FEMA Rules
Dean
Interesting. So, apparently, standing, published FEMA guidelines state that first response is a local responsibility, and state and local officials should not expect help for 72 to 96 hours from the Federal government. The entire system is designed so FEMA can come in and help coordinate long-term cleanup and other emergency measures, under the assumption that local people will be doing their jobs--so that if the locals are having trouble the Feds will back them up.
In other words, the Feds actually responded much faster than they were normally expected to. So the critics weren't just guilty of unreasonable expectations, of expecting Federal relief efforts to instantly appear wherever TV cameras were. They were expecting FEMA to do things it was never intended to do, that aren't even in its mission statement.
Maybe we need to revise its mission and how it does things, but I gotta tell ya--I'm hoping local and state officials all around the country are watching and learning from this, and realizing that it is they who are "at the top" in these situations, not the Federal government.
We expect FEMA, et. al., to be able to do a reasonable job of dealing with that. Or at least to appear to have a reasonable *plan* for dealing with that. Maybe that's not in their mission statement. If it's not, it needs to be. I don't spend a lot of time reading Federal bureaucracy mission statements, and I doubt many citizens do. That's what we pay politicians and bureaucrats for.
Maybe expectations are unreasonable, but I don't think that's been demonstrated so far. I realize that there is a major mismatch between citizen expectations and disaster plans at the moment. And there may be a major mismatch between citizen expectations and what capabilities to meet those expectations will cost.
But that's exactly the discussion we need to have. What it normally is, from the Government, is "trust us, we know what we're doing". Well, maybe they do in fact know how to do a good job of doing what they think their job is. I don't think they've done a good job of doing what the citizens think their job is.
Disruption, death, etc., etc., all expected. Allowing a major US city to descend into post-invasion Baghdad conditions was *not* expected, and is not acceptable to the citizens of this country, imo.
I'm not saying this to bash. I know almost everyone is doing their very best. But this is just not acceptable. We have to do better.
I live right across the water from MacDill AFB, and Central Command. That now looks like a Class 4 hurricane to me, every single day of the year.
Heroic as the current efforts are, we have to do better.
From my first training in terrorism/WMD attacks in 1997 I have been taught that federal assets will take 48 hours or more to respond.
The total failure of the city and state government to perform their legally mandated functions is the root cause of this disaster, not slow response by the federal government.
Gary
The federal guvmint is not our mommy and daddy and those that wrote the Constitution and the Declaration never intended them to be. Some Mayors,
Governors and local communities need to be reminded that Washington isn't your basic one stop shopping mart. Example, if your house is burning down call your local fire department not Washington, D.C.
Dean,
I am not well known as offering a compliment, but you have been pointing your readers in the right direction on these issues from the git-go.
As just one example, someone was telling me that one of the things a Guard unit has to do before they move out is fill up all the vehicles with fuel. wtf? They don't park them full? Why not?
I've also been told that soldiers have to go to the armory and draw their weapons, and then be issued ammunition separately, because it's stored in a separate place. And only a few people have the key to either. Again, wtf? Why don't Guardsmen have their weapons, with ammunition, at home with them? I'm sure there are rules now that say to do it this way but *rules can be changed*. Procedures can be changed. Throwing up our hands and saying "this is the best we can do" strikes me as entirely unproductive.
This is America, and this is the 21st Century. We have airplanes. We have cars. We have computers. We have cell phones and pagers and GPS. With all that, we ought to be able to have 5000 troops on the ground anywhere in this country in less than 24 hours. If you're going to tell me we can't, I want to know exactly *why*, and the answer should not be "because that's what the procedures are". Heck, one guy was saying we couldn't move people in fast enough in part because there weren't enough porta-potties for the troops.
People should not be dying because the trucks aren't gassed and the guns are locked up and the troops don't have porta-potties.
I don't say that as blame. I say that as something that needs to be changed.
Do you think the response that has been outlined as SOP would be sufficient or acceptable in the case of a WMD attack? If so, why?
We didn't get serious after 9/11. Domestically, we mostly did a lot of partisan finger-pointing, created some ridiculous bureaucracies, and handed out a ton of pork. That's not going to cut it if we take a WMD hit. We are in a world of hurt, and we need to get better. I hope Katrina ends up being more of a wake-up call, and less of a making excuses and CYA call.
Much respect to President Bush for realizing this and talking straight with Mayor Ray Nagin. Mayor Nagin said in a CNN interview today that President Bush touched his heart and lifted his spirits with his words and action. Now that's what a president is suppose to do.
FEMA's 72-96 hours estimate doesn't mean they sit around playing checkers until 95.9 hours have passed, it just means that experience shows that it takes that long to evaluate the situation and coordinate with the locals on what needs to happen. In this case it appears that turf fights and problems at the local level severely hampered both preperation and response.
And I still think it'd be a really bad idea for FEMA or Homeland Security to take a lead role in the local aspects of a crisis. How's a guy in Washington coordinating another guy flown in from Delaware supposed to be an expert on Louisiana? He can't be. That's why we have local governments and local resources. That's why my small county in Maryland has 14 fire stations, three seperate police presences, and mutual aid agreements with all the surrounding counties and states. Redundancy and preperation are the key.
But it just isn't going to happen _federally_.
FEMA, iirc, has 3 or 4 major food/water/whatnot caches that they can put into motion. To drop the response time to 24 hours or 12 hours, you need to quadruple (or more) the number of caches. Trucks neither drive themselves nor go 120.
Three days is not an undue burden for each individual citizen to prepare for. Yes, there will be a lot of people whose caches are rendered moot one way or another - but the sheer number of caches is what you're aiming for.
And this is _before_ whatever cockamamie scheme Seattle's local officials come up with.
We probably _should_ be organized down to block-level 'neighborhood watch'-like groups, but when the Feds came to Seattle and asked for anyone interested in assisting them in that sort of thing, in a room filled with 800 chamber of commerce types, they got _zero_ people to help.
<i>'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating...'</i>
Source: DrudgeReport
That sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, imo, and not terribly expensive. How about a major cache every 250 miles in every direction across the continental US?
My point is this: if FEMA says they have a 72-hour response time instead of 24 hours because they don't have thus-and-so, we need to give them the thus-and-so.
What I've been looking for is evidence where communities were exemplary and disaster plans were efficiently and effectively implemented by there local officials. This was a 90,000 square mile disaster. Who got it right?
Anyone?
Let's not act like we didn't know this would happen to NOLA either. The city was built 6-9' below sea level and the levy system was only good for a CAT 3 hurricaine. And that was on a good day with no wind behind it and 100% electricity. You see those pumps shut down without power. The pumps aren'
t pumping and stress is put upon a levy not built for the water.
No government, at any level, is going to have billions of dollars worth of equipment and thousands of personnel sitting by idlely, just waiting for something to happen. That costs money the governments are reluctant to spend, or to ask from their taxpayers. Just the way Congress has chosen to fund levees in NO for only CAT 3 hurricanes. They believed it to be sufficient and affordable.
That's certainly up for reappraisal now, but it wasn't, generally speaking, malicious or mendatious. It was reasonable, but ultimately wrong.
Any disaster, anywhere in the world, is going to catch people by surprise. If it didn't it wouldn't be a disaster. Fortune-telling is not a trait we select government officials for. Without prescience, they need time to figure out what's really going on. (And while they may watch TV, they don't take CNN reports as gospel, thank God!) They need reliable information about what's needed where. It makes no sense to send relief to places that don't need it. That takes time--days--to do right.
If you, personally, are not prepared to take care of yourself and your family for a week following a disaster--natural or terrorist--you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. If your disaster plan consists of waiting for someone else to save you, you have no plan. We are all responsible for our own survival ultimately.
Does that mean you might have to build an expensive extra room to hold all that stuff? Maybe. You make your choice. The city of New Orleans made its choice to not build better and higher levees. Too expensive.
If you don't have a gun, then you're not really concerned about your personal safety. History has amply illustrated that social order breaks down in crises. Even Hollywood has noted that fact in countless films. Don't like guns? Suffer the consequences. Live in a place that won't let you have a pistol? Move or live with the consequences.
Or, you just might vote to elect people who will spend their budgets in a way more conducive to your comfort level.
Every single person without transportation in NO could have been evacuated if the Mayor had chosen to use the buses--both school and city--that he had at his disposal. Casting blame on the federal government for the mayor's inability to think straight cuts no ice.
not to mention Landrieu's comments.
I think I'm just about tapped out. Oh wait, one more. OK, done. Argh!!!!
I think that arguing about roles and essentially layin the blame at the feet of teh local govt is at best technically accurate, but immoral and bankrupt an argument.
It's easy to dispute the claim that the locals didnt respond - and the comparisons of Nagin to Giuliani are utterly disingenous given that Rudy had a functioning city and Nagin a flood plain.
Anyway, Im done with Katrina analysis. Its too polarized, and I've read so much on it now that theres just too much evidence to discount. Im not willing to engage in any more arguments ove the minutae, when the big picture is so starkly clear. To anyone who thinks FEMA was blameless/the model of perfection, I agree to disagree, and will leave it at that.
The Times-Picayune has it right. If you read one link, read that one.
I wont post this as a fp - Dean, you should have the last word. I'll let this comment be my dissent. Onto other topics.
Dsmith: if you want the black&white on just why it took "so long" to get people into New Orleans, read this.
Please note that the author was in the Army, and performed disaster scenarios as part of his job. He is, in other words, well informed on the topic.
Some quotes; And this:That last brings me to a point which I haven't seen mentioned very often: the New Orleans police department has been infamously corrupt for years. Is it any surprise they crumpled, when faced with real police work?
Yes, Dsmith, you are voicing unrealistic expectations. I'm with Dean 100%, when he says that the response so far has been excellent.
"Allowing a major US city to descend into post-invasion Baghdad conditions was *not* expected, and is not acceptable to the citizens of this country, imo.
I'm not saying this to bash. I know almost everyone is doing their very best. But this is just not acceptable. We have to do better. "
Well, gee gosh, D, maybe we should hold the LOCAL POLITICIANS responsible. Ya think?
No, I'm serious. It seems like everyone these days is so locked into the Federal elections (House of Representatives, Senate, and President), that they've ignored the city and county where they live.
The number one lesson from all of this (as if it needed to be learned by now) is that local authorities have the greatest responsibility. The county won't know as much as the guys in the city, the people in the state government will be more clueless than the guys at the county level, and the feds are nearly from another planet, in terms of knowing what's going on. The bad news is that will never change, since by definition any specific event is -to a degree- unpredictable. One may consider each added layer of organization to at least double complexity of response.
Now -to a degree, in a general sense- Dsmith is correct. What happened is not acceptable, and should be improved. To a degree...
The problem here is that the local and state authorities completely screwed the pooch. They fucked up. It's that simple. You can have all the planning, wishing, and funding you want, but it won't change anything if the people aren't capable, from the bottom up. Big plans and budget-busting fat federal funding won't let the FBI compensate for the fact that the local cops are crooked, graft-happy slobs; and weren't we just talking about the New Orleans PD?...
Sorry, guys. This is (or should be) the end of the Federal supremacy. We can't wait for FEMA or the National Guard to -calvary like- save the day after a disaster. We, all of us, need to start behaving as if we were citizens of the greatest country on the planet, which means that every one of us is a citizen-responder, in the same way that we are (in theory) citizen-soldiers.
Which means that the city has to work, first. Then the county has to work, and so on, up to the federal level.
sorry, but that's been demonstrated amply so far, DSmith.
Aziz: Anyway, Im done with Katrina analysis.
Frankly, I'm glad you're done, although I wouldn't call what you were doing "analysis." More like spewing out leftist "blame Bush" talking points all along. Or blame FEMA, because everything is the federal government's fault.
And FWIW, no one anticipated the levee breaking. So Tim Russert is an ass for not doing his research.
From a liberal bastion: the NYT (via the ledger):
and
And then there is the actual devastation on the ground:
Sorry, this Great USA is only as great as each and every indivudal citizen, and the response of those citizens.
I was born and raised, and live in the north where no matter where I travel, even if it is just across town, there is a survival kit in the vehicle year round. There is always a 3 day supply of water, and food available. Those in NOLA, and the rest of the hard hit area who KNOW that a hurricane can and does hit, should also depend on themselves for the first 72 to 96 hours.
I am so sick of the socialists who demand the federal government do more. They should all go and live in Europe where socialist rule.
I don't care what the guidelines say or what the "norm" is. We absolutely had the resources and manpower to respond faster. 24 hours faster at least. But it didn't happen and a lot of innocent people suffered because of it.
You can sit there behind your computer and discuss this as some kind of intellectual exercise. That's fine. But there is no way I can accept that those people trapped in NO had to live in the horror in which they lived. Not in America. The local govenment is most to blame, but the federal government is culpable too.
Sometimes popular opinion is right.
I most definitely do not blame the rescuers or the victims. I do hold the "local" more culpable, however, for the aftermath. The plan was in place, the transportation was in place, and the order was in place. For some reason, neither the governor nor the mayor followed through. They basically "threw up their hands and gave up."
link via The Anchoress
Despite all of the cutbacks in funding, they somehow managed to cut the response time in half.
Seems like a logical fallacy to assume that the existence of a problem is evidence that things must be done differently.
I just love how the left forgets the coast guard is federal and under DHS. they were there day one, rescuing more people than the NOPD and the state of Loui did in the entire 5 days.
i think it comes down to the fact that liberals think of the federal govt as some superior efficient machine. they see locals as bumbling fools, so they expect the superiors to be smart enought o assume the bumbling fools will be bumbling fools.
of course, they never explain why other states have had no problems with this issue.
reading comprehension test: what was the entire theme of my first post on Katrina about? For extra credit, find the front page post at DailyKos that had the same theme (hint: you can't).
I advise you to look up the word "accountability" and compare and contrast it with "apologism".
I also look forward to principled accountability arguments from you when Hillary Clinton is President. Not that they'll be "right wing talking points" or anything, coming from the likes of you.
You managed to quote the one guy that "broke the straw on the camel's back" and made me turn off my TV before I threw a brick at it. Why didn't you quate the rest of his whiney ass statement. The part where he whined and cried that his own unresourceful, useless twit of an emergency management officer kept promising his mother that "help was on the way" and then his solution was to wait for help from the Feds instead of organizing his own damned rescue? No way was I going to accept this guys factoids after that pitiful display of leadership ability until I hear the other side of the story.
Really? How about hundreds of billons worth? For that is *exactly* what the US military is. And it's too small, and we don't spend enough on it. I'd like to see us return to a 4-5% military investment rate, and yes, I'll pay the taxes to do that without complaint. If we cut back on entitlement spending, we wouldn't even have to increase taxes.
The *first* duty of government is security. Without that, you have nothing. So everything else should be a lower spending priority.
Compared to past events the response *has* been faster and better than ever before. But clearly, it's not nearly good enough. We have to do better. The complacency and throw-up-your-hands-and-give-up I'm hearing from so many just amazes me. How the heck did this country ever put a man on the Moon inside of 10 years?
For the past 40 years, the majority of people in the US, acting through their elected representatives, have not seen the need to spend more money on the city of New Orleans. That's the "will of the people" we're talking about, not just venal, political hacks.
You can take your request for an additional $10 in income taxes on the road and try to convince the majority of your fellow citizens that it's the right thing to do. You may succeed. I'm not betting on it.
You might also want to pop by your local high school or public library to get a book on federalism. That will explain pretty clearly why a standing army is not--in this federal republic, anyway--a possible fairy godmother. Check out an atlas while you're at it; ponder the distances involved. Do a little math and see how fast a vehicle with a maximum speed of, say 50 mph, travels 1,500 miles. For the purposes of the exercise, you needn't factor in rest stops, refueling stops, etc. You may discover for yourself why aid didn't arrive within 30 minutes.
I'm sorry but I don't by any of this crap you're peddling. I'll grant you one exception, Brown is a moron and should be fired immediately, but that's where our agreement ends. Let me start with recommending you read this: Emergency Operations Plan for Southeast Louisiana that covers N.O. (warning - it's a PDF). Reading through this you should note that it is the responsibility of the local parishes to conduct the evacuation for their parish, provide local control, and managing shelter operations - we saw this in some parishes but not all. Specifically Orleans Parish where the city of New Orleans has a specific disaster plan for hurricanes that includes the following elements in case of a mandatory evacuation:
During the Recommended Phase of Evacuation:
1. The City of New Orleans Emergency Operating Center (EOC) is staffed for 24-hour operation.
2. Local transportation will be mobilized to assist persons who lack transportation.
3. Bus routes and locations of staging areas for those needing transportation to shelters in or out of the Parish, will be announced via radio and television.
4. Relatives and neighbors should help family and friends who need transportation and other assistance.
Doesn't that sound as if it was MAYOR NAGIN's EFF'N JOB to make sure that the busses of the New Orleans Public Schools and the New Orleans RTA were used to evacuate those who couldn't drive out of town on their own? And don't you find it ironic that this is the same SOB that had the gall to go on the air to proclaim:
"I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here."
WTF?! The freakin' incompetent had 450-500 buses in the G*d Damn city and didn't use them! You know what they call the School bus lot down town - the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. But of course he's not to blame. He had plenty of time before the damn hurricane hit to use those buses but somehow the fact that he didn't exculpates him from blame now? How? I'm at a loss to follow the logic here.
Bush declares the entire freakin' gulf coast a disaster area so the affected states can begin requesting aid in advance of the hurricane. Do you know what Blanco asked for? $9,000,000 dollars worth of aid. Hell, Nagin plans on spending about $7.5 million sending N.O. employees to Las Vegas so they can get over the stress of dealing with the disaster. Bet your ass he'll be there too, and he'll probably blame his losses at the tables on FEMA and Bush too. Sheee-it.
And if you think that arguing about roles and laying blame at the feet of the Local and State actors is merely technically accurate you obviously don't grasp the reality of EOP and disaster/relief management. Say it with me again, and repeat until it finally sinks in: 72 to 96 hours, that's how long you're on your own. That's how long before FEMA arrives.
You can't deploy troops in 24 hours unless they're ready to be deployed. Gov. Blanco didn't activate the Louisiana Guard until days after the hurricane hit so she has no one to blame but herself for letting things spiral out of control.
You can make an evacuation mandatory, but if you don't use the tools at your disposal all the kvetching and posturing on TV won't mean a damn. Nagin let resources go to waste instead of using them to evacuate people, why he did so? I haven't a clue.
Claiming that such criticism is immoral and bankrupt is to lay bare your own partisanship. I can imagine your caterwaul if Bush had used the insurrection act to declare martial law and preserve order in NO on Tuesday. See, there's no winning with some folks.
The T-P want's FEMA heads to roll, but god forbid Nagin and Ebbert, the two men directly responsible for: getting the city evacuated, establishing the refugee shelters, stocking them with food and water, making sure the local C&C was established, maintaining order, and coordinating with the State and FEMA do their EFF'N jobs or pay the price for failure.
I've been doing EOP and disaster/relief work as a volunteer coordinator for over twelve years now. Try it sometime. Try it for one major disaster Aziz. Are there incompetents in FEMA? You bet. Are there incompetents in any major operation or bureaucracy? You bet. Just get to know the people you're bad mouthing and realize that next month, God forbid, something happens and these will be the same selfish, mean spirited, callous and incompetent bastards that spend three or four weeks working 7 day a week, 18 and 20 hour days to make sure you have food, shelter, medical care, job placement assistance, and access to federal funds. All the while they'll have a pack of ingrates and armchair generals criticizing their every step. On behalf of all of them, BITE. ME.