Quote:
Originally posted by Rodeo
Well, we have an honest disagreement. I think your emergency plan is deeply flawed. It rests entirely on the assumption that "local officials are already enacting their plan." If they are not, or if there is no plan, the whole response breaks down, with awful consequences.
Nor do I think that DHS/FEMA should be regulated to a role of doing whatever some Deputy Mayor tells them to. FEMA is the professional emergency manager. The locals may or may not have their act together in that regard, and they surely don't have a $6 Billion budget like FEMA.
The Governor asks for the President to declare an emergency. That triggers federal authority to act. Once declared, FEMA should be responsible. They have professionals, they have $6 Billion, and they will and should be accountable.
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I guess you are right; we dissagree on the basic principle of how emergency response is planned and enacted. I do not believe FEMA, or any federal agency for that matter, can have comprehensive plans for every locale, every town, every city in the entire United States for any situation that may arrise. They do not have the manpower or funding, and I really don't think most of us would want them to.
Why not eliminate all city, county, and state government and put it all in the hands of the feds? What responsibilities should local governments retain vs. give up to the feds? What are local governments best suited to do, better qualified to carry out, and have more knowledge of than the feds? Where would we draw the line? Maybe that is all topic for debate in the aftermath of all of this.
For now, however, the infrastructure and law that we have in place requires that local governments have their emergency plans in place and take command of the situation. I think possibly part of our dissagreement is that you are stating how you would like it to be; that FEMA should have dissaster plans in place for every contingency in every locale accross the country. I'm simply pointing out that they do not, nor are they required to, today. That is what the locals are for. To meet your expectations would require a massive build-up of staff and funding beyond where FEMA is today. Even then, as has been demonstrated by every other federal agency that's tried to exert local control, they could never do as good of a job as the locals. They would simply never have the level of insight and knowledge of local conditions required to be successfull, at least not at the level of the locals. Assuming, of course, that unlike New Orleans, the locals did their job.