[Rhodes22-list] POLITICS - When The Levy Breaks

[brad haslett]

Michael,

Here is a transcript of an interview with Brit Hume. 
It explains some of the problems FEMA was facing.  I'm
not cheerleading for FEMA or Homeland Security, they
both have problems.  But the real culprits here are
going to be Nagin and Blanco.  Turns out, even though
they're from the same party, there's a long history of
bad blood between them.  That's another story for
another day, gotta go fly!

Brad

Fox News' Brit Hume: First, the focus of all of the
attention has been FEMA, Federal Emergency Management
Agency, what is FEMA?

Fox News' Major Garrett: Federal Emergency Management
Agency, 2,500 full time employees, 4,000 stand by
employees. The mission statement very simple: prepare,
respond, help, recover, reduce risk. How does it do
it? By coordinating with state and local entities and
other groups The Salvation Army, Red Cross, dedicated
to helping the needy when disaster strikes.

Hume: So FEMA is relatively, it isn't very labor
intensive it mostly works through other agencies?

Garrett: It works through other agencies. But it has
been moved into the Department of Homeland Security.
And in this crisis, It is a bit a victim of its own
bureaucratic boastfulness. Earlier this year the new
national response plan released by the Department of
Homeland Security promised this - "seemless
integration of the federal government when an incident
exceeds local and state capabilities." In the minds of
many Americans, this one did. And FEMA, at least
initially, in the minds of some, did not respond
enough.

Hume: The words seamless don't exactly spring to mind.
But look, they are down there, The Red Cross, for
example, is there.

Garrett: Standing by, ready.

Hume: Standing by, ready. Why didn't FEMA send The Red
Cross into New Orleans when we had all of the people
there on that bridge overpass and elsewhere. Why not?

Garrett: First of all, no jurisdiction. FEMA works
with The Red Cross, The Salvation Army and other
organizations but it has no control to order them to
go one place or the other. Secondarily, The Red Cross
was ready. I got off the phone with one of their
officials. They had a vanguard, Brit, of trucks with
water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things
ready to go where? To the Superdome and convention
center. Why weren't they there? The Louisiana
Department of Homeland Security told them they could
not go.

Hume: This is isn't the Louisiana branch of the
federal Homeland Security? This is --

Garrett: The state's own agency devoted to the state's
homeland security. They told them you cannot go there.
Why? The Red Cross tells me that state agency in
Louisiana said, look, we do not want to create a
magnet for more people to come to the Superdome or
convention center, we want to get them out. So at the
same time local officials were screaming where is the
food, where is the water? The Red Cross was standing
by ready, the Louisiana Department of Homeland
Security said you can't go.

Hume: FEMA does, presumably at some point, have some
jurisdiction over some military forces. Of course, the
first responders there are the National Guard. Why
didn't FEMA send the National Guard in? You heard that
cry from many people.

Garrett: FEMA does not have jurisdictional control
over any state's National Guard, only the governor
does. The governor in this case, Kathleen Blanco, A
democrat, did use the Louisiana National Guard for
some purposes, did not deploy them in massive numbers
initially and they were not used to move any of these
relief organizations in and they could have been for
the very same reason I talked about earlier, the state
decided they didn't want the relief organizations
where the people needed it most because they wanted
those people to get out.

Hume: But even today we know that Governor Blanco has
now decided that a mandatory evacuation may not be
necessarily after all. But we can go into that later.
What about the use by her of the National Guard to
impose law and order during the early looting and all
of that?

Garrett: She had a choice, as I am told. She could
have taken up the offer from FEMA to federalize all of
the activities in Louisiana, meaning that FEMA would
be in control of everything. Not only law enforcement,
but everything else. She declined to give them that
authority. So essentially FEMA was trapped between two
bureaucracies. One the Department Of Homeland Security
where many of its decisions have to be reviewed and in
some cases approved, and a recalcitrant state
bureaucracy that wasn't going to give them the
authority they needed to make things happen, among
them, the National Guard.

Hume: What about this evacuation problem? It's clearly
was something that New Orleans faced, knew it faced to
some extent.

Garrett: And the city [sic] of Louisiana. They have a
whole plan that contemplates dealing with an
evacuation in the effect of a hurricane three, four or
five. Their own plan says, 100,000 residents minimum
from the New Orleans area will have to be evacuated.
This plan makes it clear ...

Hume: You mean, can't get out on their own.

Garrett: These people will have not have their own
vehicles. Not only that, It stipulate that these
people are disproportionately poor, sick and in need
of special transportation assistance. Brit, I think in
these circumstances, bureaucratic language is
important. Let's go to this. This is what the state
says: "the Department of Health and Hospitals has the
primary responsibility for providing medical
coordination for all of the special-needs populations,
i.e. hospital and nursing home patients, persons on
home health care, elderly persons and other persons
with physical or mental disabilities." Brit, I don't
think you can come up with a better description of the
people we saw, day in and day out, at the Superdome
and the convention center, than this very population
that the state's own plan said needed to be
transported to a safe place and provided services.

Hume: Apparently no plan, no provision, no facility
for doing that.

Garrett: No facility for doing that. Not only that,
those who reviewed the plans the state put together
before were critical of it. In 2002 the New Orleans
Times Picayune had a whole story about this saying no
one believes the evacuation plans are possible,
feasible or will be carried out. They proved to be
accurate.

Hume: It sounds like the state will have much to
answer for in the investigation coming before Congress
as well as the federal government.

Garrett: It appears to be. 






--- michael meltzer <michaelmeltzer at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I do lot of systems design, so I look at how systems
> work and the players in them, and how they interact.
> Spend alot of time debugging them :)
> 
> FEMA had a problem that they were "fighting the last
> war", i.e. 911, mind set, spending, they forgot
> about
> mother natrue. It lead to a bad system design, for
> that he should be fired. The "top level" players in
> these systems are vision, leardship and a visable
> "interface" for people to see. They are long
> range/long time line actors, they can have some
> short
> term effect by "being unhappy" and trafering risk to
> them selfs(i.e making a desion) but.... If they were
> all shot on monday it should not have made a
> differance to the responce. What I think we are
> going
> to find when this "onion" is peeled is the GS10-GS13
> level the system broke down, truff wars, stove pipe
> problems, No clear chain of responiable, worst let
> working outside thier desion cycle(norimaly months
> and
> commitee considance) vs "on the spot" and "right
> now"
> that they were put in. Also to make life "esyier"
> for
> middle mangers allot of these agaiscy have become
> simply contracting sorces to outside vendors without
> resource of thier own. 
> 
> -mjm
> 
> --- ghpnn at bellsouth.net wrote:
> 
> > So sorry, but you got it backwards. The President
> > writes the budget and submits it to Congress for
> > approval. President Bush submitted the budget
> which
> > cut $71,000,000 out of the Corps of Engineers'
> > budget for levee work in New Orleans this year. He
> > also appointed a lawyer wuth no emergency
> management
> > experience as the head of FEMA, the federal
> > emergency managment agency. Is he responsible for
> > his actions?
> > > 
> > > From: Hank <hnw555 at gmail.com>
> > > Date: 2005/09/07 Wed PM 01:03:06 EDT
> > > To: The Rhodes 22 mail list
> > <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
> > > Subject: Re: Re: [Rhodes22-list] POLITICS - When
> > The Levy Breaks
> > > 
> > > All this talk about Pres Bush cutting the budget
> > is factually inaccurate. 
> > > Congress creates the budget. The President then
> > either approves or 
> > > disapproves. Talk to your congressmen and
> > Senators, not the President about 
> > > appropriated funding.
> > >  Hank
> > > 
> > >  On 9/7/05, ghpnn at bellsouth.net
> > <ghpnn at bellsouth.net> wrote: 
> > > > 
> > > > The head of FEMA is a political appointee, a
> > lawyer, with no disaster 
> > > > management experience. President Bush cut
> > $71,000,000 from the budget of the 
> > > > Corps of Engineers in New Orleans which was
> > earmarked for levee work this 
> > > > year. Is he responsible for these two actions?
> > > > 
> > > > Hugh Penn
> > > > 
> > > >
> > __________________________________________________
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