why would one expect the folks who choose a bit wiser to be prepared to bail them out at a moments notice. If the folks do make the choice to live in these places, a little local planning and preparation would go a long way. For example, folks who live in the middle of North Dakota don't wait until there is a blizzard and start whining for the government to immediately provide snow plows, heating oil, parkas, thermal underwear, and the military. They are prepared..have generators and food, water, and medicine stocked up, weapons to protect themselves, etc. Local emergency workers handle most problems....as they should.

yep, a city's levees collapsing leaving the place a couple of metres under water and god knows what else is just like a blizzard. Uhuh. Nice one fint.

Of course it is. Not much difference. Neither was unexpected. Both were easy to prepare for..both are expensive to prepare for. When one lives below sea level, next to a levee that is rated for less than a cat 3 hurricane...one should expect to be prepared to evacuate when a cat 5 is inbound. Not to mention the obvious...elect city/state official who would require new buildings to be elevated (housing/building code is local in the US)...or the obvious...allocate local funds to repair/reinforce/raise the levees.

Well I've been through a flood but not a blizzard so I guess I'm not really qualified to compare. I can imagine though that it's easier to keep falling snow out of the house than rising water. From what I understand, most of those stuck in NO didn't choose to stay - just no other option. Again, it's only what's making it through the media to this side of the globe.
One thing I do agree with (I think this might be a first fint), is that it makes a bit of sense to allocate funds to the levee thing. That seems to be the point of the thread to begin with.

If one does not plan/prepare...they are screwed in a blizzard. If the roof structure is not built to hold the weight of a great deal of snow, it will collapse and the snow will also be inside the house. Also, it is prudent to climb up and remove large, heavy snows. The problem is usually keeping the cold out, rather than the snow, since large snows are usually accompanied sunzero temperatures, downed power lines, and an inability to deliver heating oil/gas.
That is why preparations must be local...there is no reason to send snowplows to Florida....each situation is very different...but equally deadly.
Similarly, that is why local government should address such problems through the local tax structure instead of at the federal level. If it is cost prohibitive to make an area relatively safe...people will not locate there due to the high taxes and will opt for safer areas. The rest of the country should not have to pay for bad local decisions.
The city made no attempt to evacuate citizens before the storm other than to ask them to leave. They could have made evacuation mandatory, offered busses, etc. Then most of the police (who should have stayed) did leave. Then, instead of conmtrolling looters/crime, the local govt sympathized with them and allowed the situation to get way out of hand.

Flint, you and I usually agree. Does it make more sense to build a city araund the 4th largest port on earth, one of the largest oil & gas reserves in the US and some of the richest fishing grounds in our country and then protect it as our activity washes away the protective coastline, or is it better to build a city in the desert where water has to be dammed and piped hundreds of miles so we can have access to slot machines and whores?

There are lots of competing interests for federal dolars and attention. I guess it just depends on how much you are willing to spent to always be ready to bail out folks who choose to live in places where natural disaster is likely.


Where on this Earth is natural disaster NOT likly? The folks who choose to live in the gulf coast do alot for this country, considering that this country is fueled by fuel.

Exactly! The multi-million dollar mansions on the coast of Fl or Mass or NY are there purely for the enjoyment of the ultra-rich. Many are uninsurable due to location. Estates that fall off bluffs or burn up in wildfires in CA are again where they are solely for the enjoyment of multi-millionaires. If the govt can sponsor their re-building for mere whimsy then I see no problem doing it here.

As a southerner myself, I have nothing against LA or New Orleans... I am just trying to apply logic. If the natural attributes of the city/location are that wonderous enough to warrent living there in spite of the risk (and they may well be)...there should have been plenty of revenue/reason to build the levees and buildings properly. It should be in the building codes just as much as hot water heater retaining straps are in the code for areas prone to earthquakes. bad local (good old boypolitics) government and squandering of revenue is the problem in Louisiana.

If I build my home in the desert, I would not expect FEMA to bring me water if I had a drrought/dry well....or provide A/C if the temperatures were excessive. There are limits to what federal govt should/can do. Now, if I wanted to get together with other residents of the desert and build a pipeline, dam, well, etc to provide myself more water for (insurance)...that would be different.

I own a house in North Carolina that was built in the 20's. As all the homes in that area of that era...the site was selected carefully. Noone in the 20's expected the govt to bail them out if they did something stupid. (note the French Quarter and much of the older areas did not flood badly) Recent floods washed away/damaged several homes that were built more recently..on very low lying plots. There was no damage to my home. Should I be taxed to build some sort of diversion to protect their homes in the future..or to rebuild the damage...even though they knowingly built them in a flood area?

Uh, have you never been to NO???? There are plenty of slot machines and whores there, too. Well, not today, but pre-Katrina.

I didn't see anyone here *****ing about FEMAs policies when Florida was helped out.

But now that it's Louisiana and Mississippi, I hear that FEMA shouldn't be helping, or people shouldn't expect it to help?

WTF do all these folks pay taxes to the Feds for? FEMA was helpful to me after the '94 quake. They set up a loan for me to repair damage to my house. They were very visible and efficient. I was so impressed with them that I sent a 'thank you' letter.

FEMA failed in Louisiana and Mississippi -- failed to do anywhere near the job they did in several past Florida hurricanes. BUT, their response was comparable to the first big hurricane they had to deal with in Florida: slow. It seems they have no serious pre-disaster planning, but just feel their way along with each state infrastructure as needed.

I don't think anyone has said that all citizens should depend on FEMA -- although that's the way the apologists for this administration are trying to spin it. But in any hierarchy, the highest authority (with the greatest resources) is going to have to take some responsibility for all the government relief efforts the taxpayers *thought* they were paying for. So NO and LA are making FEMA look bad. And on top of that, FEMA looks like it's being mismanaged by yet another recipient of political welfare.