Like FEMA performed during the practiced evacuation of New Orleans (3 times) before Katrina, or the noreaster that took out so much of New Jersey shore (6 times) or...
Let’s be honest, FEMA’s ‘drills’ are nothing more than extravagant vacations. If any company was paid those billions of dollars and DIDN’T deliver actual response, we’d sue them into bankruptcy. FEMA gets to award itself more awards each time they screw up a disaster response.
I wasn’t praising FEMA at all. I was simply stating the obvious that the writer seems to have missed. This is just contingency planning for an event that might happen. It has nothing to do with secret information that they have about an impending earthquake.
“Like FEMA performed during the practiced evacuation of New Orleans (3 times) before Katrina, or the noreaster that took out so much of New Jersey shore (6 times) or...”
You are under a common misperception that FEMA is responsible for evacuations etc. during and immediately after a disaster. Those are state and local responsibilities. FEMA never has had responsibility over those functions. What FEMA does is help down range government prepare plans and policies for disasters but FEMA are not the ones who are supposed to carry them out. FEMA’s primary role is “continuity of government in times of natural or manmade disasters”. This involves making sure that government can function and that local, state and Federal resources coordinate, communicate and cooperate according to planning. FEMA’s role is not to get individuals to safety. If an planned for evacuation is a clusterf*** blame the state and local officials who were supposed to carry out the plan. FEMA does not have the authority to order local officials to do their jobs the way they were supposed to do them.
“Let’s be honest, FEMA’s ‘drills’ are nothing more than extravagant vacations.”
That is your opinion but as someone who previously worked for that Agency, I saw firsthand how these “drills” exposed shortcomings in disaster planning, communication & logistics networks etc. that could be remedied before they were needed in an actual emergency. Honestly there are very few actual FEMA personnel involved in these drills anyway (the participants usually are mostly state and local emergency officials).