Confusion once again.
It is a little early for a thorough post-mortem analysis, but a couple of thoughts come to mind.
To be sure, at least so far, FEMA has not performed as expected, but in some cases neither have the States or local communities. The President, who seemed to be in a surly mood at the time, admitted as much publicly. Others in this Forum are better equipped than I to describe how the President could step in and take over and federalize portions of Louisiana, without the consent of the
Governor of that State. While the President formally offered that option to the Governor on Friday last, we do not know exactly when that offer was first made, verbally or otherwise. Given the critical nature of the assets in New Orleans and nearby it may have well been presented as an option early on. One can certainly speculate that the protection of the Port of New Orleans, the economic highway that is the Mississippi, and critical energy infrastructure in the Gulf region is a national security concern. As it turned out, a couple of days after the hurricane hit land it was apparent the infrastructure of the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf and land based facilities were fairly intact, with some exceptions, e. g., refineries outages in LA and pumping stations in MS without power. The major reason those assets were secured relatively quickly was due to the actions of the Coast Guard and private oil and gas operators in the Gulf area. As an aside, I must commend the Coast Guard for their performance. Their efforts to secure the Port of New Orleans, the offshore docking facilities, shipping lanes to the Gulf, and search and rescue operations was and is outstanding.
Although I have not been active on this Forum very long, I have been very critical, in other settings, of the way
FEMA was set up many years ago in 1974. I have also been critical of the fashion in which the Homeland Security Department was set up intially.
The major events leading to the consolidation of federal emergency relief operations prior to the establishment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), were the string of disasters that occurred in the 1960's and early 1970's that overwhelmed State governments.At the time the Stafford Act was passed in 1974, the major points of debate centered around what responsibilities the States would retain given the proposed structure and what cost sharing arrangements would be put in place to supplement State funds in the event of a disaster. What followed was a five year debate on just those questions resulting in the creation of FEMA in 1979. In 1979, at the request of the National Governors Association, President Carter, by executive order, consolidated many agencies responsible for disaster related activities. The FEMA regime continued from there on with some minor adjustments until after the turn of the century. Then an event occurred which finally changed at least the focus of disaster relief. We all know what that event was, 9-11. This milestone and the response that followed pointed to the major flaws in the FEMA system and other Federal functions associated with disaster response. The key words here are
assets, security, command and control.
In the State of Louisiana there is one major department that reports to the Governor that is charged with providing relief and security in a disaster scenario. The head of that department is the
Adjutant General of the State of Louisiana. In addition to his duties as Commander of the Louisiana National Guard, the AG also has the title of Director of the Louisiana Military Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Thus, the Governor has single level command and control over both security and disaster relief. We can debate at a later time whether this type of organization is better than others, or was effective in responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In the State of Mississippi the
Adjutant General and
Executive Director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency are separate, cabinet level departments with both reporting directly to the Governor.
IMHO: The Federal Government is not a bottomless cookie jar, whereby each State can whine to the Feds., saying over and over again, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie. The Governors and officials in those States are responsible for the security of their citizens. The Federal Government can help whenever it can, but the Governors of the respective States must take responsibility for their own actions.
If you can't stand the heat, try some other line of work like baking cookies.