Former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, testified today on issues surrounding FEMA’s handling of the Katrina disaster, and blamed local officials for the poor response. Surprised?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, who resigned under a hail of criticism about the slow response to Hurricane Katrina, on Tuesday blamed local officials and said his agency had done a good job.
“My biggest mistake was not recognizing, by Saturday (before the storm made landfall), that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” Michael Brown told a House of Representatives panel looking into the aftermath of the catastrophic storm.
“I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade (Louisiana) Governor (Kathleen) Blanco and (New Orleans) Mayor (Ray) Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together,” he said. “I just couldn’t pull that off.”
[…]He refused to concede FEMA made serious mistakes and rejected reports that he had been unqualified for his job.
“I have overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I am doing. And I think I do a pretty darn good job of it,” he said.
[…]”I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA’s failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans,” Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) said.
[…]Brown said the response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people and inundated New Orleans, went more smoothly in Alabama and Mississippi, which have Republican governors, than in Louisiana. Gov. Blanco is a Democrat.
“It’s my belief that FEMA did a good job in the Gulf states,” Brown said. He said most of the problems were due to a failure of state and local officials to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans earlier than Sunday, the day before the storm hit land.
Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order on Saturday before the storm and made it mandatory the next day.[…]
The inquiry has been marked by partisan bickering. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California has refused to name members to the Republican-led panel saying it would not undertake an honest investigation of the Republican White House.
Pelosi on Tuesday said Brown’s testimony underscored the need for a non-partisan independent commission investigation of the federal response to the hurricane.
“Surprise, surprise, surprise. The administration sends over their crony to testify and whitewash the committee that it wasn’t their (the Bush administration’s) fault,” she told reporters.
Committee Chairman Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement that the committee will conduct a “tough and thorough” investigation.”[…]
Oh jeez. As for this committee or commission investigation (whatever they’re going to call it) into ‘what went wrong,’ will we truly get any honest answers from them?
He should talk.
I have lived in Louisiana for 30 years and it IS dysfunctional.
We natives refer to our state and large municipal governments as a, “Banana Republic” Why? Because of the astronomical amount of malfeasance in office and fiscal incompetence of piss-poor elected officials like Ray Nagin.
In one of our gubernatorial elections Edwin Edwards, a Democrat (now in Federal Prison for shady financial dealings with huge quantities of state money) and an individual who was elected repeatedly as governor was running (prior to his conviction) against a man named David Duke (an avowed white supremacist). We had bumper stickers in the state reading “Vote for the Crook -Not for the Nazi”
Federal monies for NOLA levee improvement have been systematically diverted by LOCAL officials to other more superficial projects for 40 years. We all know this. We know precisely where to place blame. YOU people who do not live here don’t. But still you bloviate on about issues of which you have not one iota of personal experience.
Let’s compare to Texas and Southwest Louisiana (which is on the fringes of the big city corruption zone) during and after Rita. How did they do such a vastly superior job of protecting the live of their citizens? How did Houston (which is vastly larger than New Orleans) evacuate so much better than New Orleans? Why are there so many fewer deaths?
Must be FUNCTIONAL local officials, not like our procrastinaing hand-wringing excuse for a governor in Louisiana (for whom I will not vote again–fool me once, shame on you) or Ray Nagin whose IQ appears to be lower than his shoe size. Local news just said that he will have to discipline about 50% of the New Orleans police force for going awol during Katrina. Now isn’t a disciplined police force the responsibility of a city’s mayor? Wonder how many of them went looting, like that big fat (and unfortunately black, like me) looting cop they showed over and over on the cable networks. New Orleans finest! Kinda gives one food for thought.
Anyway, we all know, as you will happily tell us, Dubya is not competent to overhaul FEMA in just three short weeks, nor competent do do anything well (according to you). So, the Federal Government under Dubya’s leadership could not have possibly have had any kind of positive impact on Rita’s not having been such a disaster in terms of human life.
Cheap shots like your post are annoying. Pardon me but your hatred of anything Bush is showing.
P.S. I will never vote for that hand-wringing, indecisive wimp Blanco again. Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me! Anybody know where NOLA can find a good efficient Republican mayor on the order of Rudy Guliani to oversee the rebuilding efforts?
As this story goes on people are going to find out that what Brown says is absolutely true. No amount of demagoguery, or sanctimonious soapbox operas are going to change the simple facts that:
1. FEMA doesn’t parachute into a disaster area and just take over. They are there to help and coordinate with local and state emergency officials. There simply isn’t federal authority to just take over because of incompetent local and state emergency managers.
2. FEMA can’t order and don’t execute mandatory evacuations.
3. FEMA is a small agency and are not first responders.
Although FEMA could have done a better job in some areas, this was primarily a failure of state and local government. The governor was simply overwhelmed and incompetent. The mayor acted like a spectator rather than a public official with responsibility to his constituents. They had the authority and responsibility to implement the N.O. evacuation plan earlier and to the letter (complete with public transportation). They simply didn’t do it.
Brown did about as well as you could expect someone who fudged in his resume about his experience in disaster planning and response and who’s biggest claim to fame was being director of a organization involving horses. They screwed up by turning a cabinet post into a political back-scratching appointment and putting FEMA in Homeland Security when in this country we are more likely to see natural disasters than terrorism on a large scale.
And the feds did exactly what my city does with incompetent, underqualified employees who screw up. It lauds their efforts, then takes them off a project, then pushes them to resign, then hires them back as a “consultant” which is a fancy term for a highly-paid stiff. with close economic, personal or political ties with the people at the top of the food chain. Oh, I forgot, there’s a “whitewashing” too.
I think the Lousiana politicians were disgraceful, but w/ the exception of the military, the feds were too. The feds will point fingers locally as Brown did, The local crowd of politicians will point fingers at FEMA and the feds. They’ll squabble. The GOP and Dems. will have arm wrestling matches and pissing contests about who’s better/worse at this kind of situation.
NOTHING WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED THAT WILL HELP THE AVERAGE PERSON.
And since I loathe both Repubs and Demo politicians, with few exceptions, please don’t paint me as an apologist for liberals, conservatives, or bureaucrats.
You can’t compare Katrina and Rita. I really believe that had Katrina not happened so tragically and put a blot locally, state and federally for the rest of the world to seee, Rita would have been worse. Also, Rita itself COULD have been worse. It hit a less populated area than it could have or that Katrina hit, with less power. If it had gone straight up, it might have hit some evacuees. I don’t know many people in Lousiana, but I do know my share of Texans who evacuated and it was a nightmare, which could have been planned better. If it had happened to Katrina, that would have been worse as well.
I really believe, and certainly hope that Katrina would have changed things to the point that there will be a “Before Katrina” and an “After Katrina”. But I don’t know. Governmental hacks and wind bags have a short memory for tragedy that’s not directly at their door steps.
Yes, yes, guys. And what about when Brown talked about how much better things went in Mississippi and the Congressman from Mississippi talked about how utterly absent FEMA was in his district? And about how the local authorities had to loot local stores to get needed supplies? And how about how Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn) was right there defending Brown – not? Does Rep. Shays hate all things Bush? And how about Brown’s explanation of how he “coordinated” the evacuation of New Orleans (“I asked them to start the evacuation,” – hardly the definition of “coordinating”).? So, the only things Brown did wrong were to not have enough media briefings & not realize that LA is disfunctional? Whew! That’s a relief. Knowing that the lack of interdepartmental & intra-FEMA communications are a result of a disfunctional state government & lack of media briefings is a relief.
Yes, Brown is only telling the truth and everybody else is lying. Thank the various divinities that you were able to set me straight on that.
Ah, yes. The effective evacuation of Houston. 150 mile traffic jam moving at 10 yards/hour in 100 degree heat. The call from the gov. for those still on the road to turn around and go home. That was fantastic. The real problem is that 48 or even 72 hours is not enough time to evacuate millions (or even hundreds of thousands) from a small geographic area in the USA. Think about local evacuation plans for the areas around nuclear reactors. Everybody living there who knows what they are knows that it is a joke.
We, as a country, do not take the possibility of necessary evacuation seriously. That is our problem w/ the evacuations of both NO & Houston. No serious, realistic planning for the eventuality.
(This is directed at Jake Squid’s first post)
First that moronic Rep from Mississippi was embarrassingly clueless. He apparently expects the feds to swoop in and give everyone a five gallon jug of gasoline and water bottle the day of the storm. He also has no idea about how emergency response structures are supposed to work. If first responders had to loot to get supplies then the local emergency response managers failed to do their job.
Secondly, Shays is a liberal republican. His pathetic sancomonious demagoguery isn’t a surprise to those to know him.
Third, I am interested to know how you would “coordinate” with authorities that will not make the decision they are responsible to make? Hmmm? Should he have threatened them? Tortured them? Knowing that FEMA CANNOT IMPOSE A MANDATORY EVACUATION BY LAW… knowing that state emergency response planners had an evacuation plan in place, what should have happened? Do you think they should have ignored the law? Do you think the military should have disposed the Blanco’s government in LA.? I am really interested if you have actually thought about your position beyond the emotional level that “someone needs to do something”.
… FEMA CANNOT IMPOSE A MANDATORY EVACUATION BY LAW…
Repeat after me. Imposition is not coordination. Coordination is not imposition. These are two entirely seperate concepts.
He may very well have urged them to call an evacuation, but that is a far cry from coordinating an evacuation. Coordination is not imposition. Coordination is making sure that all of the components work together. Brown did not do that. Brown may regret that he didn’t get a chance to coordinate because he couldn’t convince state & local authorities to start evacuating earlier (I haven’t heard any corroboration of his assertion, but that’s another story), but he did not coordinate the evacuation. It’s possible that he did all he could do to get an evacuation started earlier, but the man is lying (or doesn’t understand the definition of the word – which is even scarier considering he was the head of FEMA) when he says that he coordinated the evacuation.
So, are you saying that Shays is not Republican enough to be considered a Republican critic of Brown? Or that only “conservative” Republican criticism of Brown could be viewed as fair, non-partisan criticism?
The “embarrasing Rep from Mississippi” wasn’t talking about “first responders” in the part that I heard. He was talking about days afterward, he was talking about food and water, not emergency medical & rescue supplies. Though it’s always possible that I misunderstood what he was saying.
Your missing the point. A necessary condition of “coordination” is cooperation. Also, it is the direct responsibility of the state and local authorities not only to call for evacuations but also implement them. FEMA can help, but they don’t run the show. That is simply the facts.
JS: “So, are you saying that Shays is not Republican enough to be considered a Republican critic of Brown? Or that only “conservative” Republican criticism of Brown could be viewed as fair, non-partisan criticism?”
No I am saying that the position that just because Shays is a republican criticizing another republican doesn’t make his criticism valid, or even surprising.
No I am saying that the position that just because Shays is a republican criticizing another republican doesn’t make his criticism valid, or even surprising.
Ahhh. Now I understand what you were saying.
But, really, my initial comment was in response to dispassionate’s dismissal of PA’s criticism due to her “hatred of anything Bush.” Shays’ input was held up in counterpoint to that. Does his being a “liberal” republican invalidate his criticism? “Liberal” as compared to the far rightishness of the Bush admin notwithstanding, I don’t believe that Shays can be fairly characterized as a person who holds a “hatred of anything Bush.”
Your missing the point. A necessary condition of “coordination” is cooperation.
I’m going to continue to disagree with you on this because I think that you are missing the point. The point is that Brown did not coordinate the evacuation. The only way in which he “coordinated” an evacuation, according to Brown, himself, was to urge that it happen earlier. That is not coordination. If we agree with your statement about cooperation being necessary for coordination and if we take Brown’s word as truth, he could not have possibly coordinated the evacuation since he didn’t get any cooperation on his only action with regards to the evacuation.
I think that your position that Brown did, indeed, coordinate the evacuation, is tenuous at best.
No I am saying that the position that just because Shays is a republican criticizing another republican doesn’t make his criticism valid, or even surprising.
The more I think about this statement, the more ridiculous it seems to me in the context of the standard defense of Bush & his administration from any and all criticism. The standard response is to attack the validity of the criticism based on the identity of the speaker. We see that twice in this thread. Once w/ dispassionate reader dismissing PA due to her “hatred of anything Bush,” and once w/ FormerlyLarry dismissing Shays because he is a “liberal” republican. It’s the “heads I win, tails you lose” defense and it is just silly (although very effective for the last 4 3/4 years).
JS: “I think that your position that Brown did, indeed, coordinate the evacuation, is tenuous at best. ”
That is not my position at all. Since the mandatory evacuation was called too late to implement the actual evacuation plan I am not sure what coordinating was done, or could have been done. If Brown says he coordinated the evacuation I have no idea what he means by that. Could he be lying? Sure. I am no fan of Brown and I think he probably deserves some criticism. But I also am not going to pile on just out of some emotional need to scapegoat.
As I said Shays is a liberal republican that represents a liberal constituency. He stays elected by being an occasional thorn in the republican leadership’s side. He is a republican in the same way that Zell Miller is a democrat. In other words he doesn’t get any extra credibility because he is a “republican.”
Why should FEMA “coordinate” the evacuation? The whole thing would have involved local resources, including the 2/3 or 3/4 of the Louisania National Guard that was in-state when this all occurred. Seems to me that coordinating the various resources to be used in the evacuation would have been a state job, not a Federal one. It wasn’t FEMA’s fault that 300 school buses that the city’s evacuation plan called for using to bus people out of NO sat a couple of miles from the Superdome (which was filling with people) until the flood waters made them useless.
Fault FEMA for the lack of coordination of search and rescue after the fact, maybe. Even that’s dubious. But to fault them for not coordinating the evacuation seems wrong to me.
RonF,
I’m not, in this thread, faulting FEMA for not coordinating the evacuation. I’m faulting Brown for saying that he did coordinate the evacuation. I’m faulting Brown for saying that his coordination of the evacuation consisted solely of encouraging the Gov & the Mayor to evacuate sooner. Those two statements of Brown’s, when taken together, certainly seem to indicate that he is either a liar or an incompetent. Neither of those is what I want as qualities of the head of FEMA.
Please also note my comment #6, in which I voice my opinion about major evacuations in the USA.
I am also faulting the Dept for Homeland Security (and, fuck, if that isn’t a frightening name) and Bushadminco for defunding FEMA, for allowing knowledge to leave FEMA without replacing that knowledge, for appointing an entirely unqualified person to head FEMA and for not implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission wrt communications systems among other things.
*glances at watch*
I wondered how long it would take for the knee-jerk Blame Anyone But the Bush Administration (BABBA) people started crawling out of the woodwork.
Also, you know what would have been a great demonstration of Brown’s eagerness to cooridinate and effectiveness at coordination?
Several Days before Katrina hit, the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana. Unfortunately, the Federal level paperwork didn’t clear until Thursday after Katrina. Now, it is quite possible that TX or LA bureauocrats screwed up their end of the paperwork, but a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy. Given that Brown failed utterly to ensure that that paperwork was expedited, I find any claims that Brown was stymied entirely by State level refusal to do anything simply ridiculous.
The govenor of LA decided that her state did not have sufficient resources to handle what was coming, arranged additional support from a neighboring state, and the Federal government stymied her efforts. While Brown was presumably not directly for fouling up the paperwork, he was certainly responsible for ensuring that the Federal response was not crippling the state response.
This is far from the only example of the Feds screwing up lower level responses in this situation, but it is one in which the potential role of the FEMA head is most obvious.
Jesurgislac, trust me: I am by no means a member of BABBA. I think it’s absolutely absurd that 4 of the 7 people reporting to the head of FEMA are political appointees, and Bush has to wear the jacket for that. It’s just that as I read the comments on this (not just here, but all over the blogosphere), it seems to me that BBAAE (Blame Bush Above All Else) is out in full force as well. Way too many people are trying to contort the facts to fit their desire to make political points, instead of actually trying to figure out what went wrong.
From what I hear, the actions of FEMA pre-disaster was just about what it was in other disasters. Did the Feds take a hand in evacuating for hurricanes in previous years? As far as post-disaster goes, did they get substantial relief into disaster areas sooner than they did here? From what I’m able to determine, the asnwer is “no”. Now, if I’m wrong about that I’d love to see documentation thereof. I’m by no means tied to this.
We are a federal republic, not a unitary democracy. The powers of the Federal government are limited, and quite deliberately so, as the founders of the USA figured that the more distant a governmental body was from the people who were governed, the less they should be trusted (and they didn’t trust any government). In this case, disaster planning and preparedness and the execution of those plans is the responsibility of the local government first, and then the state, and then the feds. The more distant strata don’t step in until asked by the more local one. In this case, it appears from what I have read that the city had an adequate disaster plan, but completely failed to execute it. The state then apparently dithered. The plans at the federal level presume that the local and state levels are doing their jobs. I’m sure that the feds have an alternative for when the local and state levels aren’t doing their jobs because they were wiped out. But they don’t seem to have one for when the local governments are in place but ineffective through panic or incompetence. There’s a lot of legal bars to the feds declaring the locals incompetent and barging in and taking over, and quite properly so.
Who were the disaster chiefs for New Orleans and Louisania? Were they political appointees with no competence or clue? What actions did they take? Had they ever even read the plans? Let’s see them up before Congress and have them account for their actions.
By all means, if the Bush administration’s minions screwed up, flog him and them. But let’s not make a presumption that the Feds are responsible to take charge immediately for disasters, etc. in this country, because they are not, should not, and cannot be. It is a foundation of governmental philosoply in this country that government is not to be trusted, and that the more powerful it is the more it’s powers should be limited.
Let’s see an investigation at the state and local levels too, and let’s see exactly what went wrong, on all levels. If this whole thing descends into “Let’s flog the Republicans” or “Let’s flog the Democrats”, then the real causes will be deliberately obscured for political purposes and go undetected. Then those real causes won’t be rooted out of the political and governmental structures in other cities and states, and when we lose a city to earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, or a smuggled nuclear weapon, there’ll be more unnecessary loss of life.
Charles:
Several Days before Katrina hit, the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana. Unfortunately, the Federal level paperwork didn’t clear until Thursday after Katrina. Now, it is quite possible that TX or LA bureauocrats screwed up their end of the paperwork, but a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy.
Why would you presume that the head of FEMA would have been advised of an agreement between the Louisania and Texas governors concerning the National Guard? The “Department of Homeland Security” (and if that isn’t a Fascist title, I don’t know what is) is a mish-mash of various federal agencies thrown together. I would not be surprised to hear that communications among the various agencies has yet to be worked out well.
The questions I’d ask are, what are the nature of the communications between the Governors of the various states and FEMA? Between the National Guard and FEMA? Do the two governors coordinate this and let FEMA know? Do the two National Guard organizations let FEMA know? Is the structure set up such that a third party gets the information from either the Governors involved or the National Guard commanders and then let FEMA know? Did anyone let FEMA know? Or, maybe FEMA did know, told some other organization whose job it actually is to deal with this, and they did nothing.
If FEMA heard about this and did nothing, that’s one thing. But making the presumption that FEMA heard about this in the first place is unwarranted at this point. There’s also the important point of fixing the problem. By simply presuming that FEMA did hear and did nothing, we miss the possibility that communications are screwed up and miss the opportunity to fix them.
My basic philosophy on all this is, “Let’s not rush to judgement.” Let’s find out what happened first, and then assess responsibility and blame. And then lets fix the problems that can be fixed.
I say, “that can be fixed” because not all problems can be fixed by passing laws and writing regulations and plans. We get the leadership we choose in this country. If we pick leaders on the basis of how well they can make emotional appeals with high-sounding phrases instead of selecting people who seem to have a rational understanding of government and the ability to get things done, we’re going to end up with messes like this. Bad leaders will screw up good plans.
Oh jeez. As for this committee or commission investigation (whatever they’re going to call it) into ‘what went wrong,’ will we truly get any honest answers from them?
Pseudo-Adrienne, I share your pessimism. Regardless of which side of the aisle they sit on, the politicians are likely going to try to use this process to pillory the other side rather than do what they can to see that it doesn’t happen again.
Well, seeing that it doesn’t happen again would cost money. To paraphrase John Lewis, everyone knows that it’s much more important to bomb the poor overseas than it is to assist the poor locally. Business as usual.
RonF, nothing in Charles’s comment, including the part you quoted, says he made “the presumption that FEMA heard about this in the first place”. I went back and read it carefully.
Charles said, in part: a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy
You’re presuming that Charles thinks Mike Brown was “a competent FEMA head”. As far as I can see, no one but George W. Bush and Mike Brown himself thinks this.
It’s possible that Mike Brown knew about the agreement and did nothing: it’s also possible that he was so incompetent as a FEMA head that he didn’t even know about this agreement. I think that the second possibility is more strongly implied by Charles’s post.
There is no excuse for this. DHL subsumed FEMA precisely so that federal agencies could work together under the DHL umbrella in case of a terrorist attack. We may presume that had al-Qaeda, rather than a hurricane, managed to breach the levees, the response by FEMA/DHL would have been exactly as incompetent, since it appears that Mike Brown’s idea of forward planning for a disaster is that he should begin planning when he’s told the disaster has actually happened. They’ve had four years to get their act together and this is the result?
It seems to me that FEMA and the feds main failing was failure to control the situaion after the hurricane. They made many bad decisions, like bungling the red cross’sdistribution efforts, not cordinating relief efforts and teams fromother states, and just generally hestitating to bring any order. Part of the feds’poweristoact be a figure-head that peoplecanrally behind and to show that everything is under control, but they were too afraid to send the suits in even to give a speach and do some talking because of a bitof looting and shooting.
It might have been localofficialsfault that evacuations didn’t happen in an organized fashion but FEMA needs to step up and admit that it was hesitatinginthe faceof crisis ans everyone knows thats the last thing you should doif you wantto stay alive.
It’s possible that Mike Brown knew about the agreement and did nothing: it’s also possible that he was so incompetent as a FEMA head that he didn’t even know about this agreement. I think that the second possibility is more strongly implied by Charles’s post.
I’m still trying to figure out how anyone figures Mike Brown’s competence as FEMA head is tied to knowing about an agreement between the governors of Texas and Louisania when so far there’s no evidence that he or his agency was ever told about it.
If you want to indict him or DHS on this score, show me where you have knowledge that they were informed of this agreement. I’m willing to entertain the notion, and will join you in criticizing them if they were. But so far there’s no proof. To say that they should have been informed makes sense to me, but saying that they actually were and did nothing about it is a presumption, not established fact.
We will never know whether the evacuation of Galveston and Houston was better coordinated or effective, even, because Rita didn’t hit the same way.
If Katrina had been less devastating to NOLA, we wouldn’t know today how ineffective the evacuation was. We wouldn’t know how many people were actually left behind.
We don’t know how many people were left behind in Galveston/Houston because most of the people are faceless to us.
RonF: I’m still trying to figure out how anyone figures Mike Brown’s competence as FEMA head is tied to knowing about an agreement between the governors of Texas and Louisania when so far there’s no evidence that he or his agency was ever told about it.
Er… FEMA’s own website says: “FEMA’s continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. ”
When the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana, there was federal paperwork involved. If FEMA was supposed to be “effectively managing” federal response, part of that effective management would have been ensuring good communication channels meant the head of FEMA did know about this agreement between the governors of Texas and Louisiana. It may be that the state departments of Texas and/or Louisiana were also incompetant, but the fact is, if after so many years of knowing a situation like Hurricane Katrina could occur, FEMA’s excuse for not knowing about an emergency response agreement between Texas and Louisiana with regard to Hurricane Katrina is “but no one told us…” then yes, this is yet another example of Mike Brown’s incompetence.
Part of being a competent senior manager – and a pretty large part – is making sure you are told things. One of the sure signs of an incompetent senior manager is one who keeps making mistakes based on incomplete information because “no one told me”. Granted, a newbie in the job may need time to shake down and establish good communication channels, but Mike Brown was appointed head of FEMA in January 2003.
Where I’m coming from is that someone else in DHS may have fallen down on the job; that the incompetence here may be within the office of the head of DHS, not FEMA.
RonF: Where I’m coming from is that someone else in DHS may have fallen down on the job; that the incompetence here may be within the office of the head of DHS, not FEMA.
Well, no. You can argue that the head of DHS was also incompetent. You can trace the incompetence far and wide: it’s not a zero-sum game.
But this is precisely the area where the head of FEMA ought to have known what was going on, and whether the situation is that he did know and did nothing, or just didn’t even know about it: either option is one of the indications that Mike Brown was incompetent.
Er….FEMA is a federal agency. They’re supposed to cut through all the red tape. Actually, so is the Prez. Guess what? That didn’t happen. Whose fault is it that the supervisor didn’t supervise?
I agree that Louisiana is dysfunctional. Why would you put water pumps and emergency generators(for hospitals, etc) in positions where they can be damaged by floodwater-if you are living in one of the most flood prone areas on earth. Why would you wait until less than 24 hrs to issue a mandatory evacuation? Why would you try to re-populate New Orleans when all the officials are telling you that it isn’t safe.
FEMA-I am sure they need to improve their performance-but the bulk of the problem was caused by the failure to evacuate in time-and failure to get the underpriviledged people out on buses-they had the buses-but didn’t use them. If New Orleans had done that-then there would not have been as many deaths-or the situation at the convention center(which was not designated as a “shelter”)
I think that the congressional commitee is asking the right questions-even if they are Republicans-I don’t see a white-wash taking place. The two democrats that appeared made asses of themselves by attaching Brown-and not asking real questions. The political bullshit is nauseating-but is business as usual.
Most people do not understand what FEMA does-and that they do have limitations under law. And that under the circumstances-90,000 square miles of devastation-they are stretched very thin. Everyone expects the federal government to roll up on their doorstep(even if it is underwater)
with food and water(seems like that should be an individual responsibility)
as soon as the wind calms down. I have been in a few hurricanes-and you always have food and water on hand-just like everyone hits the grocery store up north before a big snowstorm.
People want it all-but don’t raise my taxes.
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Gee, thanks, euphoricreality.net. Having made your accusation, unsupported by any facts whatsoever, you take off. I’m convinced! Let’s blame the little fish instead of the guy on vacation who could have cut through that nasty red tape and saved some lives.
And didn’t.
Louisiana is definitely dysfunctional, and its police force is notable for the incidence of corruption, tied in turn to low wages (comparatively) and lax policies on the private hiring of police as security guards. HOWEVER, the fact that federal money was “wasted” by local officials is still an issue of federal misfeasance — the federal government certainly had the power to control how the money was spent, and it didn’t.
As for the evacuation, as I understand it, FEMA officials spent a large part of the Saturday (August 27) talking about buses but never took any steps to carry out this idea, not even in theory, and not even urging local government to do something or offering to help. It was probably beyond human capability to fully evacuate NOLA, under the circumstances, but this was such an obvious step that could have alleviated some of the problems, that the failure to take it has t be reckoned as monumental.
And the failure to get buses in to evacuate the Superdome and the Convention Center after the fact — again, I have a hard time finding good excuses.
There’s a lot of blame to go around, but by definition, a disaster of this magnitude usually renders local officials helpless. That’s where FEMA is supposed to help out. The fact that the local officials could have done a better job just doesn’t excuse the fact that FEMA did so little so late, and in some cases actually impeded the efforts of others.