FEMA is not a first responder - Don't be so quick to pillory the federal response in New Orleans

As one who has received training by FEMA in emergency management and also training by the Department of Defense in consequence management, I believe that the federal response in New Orleans needs clarification.

The key to emergency management starts at the local level and expands to the state level. Emergency planning generally does not include any federal guarantees, as there can only be limited ones from the federal level for any local plan. FEMA provides free training, education, assistance and respond in case of an emergency, but the local and state officials run their own emergency management program.

Prior development of an emergency plan, addressing all foreseeable contingencies, is the absolute requirement of the local government --and then they share that plan with the state emergency managers to ensure that the state authorities can provide necessary assets not available at the local level. Additionally, good planning will include applicable elements of the federal government (those located in the local area). These processes are well established, but are contingent upon the personal drive of both hired and elected officials at the local level.

"We coordinate all city departments and allied state and federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and emergencies through the development and constant updating of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for federal disaster assistance and federal funding subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through this office. Our authority is defined by the Louisiana Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993, Chapter 6 Section 709, Paragraph B, 'Each parish shall maintain a Disaster Agency which, except as otherwise provided under this act, has jurisdiction over and serves the entire parish.' "

Check the plan -- the "we" in this case is the office of the mayor, Ray Nagin who was very quick and vocal about blaming everyone but his own office. A telling picture, at left, taken by The Associated Press on Sept. 1 and widely circulated on the Internet shows a school bus park, apparently filled to capacity with buses, under about four feet of water. If a mandatory evacuation was ordered, why weren't all the taxpayer-purchased buses used in the effort?

Who could have predicted the anarchy resulting as a consequence? The individuals who devolved into lawless animals embarrass the entirety of America. (I worked in a U.S. Embassy overseas for a couple years and I can imagine what foreign diplomats are thinking.) What societal factors would ever lead people to believe that this behavior was even remotely acceptable?

The folks in New Orleans who are perpetrating the violence and lawlessness are not that way because of low income or of race, but because they personally do not have any honor or commitment to higher ideals. The civil-rights leaders should be ashamed at playing the blame game.

The blame is on the individuals. The blame is on the society that allowed these individuals to develop the ideal that the individual is greater than the national pride he is destroying. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was very clear in her comments that she was offended at those who suggested the suffering in New Orleans was prolonged because of race.

As a retired Marine, I hang my head in shame to see my fellow Americans degenerate so far. I spent so many years in the Corps helping the citizens of other countries rise to a higher level of personal responsibility to ensure that in case of emergency, anarchy did not necessarily follow. When people are held to a higher standard of personal responsibility and they accept that, then they will do the right thing when the time comes.

It seems that the mayor of New Orleans is leading the effort in not taking responsibility for his actions. The emergency managers for the state of Louisiana do not have much to say either. The failure in the first 48 hours to provide direction for survivors is theirs to live with. When FEMA was able to take over, it started out behind and had to develop its plan on the fly. Now the federal government has established priorities -- rescue the stranded, evacuate the city, flow in resources and fix the levee. It appears that now there is a plan and it is being systematically executed.

Hurricane Katrina was a national tragedy -- not just in the number of lives lost or the amount of physical damage, but also in the failure of people to do what is right when no one is looking.

Yes. They know they live in a "possible" disaster area. For instance, this city had a large flood several years ago near where we live. We did not depend on the national government to get things done. The churches took over feeding the people in that area. They brought chainsaws to cut trees into smaller pieces so they could be moved. We depended on our neighbors to help us. The city bought out houses that were flooded and widened the drainage creek to make sure it would not happen again. We are in a tornado zone but again, we depend on our neighbors. Sure the Salvation Army and Red Cross come in but even that took a few days but neighbors helped care for the people in the area that was hit.

Read my post - #216.

FEMA did not set up the convention center as a mass care center. Did not happen. New Orleans or ARC did - and then abandonded it. How the hell is FEMA supposed to know everything? Yes - reporters went there and shot footage, but guess what people that work for FEMA were: DOING WORK and not watching tv. Or - should FEMA employ people to just watch tv. ANd they would have to employ A LOT of people because of all the coverage. Gee - wouldn't it be better to have FEMA employees actually working on getting aid to the people they do know about?

The failure at the convention center was a local one. Once it was brought to FEMA's attention, the clock was ticking on how long it took the feds to get aid there and the place evacuated. If they knew about it and did nothing, then they can be blamed, but it is very legitimate that they may not have known about it until Thursday. Then they had to figure out a way to get massive quantities of aid there. If they knew about it for several days and did nothing, blast them for it - but if they found out about it on Thursday and arrived to the rescue on Friday, not too bad in my book. Yeah, Thursday night would have been nice, maybe early Friday morning, but better to do it with the right number of troops and supplies.

GEEZ - some on here are forgetting that the feds don't know everything about everything (and they know nothing about a lot of things). If you think that someone at FEMA knows where you will go to if you are evacuated from your home - you need to check into Disneyland full-time. FEMA does not know - and for them to know would take a lot more employees than what they have - and what you would be happy to pay in taxes to support.

from the DHS's own website:

"Response -- Lead, manage and coordinate the national response to acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies."

Perhaps we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here. The responsibility for leading, managing, AND coordinating is in the lap of the DHS (which owns FEMA).

Let's not look silly defending FEMA, PLEASE!!!!

WoW! Maybe you should work for the DOD and let them know how a few blackhawks can be loaded with enough supplies for thousands. The chaos that would have ensued had they not gone in with an overwhelming force, like they did on Friday via a ground convoy, would have been terrible and cost far more lives than the few that may have perished in the interim.

Oh, come now. I served almost eight years in the military as a Supply Officer. I have some idea as to capabilities and logistics. We could have ferried in enough people with the helicopter assets on hand to maintain order and security until the convoys came in. You don't need "overwhelming force." Enough supplies could have been sent in by chopper to take care of the most needy.

And everyone is getting on FEMA's case over the convention center - and that they didn't know about it. My question is: Who the hell set that shelter up?

Some people just gravitated there. I assume the city used it previously. Certainly FEMA had nothiung to do with it nor did they have anything to do with the Superdome. Nagin is totally responsible for the arrangements.

Does that same rationale apply to folks who build there homes on fault lines, e.g., San Andrreas fault?

Yes, it does. The same goes for people who build on flood plains.

If you build your house in an area that is prone to some sort of cataclysmic event, you shouldn't be surprised when that event occurs. There's nothing wrong with building/living there, you just have to be ready to deal with the hand mother natures deals. And if something does happen, it's not "Bush's Fault."

It is more difficult to make those comments before the event happened. I did say the Sunday morning that Nagin declared a mandatory evacutation, that we should have sent in military aircraft to evacuate people.

How many military aircraft would it have taken to airlift 100,000 people? You want this done in less than 24 hours? Heck, probably less than 12 hours since it would have been too dangerous to fly as the hurricane came closer. So, even if the planes had been requested at 0600 Sunday, how many flights do you think could have gotten in and out of NO in 12 hours? (I know, every life saved is valuable but it's still not the answer to the problem)

I'm listening to Blanco on FOX right now. She is not directly answering some questions by slightly changing the subject.

I saw that, and about 45 minutes later she was interviewed (split screen unlike FOX which was just phone, so you could see her squirm)by CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

Amazingly, Soledad was much tougher and direct with her than FOX.

You said: That's the crux of the matter. In this case, I say legalisms and laws be damned. Save lives and alleviate suffering. Just as we praise the 18 year old who broke the law and commandeered a school bus to save himself and others, we need to assist our fellow citizens in the name of morality and humanity.
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We also aren't going to arrest those who may have "looted" food, water and necessities in this emergency, and I do understand your point. The problem is that, if what you suggest were to become precedent, the feds would be able to act whenever they thought it was in the best interest of those being served. Someone earlier in the thread asked that you state how this concept you support would be limited, and you did not directly respond. How about fed action to forcibly close abortion mills? (But it does sound tempting.) Some religious organizations don't believe in blood transfusions, perhaps the army should come in and close the doors of such religious practitioners. It would almost certainly save lives. How about federal intervention on our highways to slow down traffic? Sure, some of these may sound silly to you, but how do we define the paramater for ignoring state officials and substituting federal agencies? This is a very thorny problem, even in the face of what APPREARS to have been a tardy federal response.

"Rush just read most of this article on the air."

That's cool. Although we should have learned from the Rathergate affair last year - let no one doubt that FreeRepublic has an impact. I am pretty sure that Rush or one of his minions saw the article here - I mean, who reads the Pittsburgh Post Gazette? (Other than me and some other ex-pats).

I also saw it posted on NRO - The Corner by KLO. I would bet she saw it on here too.

Wish I had written it.

,i>If you build your house in an area that is prone to some sort of cataclysmic event, you shouldn't be surprised when that event occurs. There's nothing wrong with building/living there, you just have to be ready to deal with the hand mother natures deals. And if something does happen, it's not "Bush's Fault."

So what should our response be if SF gets hit by the big one? Call them idiots for living there and refuse any federal assistance? There are very few places in this country that are immune from natural disasters. Most of our major citites are built on rivers and oceans. Tornados and earthquakes zones are all over the country.

We could have evacuated the hospitals, old age homes, and children.

The Mayor is wrong, in the Constitution of the United States, the Federal Government can not enter and take over anything unless the Governor allows it. She did not! Barbour and Riley asked the Feds in BEFORE the storm hit.

Finally! Thank you for this post ... I am STUNNED at the ignorance of just how things work in this country by so many in the media, the general public, even a few on these BBS sites.

We allow the citizens to suffer and die because of the incompetency of the governor and local authorities?

Are you getting your talking points from Jesse Jackson?

This was a storm of Biblical proportions; people were going to die, regardless of how soon the aid got there; and you cannot save people who don't have the sense or will to save themselves.

Just because you wrote some disaster plans doesn't mean you could implement them without anything going wrong.

Maybe you could put them up here for us all to go over with a find tooth comb; I'm sure some on here could find something wrong with what you did.

When you have an unprecedented disaster involving 90,000 square miles involving millions of people across several states, the Federal Government must take the lead. Damn the uproar if it means lives will be saved. That is what leadership is all about.

Da** that pesky Constitution of the United States, the laws on the books ... what a nuisiance. [/sarc]

I heard an interview on FOX-NEWS with a retired Louisiana official who said that the department/association responsible for maintaining the levees had used the money to buy a casino and to invest in each others' businesses rather than strengthen the levees. I'm sorry that I didn't note the name, but I hope this info comes out on the Internet somewhere.

It Should be SOP for the feds to immediately insert military forces, guns blazing at lawbreakers, under the force of Martial Law, into a disaster area Immediately because civil disturbances and looting are assured. (We have had this lesson for the last 40 years and ignore it repeatedly.) The authority for this comes from:

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

This was eventually carried out in NOLA, too late to prevent a lot of criminality. First secure the area, next search and rescue. This was done backwards.

You obviously have not read all of my posts on this thread. I assign most of the blame to Nagin and Blanco. However, I don't hold the Feds blameless for their initial, bleated response to NO.

I might be inclined to agree with you. If you would phrase the last part ('Fed blameless') this way:

The Feds share some responsibility for failing to recognize, or even believe, the complete incompetence of the local and State 'leaders' sooner.

Just a thought process I'm working through. I might be wrong.

We also aren't going to arrest those who may have "looted" food, water and necessities in this emergency, and I do understand your point. The problem is that, if what you suggest were to become precedent, the feds would be able to act whenever they thought it was in the best interest of those being served.

We can worry about setting precedents later. Congress, the MSM, university professors, and the rest of the elites can discuss it ad nauseum after lives are saved and order established.

Someone earlier in the thread asked that you state how this concept you support would be limited, and you did not directly respond. How about fed action to forcibly close abortion mills? (But it does sound tempting.) Some religious organizations don't believe in blood transfusions, perhaps the army should come in and close the doors of such religious practitioners. It would almost certainly save lives. How about federal intervention on our highways to slow down traffic? Sure, some of these may sound silly to you, but how do we define the paramater for ignoring state officials and substituting federal agencies? This is a very thorny problem, even in the face of what APPREARS to have been a tardy federal response.

You can set up all the what-ifs you want and make all kinds of linkages to other issues. The bottom line is that there is an ongoing crisis of historic proportions involving millions of Americans. Sometimes people have to make hard and immediate decisions based on the circumstances. Saving lives trumps bureaucratic red tape.

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Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder

Don't be so quick to pillory the federal response in New Orleans. Immediate emergency management is primarily a local and state responsibility


		Craig Martelle, retired as a major in the U.S. Marine Corps, lives in North Huntingdon. He recently launched the Strategic Outlook Institute, a public-policy organization.


	Phil Coale, Associated Press Flooded school buses in a lot, New Orleans, Sept. 1. Click photo for larger image.