FEMA director has no emergency experience :(

[basschick]

FEMA director has no emergency experience
apparently michael brown's (FEMA director)sole qualification for the job is that he is a long time friend of a bush aide...


"GULF COAST CRISIS: DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Top FEMA leaders short on experience

By Andrew Zajac and Andrew Martin
Washington Bureau
Published September 7, 2005


WASHINGTON -- Top officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have strong political connections to President Bush, but they also share at least one other trait: They had little or no experience in disaster management before landing in top FEMA posts.

Michael Brown, who heads FEMA as undersecretary of homeland security for emergency preparedness and response, already has endured sharp criticism for comments he made last week that seemed to suggest he did not understand that thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina had taken refuge at the New Orleans convention center.

Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management.

An official biography of Brown's top aide, acting deputy director Patrick Rhode, doesn't list disaster relief experience.

The department's No. 3 official, acting deputy chief of staff Brooks Altshuler, also does not have emergency management experience, according to FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule.

Rule said the absence of direct experience managing emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need "the ability to keep the organization running."

But Eric Holdeman, director of the King County Office of Emergency Management in Seattle, said familiarity with the specifics of disaster management is essential.

"Experience is not just general managerial experience, it's experience in the field," he said.

Rhode and Altshuler worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations, which arranges Bush's travel and scripts his appearances.

The credentials of top FEMA managers stand in contrast to the backgrounds of leaders of the agency during the last years of the Clinton administration.

Clinton-era FEMA Director James Lee Witt headed the Arkansas office of emergency services before he was tapped by Clinton in 1993 to run the federal disaster relief agency.

Witt's top aides in 2000, Lynn Canton and Michael Armstrong, ran regional FEMA offices for at least three years before assuming senior positions in Washington.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the lack of experience in FEMA's top ranks was evident in the sluggish response to the hurricane.

"Disaster preparedness, whether it's in anticipation of potential weather-related incidents or terrorist incidents requires a skill set that in my mind someone has to be trained for," said Thompson, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Moreover, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Brown waited until hours after Katrina had struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees to the region--and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Brown sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, the AP said.

Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials said Tuesday that the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

Brown has stoutly defended FEMA's performance, saying the agency has done the best it could under bad circumstances.

Last week, Bush, while saying that the initial federal response to the hurricane was "not acceptable," nonetheless lauded Brown, telling him, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan declined to echo such praise.

"We've got to continue to do everything we can in support of those who are involved in the operational aspects of this response effort," McClellan said."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...ck=1&cset=true

[Rainbo1956]

Good post basschick

And so, ultimately Bush “failed”. Now he’s going to do an investigation.
Like what, look into his own sick brain as to where "he" failed?

And, please, please don't anyone give me the speech about not blaming anyone or pointing fingers. I'm so sick to death of hearing that no one should be blaming Bush, pointing fingers or anything like that now.

It all will need to be addressed sooner or later. My greatest fear is that there will be so many that will let it die down (the people that weren’t affected) and begin again with their sheep mentality, if it's not addressed asap.

I hate the word "blame"...I find it much more appropriate though to use the words irresponsible, ineptness or failed.

Bush (his admin) are now laying the foundation for the patsy, the fall guy.
Get ready for the speech, where Michael Brown gives his oh so heartfelt apology and then resigns. This will be the order of Bush (though, of course the public wont know it was Bush (his admin) that "orders" this.

[Squirt]

Great post! Another take on this new insight is posted below. I'm seeing reports ( on Fox of course ) that ALL government is to blame from the BOTTOM UP and that Bush is showing his dedication by appearing in the affected areas and keeping the public posted through various media appearances. :thumbsup: So fuck everything up, blame the person you picked for the job, then tour the dead and talk about what you'll do that's to late, and you'll get off the hook... right? God I hope not. When Bush declared a state of emergency, before Katrina hit, he was personally taking responsibility for overseeing that situation period. Why is it he preaches personal responsibility yet never accepts responsibility for his fuckup? Iraq, Bin Laden, New Orleans? I hate talking about the man I can't wait til he's out of office he wastes to much of my time and energy.

---------------------

WASHINGTON -- Michael Lindell knew things were going downhill at the Federal Emergency Management Agency when President George W. Bush appointed Joe Allbaugh as head of the U.S. federal agency responsible for disaster management in 2001.

"It was a political patronage job" for Mr. Allbaugh, who had no experience in emergency management but had been Mr. Bush's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas, said Mr. Lindell, senior scholar at Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center.

Soon afterward, Mr. Allbaugh hired his former college roommate, Republican lawyer Michael Brown, to be FEMA's general counsel. His experience in organizing the response to hurricanes and earthquakes? He ran the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' group that organized horse shows.

Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Allbaugh at FEMA in 2003, now finds himself at the centre of a storm of controversy over Washington's slow response to hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on New Orleans.

"Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially," said The Times-Picayune, the leading New Orleans newspaper, in an open letter to Mr. Bush published on Sunday.

Critics allege that the Bush administration has undermined the effectiveness of the agency by turning it into a second-rate department run by political hacks.

"I think it's clear that they did drop the ball," said Susan Cutter, a professor of geography and director at the Hazards Research Lab at the University of South Carolina. "FEMA should have come in much, much sooner. . . . There is something wrong with emergency management that needs to be fixed."

Mr. Lindell said that unlike an earthquake or a terrorist attack, which arrives without warning, hurricane forecasters predicted at least 24 hours before landfall that Katrina was going to pack a devastating punch.

Anticipating Katrina's impact, Mr. Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana on Sunday, a day before the storm hit. "Then, there was a black hole for five days. I don't understand it," Mr. Lindell said, noting that until last Friday, the federal response seemed scattered and unfocused.

Prof. Cutter said the problem is that FEMA, which used to have cabinet-level representation, was downgraded when it was forced to merge with the Department of Homeland Security. The emphasis was placed on responding to terrorism at the expense of natural disasters.

"They gave FEMA a backwater position," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "They didn't think it was important."

As for Mr. Brown, 50, his light has not exactly shone in the harsh atmosphere of post-Katrina New Orleans. On CNN last Thursday, he admitted he had been unaware that thousands of storm victims were marooned in horrific conditions at the convention centre.

Mr. Brown's performance has been harshly criticized even by Bush loyalist Senator Trent Lott, who lost his own coastal home in Pascagoula, Miss., in the hurricane. "If he doesn't solve a couple of problems that we've got right now he ain't going to be able to hold the job, because what I'm going to do to him ain't going to be pretty."

Mr. Bush has been loyal to Mr. Brown, an Oklahoma Republican, declaring on Friday during a visit to the hurricane-hit region, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Although FEMA owns no helicopters and no trucks, it is at the heart of the response to Katrina, co-ordinating the response to the disaster with local and state authorities. FEMA is spending about $750-million (U.S.) a day on disaster relief. Estimates are that the recovery and relief operations could end up costing more than $150-billion.

The U.S. government's involvement in disaster relief co-ordination began in the early 19th century when Congress passed an act providing assistance to a New Hampshire town that had been hit by a catastrophic fire.

Over the next century, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times in response to earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other disasters. The federal involvement became more institutionalized in the 1930s, but it was only a series of disasters in the 1960s and 1970s, including hurricane Camille's ravaging of the Gulf Coast in 1969, that prompted the creation of FEMA in 1979 as a central agency responsible for federal response to disasters.

After criticism of the handling of hurricane Andrew, which ravaged southern Florida in 1992, then-president Bill Clinton named a professional emergency manager, James Witt, to run the agency. But Mr. Witt was shunted aside after Mr. Bush was elected President. The agency has an annual budget of $5-billion. FULL STORY

[Rainbo1956]

So fuck everything up, blame the person you picked for the job, then tour the dead and talk about what you'll do that's to late, and you'll get off the hook... right? God I hope not. When Bush declared a state of emergency, before Katrina hit, he was personally taking responsibility for overseeing that situation period. Why is it he preaches personal responsibility yet never accepts responsibility for his fuckup? Iraq, Bin Laden, New Orleans? I hate talking about the man I can't wait til he's out of office he wastes to much of my time and energy.

********** :yeah: **********