Was FEMA Prepared? Blame Game Part I

In addendum to what Brendan has to say over at the IrishTrojan site, and after also hearing Chertoff on the air a short while ago, here's my 2 cents:

I have said it once Brendan, and I will say it again...you are totally correct. This is infuriating that Chertoff and Brown are lying through their teeth. And although FEMA itself says that the locals bear responsibility for ensuring that they have plans for making it through the first 72 hours without FEMA help, I think that FEMA should be clear that that clock should have started ticking as SOON as the NWS plotted this as a CAT 3 storm on Friday PM.

In addition, I think that everyone agrees New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin bears a huge responsibility for not doing more in this tragic situation. From the moment I saw the pictures like the one you have posted of the buses sitting in the bus garage, and I read examples of emergency evacuation plans like the one posted here: [ My Previous Post] I knew that there was a severe problem with the way the situation was handled from the onset.

However, regardless of the ineptitude of the New Orleans Mayor, FEMA is an agency that is tasked with understanding and planning for the response given the severity of the situation. When FEMA Director Mike Brown makes comments like "Saturday and Sunday, we thought it was a typical hurricane situation -- not to say it wasn't going to be bad, but that the water would drain away fairly quickly...then the levees broke and (we had) this lawlessness. That almost stopped our efforts." [ Shreveport Times ] they totally ring of ineptitude at best and a blatant lie at worse...because as early as 2002 [ Washing Away ], the media was reporting that the devastation that could occur from even a "moderate" storm as potentially killing thousands. More importantly, and even more damning is the quote at the beginning of the article. That quote is from former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh stating that shortly after he took office, he ordered aides to examine the nation's potential major catastrophes, including the New Orleans scenario. The article then says that "Louisiana emergency management officials say that they lobbied the agency for years to study how to respond to New Orleans' vulnerability, finally getting attention last year."

My next question is what happened to the plans or planning process? Why could something so important be no longer a prioirity? Allbaugh (and keep in mind that any respect I have is a grudging, and very hard-won respect because he also served as the National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000), was highly decorated and commended in his role in helping NYC and DC recover post 9/11, but he decided to leave in March of 2003 when FEMA was merged into the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's new director, Mike Brown, had a different task to fulfill as President Bush made sweeping changes in creation of the Department of Homeland Security. It was at this time when FEMA was re-tasked with focusing on "ensuring that the nation's first responders were trained and equipped to deal with weapons of mass destruction" [ http://www.fema.gov/about/history.shtm ] and that "just a few years past its 20th Anniversary, FEMA was actively directing its "all-hazards" approach to disasters toward homeland security issues." [ http://www.fema.gov/about/history.shtm ]

Taking this into account, it would seem that although Mayor Nagin and the LA Government share much of the responsibility for not doing more to evacuate folks...it also seems that with FEMA's new priorities, they did not do their job to rectify that situation, and to fulfill their mission statement "to lead America to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disasters..."

UPDATE: Wow...who would have thought that Michelle Malkin would be calling for Brown's head...

UPDATE 2: Glenn Reynolds amazingly, may be defending him a little.