FEMA

While I was watching the events in New Orleans last week, one question kept popping up in my head:  where's the show of force?  Where's the aid?  Let's all keep this in mind:  before the Hurricane hit, the Mayor of New Orleans asked everyone to leave the city in advance of the storm.   Most people got out, but sadly, many were left behind.   Sure, there could have been a better effort done before hand, but I don't think those that had the authority to send aid prior to the hurricane realized that levy system in  New Orleans wasn't made to withstand a cat 4 Hurricane.   There is alot of blame that can be passed around, but, after reading this story, I have to say that FEMA so dropped the ball on this.  FEMA was desinged to react to an event such as this, and they basically took their time in supplying aid.   If you read the story, you'll see the head of FEMA seemed to be more concenred with showing "a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organisations and the general public" than anything else.  Well, how about doing your job right?  That would have taken care of all your image worries. 

Sure, if the levies held this catastrohpy would have been avoided in New Orleans.  But they didn't hold up, 80% of the city became flooded, and now we're left with finger pointing and what if's. 

Leaked Katrina memo increases pressure on disaster chief
By Jenny Booth, Times Online

US politicians have called for the head of America's disaster management agency to resign for failing to respond adequately to the New Orleans floods.

NI_MPU('middle'); Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), waited until five hours after Hurricane Katrina had struck before putting out an appeal for staff to help deal with the disaster, it emerged today.

In a memo to his boss Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, he proposed that the initial wave of 1,000 emergency workers would not be in place for two days, and that a further 1,000 would take a week to arrive. The delay was while staff were trained.

In his letter he describes Katrina - thought to have killed more than three times as many people as the 9/11 terror attacks - merely as a "near catastrophic event". The memo has now been leaked on the internet.

Before the storm, Fema had positioned front-line rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

On August 29, the day that the hurricane hit land, Mr Brown also warned fire and rescue services outside Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama not to send in emergency workers unless specifically asked for help from local authorities.

In mitigation, a Homeland Security spokesman, Russ Knocke, said that Mr Brown's memo aimed to assemble a taskforce to co-ordinate with victims and community groups.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.

"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn’t work," said Mr Knocke. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."

Mr Knocke said the 48-hour period was to ensure workers had adequate training. "They were training to help the lifesavers."

In another part of his memo that has struck a jarring note with the US public, Mr Brown tells Fema staff that one of their duties is to make the agency look good.

"Convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organisations and the general public," he writes.

Democratic Senators Barbara Mikulski and Hillary Clinton said that Mr Brown should resign. Mrs Clinton told CBS’s The Early Show that she "would have never appointed such a person" and said that President Bush should have picked someone with more experience.

Mr Brown was previously head of the International Arabian Horse Association for nine years.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1769180,00.html