I just read this editorial from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, reprinted in Editor and Publisher.
It makes me furious. The spectacularly incompetent director of FEMA, Michael Brown, should be fired. So should whoever hired him. And whoever hired whoever hired him. And so on up the line.
Update: I’m reading a lot of comments (one on this site, and on other sites as well) from people who think that the state and local authorities deserve the lion’s share of the blame. Sorry, I don’t buy that at all. The Department of Homeland Security should have owned this crisis from Day 1, and they know it. In fact, they outsourced the management of the crisis to a private firm last year. Here’s the press release:
IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana
June 3, 2004IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
In making the announcement today on behalf of teaming partners Dewberry, URS Corporation and James Lee Witt Associates*, IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas explained that the development of a base catastrophic hurricane disaster plan has urgency due to the recent start of the annual hurricane season which runs through November. National weather experts are predicting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season with six to eight hurricanes, of which three could be categorized as major.
The IEM team will complete a functional exercise on a catastrophic hurricane strike in Southeast Louisiana and use results to develop a response and recovery plan. A catastrophic event is one that can overwhelm State, local and private capabilities so quickly that communities could be devastated without Federal assistance and multi-agency planning and preparedness. [Emphasis added]
Thomas said that the greater New Orleans area is one of the nation’s most vulnerable locations for hurricane landfall.
The Governor of Louisiana requested Federal help on Thursday, August 26. The official proclamation of emergency by the state was issued on Friday. The President responded to her request by declaring a state of emergency on Saturday:
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.
The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe…
Ordinary citizens in two-wheel drive vehicles were able to get into town to help people. All the major networks had people on the site from Day 1. So why wasn’t FEMA there?
Because the people running the agency are completely unqualified, and the agency has been gutted.
Ed Bott 
Paul Krugman’s piece in the New York Times today, “Killed by Contempt”, is very much worth reading on the ineptitude of the federal response, and its ideological roots. It includes this mind-numbing assertion: “The U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday – without patients.”
Another eloquent statement this week was from From Steve Gilliard:
We Told You So.
The more we learn, the worse this is going to get. I just hope the days of using someone else’s misfortune as a photo-op political opportunity are over for good.
“It makes me furious. The spectacularly incompetent director of FEMA, Michael Brown, should be fired. So should whoever hired him. And whoever hired whoever hired him. And so on up the line.”
Well, that would be George W. Bush. And then it would be the people that voted George W. Bush in, where you have your choice. Either the Supreme Court in 2000, or the people that actually decided the election in 2004. Thankfully, that’s not me in any case.
I don’t think you go any further than that in your wish.
Why aren’t the refugees who are being pulled out of that murky mess in New Orleans being arrested when they land at the Superdome for ignoring the N.O. mayor’s mandatory evacuation?! Why didn’t the mayor have all of his city’s school buses and public buses out all last weekend picking up the 20% of his city that he knew couldn’t afford their own cars?! Why did FEMA have to beg Mayor Nagel on Saturday morning to order the (first time in over 100 years) evacuation of major American city?! Why didn’t the Louisiana governor take advantage of the three days before the (then) Category 5 storm smashed into her state by readying more than just 5,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen to evacuate a city of 1.5 million people??
Mayor Nagel and Governor Blanco will both be indicted on thousands of counts of criminally negligent homicide due to his inactivity. God help the people of Louisiana and New Orleans if they are allowed to remain in power.
A marvelous job of “blame the victim,” New Yorker. It appears that the heart removal surgery was completely successful with you.
Your rant would be a little more compelling if you actually got the name of the mayor right. Also, should the tourists who were stuck in New Orleans because their flights were canceled and all rental cars were gone be arrested as well? What about people who stayed behind because they had elderly relatives in hospitals or nursing homes that couldn’t be evacuated? Should they be thrown in prison?
Oh, and maybe some more National Guard would have been available if 10,000 Guard members from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama weren’t in Iraq. They were complaining about the problem back at the beginning of August:
The state and local authorities asked for help early. FEMA let them down.
You know, there’s lots of blame to go around on this one. It’s funny, people who normally hate/dislike Bush anyway seem to lay all the blame at his feet, while people who blindly support him lay all the blame at the local/state levels.
The truth is, everybody dropped the ball, from the city officials to the mayor to the governor to FEMA to the Dept. of Homeland Security to the President, not to mention a lot of non-governmental types, and, yes, even some of the people affected by all of this (some had no choice and had to rely on the aforementioned governments, but some did have a choice, and chose wrong).
Shame on all of us.
There is lots of time for finger-pointing and blame placing, and lots of hard questions that need answered. But since things are finally actually being done, the time to start firing people is probably not yet.
But that time will come soon.
Peter, see my updates to this post.
I don’t believe that any state or local government can be expected to cope with a disaster of this scale, and neither does FEMA. That’s their mission. They were on the scene on Friday before the hurricane, and then they apparently did nearly nothing for a week.
The director of the agency is spectacularly unqualified. He spent the previous nine years running disciplinary hearings for the International Arabian Horse Association, and he was fired from that job. Curiously, that nine-year portion of his experience isn’t listed on his FEMA bio. It’s almost as if he were embarrassed by that part of his record.
The head of FEMA should have a background as a senior leader in the military or in the global construction industry. The person in that job should know how to coordinate massive projects and how to lead people under pressure. Brown wasn’t qualified for the job, and the two people who are directly beneath him are equally unqualified. Please read their bios and tell me why anyone could expect them to do a competent job in their current positions.
I stand corrected on the name of the incompetent Mayor Nagin of New Orleans. As Matt Drudge asked over the weekend, why didn’t he use the almost 200 city and school buses he had available to evacuate the sick, elderly, and poor? Who in Washington DC knew the city of New Orleans better than it’s own mayor? The FEMA director? The Homeland Security director? George Bush?
The elected leader of the people of New Orleans complained and whined at every chance. When he wasn’t running after his police department that was deserting him every hour, he was laying blame and sending out S.O.S. messages on CNN. Any uplifting words to his city to reassure and comfort the citizens that were looking up to their elected leader? Nope, he was just “damn mad”! At mother nature? At his own cops for running away? At Governor Blanco for not declaring martial law in the state so his cops might still have been on the job? At the stubborn citizens who refused to evacuate their homes? No, he was mad at George Bush!
I just thank God that in 2001, NYC Mayor Guliani didn’t camp out in Madison Square Garden and give press releases to CNN that Bush was to blame. He motivated people to do whatever was needed, and he kept New York City alive when others didn’t have the strength.
That’s what a real leader would have done in New Orleans last week.
Ah, you get your talking points from Matt Drudge. I see. There really isn’t much more to say than that.
“The head of FEMA should have a background as a senior leader in the military or in the global construction industry. The person in that job should know how to coordinate massive projects and how to lead people under pressure. Brown wasn’t qualified for the job, and the two people who are directly beneath him are equally unqualified.”
As you seem quite comfortable judging whether people are qualified to carry out their jobs, can you give me your judgement on Governor Blanco’s qualifications to continue to govern considering her inability to utilize resources that were available to her:
{The Bond-Leahy Amendment authorizes the nation’s governors to call up and command the National Guard for homeland defense missions during national emergencies or designated national security events. Under the Bond-Leahy provision, these missions will be carried out on a so-called Title 32 basis under the command-and-control of the nation’s governors.
Senator Leahy said, “The nation has increasingly relied on the Guard after 9-11, and this change recognizes the Guard’s importance to our homeland security. We are finally making it clear that when carrying homeland security missions, the National Guard should serve under the command-and-control of the nation’s governors, who are accountable to their states and who know and understand their communities.
Under the supervision of governors, command of Guard units will not violate posse comitatus statutes, which limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement activities, because they serve under a governor’s and not an active duty military leader’s supervision.}
You’ve got to stop getting your news from Drudge. The Louisiana National Guard was called up well before the flooding began. In fact, Governor Blanco accepted an offer from the governor of New Mexico to send additional National Guard troops on Sunday, before the hurricane hit. But the troops were not allowed to go to Louisiana until the Feds approved, and they didn’t sign off until Thursday.
You can read all about it in this Drudge-free story from AP:
Congress Likely to Probe Guard Response
And I guessed you missed the other story that noted how the crucial equipment the Louisiana National Guard needed was in Iraq.
Now will you please answer the question about why Michael D. Brown is qualified to run FEMA? I guess I agree with this assessment:
Seriously, read that story and tell me why this man should have ever been given this job.
Ed, I agree the head of FEMA is totally unqualified, and deserves to be booted (among other things) for his (lack of) performance. I’m just not sure the time to do that is in the middle of the crisis, when things are finally actually getting done. Bringing in someone totally unfamiliar with the details right in the middle of a major operation usually leads to more trouble. But, as I said, the time for that will come soon, and they ought to be working towards it already.
As to whether state/local gov’ts can handle a disaster of this scale, no, I would agree, they ultimately cannot, although it needs to start with them.
Don’t be so quick to completely remove all responsibility from the people and the local officials, whatever your political views may be. They have to share in it, just as Mother Nature does for creating it. Also, despite that all we keep hearing about is New Orleans, don’t forget that there is a WHOLE lot of ground to be covered in multiple states/jurisdictions that is just as badly impacted (if not worse), and that all takes time to coordinate.
Should the federal government have been more prepared to assist (although not “in theater”, because they would have been victims, too) on Tuesday? Absolutely. We knew this was going to be bad, even if some of what happened was not expected, and knowing how long it takes to navigate the beaurocracies and handle the logistics, there is no excuse for waiting until Tuesday to get it moving. Even if all we are debating here is two days or so, there is no excuse. Would it still have been a royal mess? Yes. Would it still have taken longer than some think it should have? Yes. Would a lot of what happened still have happened? Yes. Would some people still be screaming about how inadequate it all was and how it would have been done better if their chosen party was in power? Yes. But it should have been done.
This does not, however, answer all the questions, nor totally remove blame from other agencies.
BTW, dismissing someone sch as New Yorker because he reads someone else’s site/opinions is no different than dismissing someone just because they read YOUR site. He is entitled to his opinions, just as you and I are. Where do you get your talking points from, after all? You read/watch others and formulate opinions, which may or may not reflect the views of those others. Do you want to be accused of parroting someone else’s views? You don’t want to be dismissed just because you don’t totally agree with someone else, so be careful about doing the same to others.
The government could just dismiss the opinions of views like yours (and mine, to a lesser degree) on this issue, but I would certainly hope they do not, and we figure out how to make this better the next time, for there surely will be one.
Sorry, I don’t live in a world where Matt Drudge is a credible source. He’s a partisan hack. I’ve been careful to provide independent backup for everything I’ve written here, from nonpartisan sources.
I just deleted a post from a wingnut troll who accused me of comparing Bush to Hitler. Nope. But that invokes Godwin’s Law, which ends this thread. Comments are closed. Go ahead and trackback from your own blog.