Do you know what the purpose of FEMA is?
FEMA is an executive department and the acronym stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency. The head of the executive branch is the president. Therefore, the response of FEMA in any disaster is the president’s ball court.
And I’m not even talking about Louisiana. I live in Alabama. We’re often forgotten about when talking about Katrina but we still had our worst storm surge in 90 years.
And the governors do not have FEMA at their disposal. They can’t order FEMA to do anything. That comes from the president.
And it would not have taken much effort as you think to have had several million MRES stockpiled in cities across the region that weekend so that they could be deployed into the disaster area as soon as the all clear was given.
FEMA’s job (Until Katrina) was to FUND and aid the States’ Emergency Plans, not MAKE them. The states have to (or had to) ask for specifically what they wanted and needed, and FEMA’s job was to help them get it. What Katrina revealed was that Louisiana (yep, I live here) had NO PLAN. They didn’t know what they needed or where they needed it. Who in their right mind would expect a federal agency to know where people across Louisiana would be sheltered and what roads to use to get them out if needed....That was La’s and N.O.’s job and they failed miserably.
The federal government could not legally come in and take over anything without the state’s permission. Bush gave Blanco the out to let the Feds take over once it became clear what a disaster La and N.O.’s lack of planning was causing, but after ‘thinking about it’ for 24 hours(!), she refused his offer.
Now, thanks to the incompetence of Louisiana democrat ‘leadership’ FEMA has grown into another example of federal takeover of states’ duties. Great, since we all know how much more efficient the feds are at running local programs.
/rant
O2