Emergency responders are highly trained, well-rehearsed, experienced from years of doing this, and are remarkably hard-working multitaskers that can bring together a multitude of subordinate responders; and, they use a military-based command system and they speak a common language (that simply cannot be learned OJT). They know the capabilities of the component responding agencies (and how they all dovetail together), and they likely know personally many of the key responders.
Ask any emergency responder what they fear, and he or she will say political interference and/or grandstanding.
A politically driven "take-over" of a command center during an active response (if this is indeed what is happening) is arrogant, irresponsible, and one suspects that it just happens to be the very model of the modern malignant narcissist.
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I’m just wondering how many residents of Coney Island and Far Rockaway will be returning to cleaned-out apartments tomorrow morning.
You don’t have to be an extreme libertarian to have a problem with “mandatory” evacuation orders.
I remember one of those CA brushfires a few years back. Ahnuld ordered evacuations but quite a few neighborhoods could have come through unscathed if the able-bodied male members had stayed behind with garden hoses primed and kiddie pools filled with ladders and wet blankets at the ready.
Many houses were lost to blowing embers that could easily have been put out.
You shouldn’t worry, anyhoo.
Obama was probably at the command post for all of ten minutes. Just long enough to pose for some publicity shots.
I’m sure he thinks he is the smartest person in that room.. I can just see it....”folks, I’m in charge here, stop what you are doing, I’m going to make a speech and then I’ll come up with a plan in a couple of weeks”...
Too true.
When the crunch comes, the last thing these command centers need is some political moron stopping everything so everyone can listen to him tell them how important their work is, or to patiently explain to him (usually with a camera conveniently nearby) something which is unfolding.
Maybe the command center wheeled in a wittle throne for 0 to clamber up on and preside.