A Partial Answer to What's Happened to FEMA

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Frederick Lane <fslane3 () gmail com>
Date: September 4, 2005 3:02:48 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: A Partial Answer to What's Happened to FEMA
Reply-To: fslane3 () gmail com


Hi all --

Here's a great article that helps answer the question I posed
yesterday about what's happened to FEMA since Hurricane Andrew.
Reporters at the Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune make the
case that when FEMA was folded into the Homeland Security Department,
much of its effectiveness was reduced, leading to the tragic delay and
confusion in responding and hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

In 2001, John Ashcroft submitted a preliminary version of the Patriot
Act just TWO weeks after 9/11. What are the chances that next week,
someone in the Administration will ask Congress to pass legislation
recommitting us to environmental restoration of wetlands and coastal
boundaries, and a rejuvenation of FEMA?

Fred

==========
GULF COAST CRISIS: FEDERAL RELIEF EFFORT

Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response

By Frank James and Andrew Martin
Washington Bureau
Published September 3, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a
major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when
Hurricane Katrina struck.

Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and
federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald
Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."

More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the table-top
scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread
flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.

"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican
appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private
sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with,
not all of them were solved."

Still, Castleman found it hard to square the lessons he and others
learned from the exercise with the frustratingly slow response to the
disaster that has unfolded in the wake of Katrina. From the Louisiana
Superdome in New Orleans to the Mississippi and Alabama communities
along the Gulf Coast, hurricane survivors have decried the lack of
water, food and security and the slowness of the federal relief
efforts.

[more at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ 
chi-0509030220sep03,1,5525666.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld- 
hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
]

--
Frederick Lane is an expert witness, lecturer, and author of "Obscene
Profits" (Routledge 2000) and "The Naked Employee" (Amacom 2003). He
is currently working on his third book, "The Decency Wars: The
Campaign to Cleanse American Culture" (Prometheus Books 2006). For
additional information, please visit www.FrederickLane.com.



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