Subj : Good State of FEMA article
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : John I
Date : Wed Sep 07 2005 15:02:09

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

Here is a http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover.html good story on 
the state of FEMA in 2004 and the election implications of the Bush 
administration's response to the 2004 Florida hurricane season.  

'Fridays don't get much busier than this. It's the morning of Sept. 3, and 
Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., is 
running at a full clip, having mobilized a cadre of disaster-response 
specialists in its National Emergency Operations Center the day before. "This 
is our 'war room,'" a FEMA employee explains.

"Right now we're in 24-hours-a-day activation," he says. "It's a double-
whammy." Indeed, the agency is still busy helping Florida recover from 
Hurricane Charley's punishing winds and rain when satellite images show that 
an even greater storm, Hurricane Frances, will soon make landfall. It appears 
so threatening that most of FEMA's personnel on the ground, along with 2.5 
million Floridians, have evacuated from the storm's projected path. '


'"They're doing a good job," one former FEMA executive says of the Bush 
administration's response efforts. "And the reason why they're doing that job 
is because it's so close to the election, and they can't fuck it up, 
otherwise they lose Florida--and if they lose Florida, they might lose the 
election."'

....

'In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew assaulted Florida and other Southern states 
with 170-mile-an-hour winds, killing 23 people and leaving a trail of 
devastation. The severity of the storm caught FEMA off-guard, and the agency 
did too little, too late to help the state recover, enraging thousands of 
storm victims. Several days after Andrew dissipated, Dade County's emergency 
manager famously pleaded, "Where the hell is the cavalry?"

Two months later, President George H.W. Bush paid a price of sorts at the 
polls when Bill Clinton shrunk the incumbent's once-sizable lead and came 
within two percentage points of beating Bush in Florida. It was an important 
lesson learned for both the politicians and the emergency agency.'

....

'At FEMA, President Bush appointed a close aide, Joe Allbaugh, to be the 
agency's new director. Allbaugh had served as then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff 
in Texas and as manager of his 2000 presidential campaign. Along with Karl 
Rove and Karen Hughes, Allbaugh was known as one part of Bush's "iron 
triangle" of professional handlers.'

....

'Michael Brown, a college friend of Allbaugh's who had served as FEMA's 
general counsel, was recruited to head the agency, which would now be part of 
the DHS's Emergency and Response Directorate. When the reorganization took 
effect on March 1, 2003, Brown assured skeptics that under the new 
arrangement, the country would be served by "FEMA on steroids"--a faster, 
more effective disaster agency.'

.... 

'In fact, disaster professionals are leaving many parts of FEMA in droves, 
compromising the agency's ability to do its job. "Since last year, so many 
people have left who had developed most of our basic programs," Mann says. "A 
lot of the institutional knowledge is gone. Everyone who was able to retire 
has left, and then a lot of people have moved to other agencies."'





Too bad it's not an election year.

.