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Katrina's
Lessons, Pt. 2 - Would FEMA Bungle
Another Disaster?
A year after Hurricane Katrina, the writer looks at the
changes made to the federal disaster-management agency, and whether they would
make a difference today
By Earl Ofari
Hutchinson, New America Media
LOS ANGELES - Aug 14, 2006 - At the start of the
hurricane season in June, media outlets
shocked the public with
computer-generated images of New York
City streets being swept by torrents of
ocean water. Though it was pretend
stuff, FEMA officials insisted the
agency was well prepared to handle a big
disaster. A few weeks later, FEMA
Director David Paulison told reporters
that the federal government can and will
act quickly and decisively in the event
of another Katrina-scale event.
Paulison and FEMA higher-ups had to say
that. No federal agency has been
battered harder than FEMA for the
Katrina debacle. Paulison aimed to bury
that criticism and history. At first
glance, he has a case. In the months
since Katrina, FEMA has made a dizzying
array of changes. It revamped its
communication systems, upgraded its Web
sites, streamlined claims processing,
speeded up inspections, and improved
disaster coordination efforts with state
and local officials. It pledged that all
disaster housing repair and rebuilding
contracts would be subject to the bid
process. That was a major sore point.
Last year, FEMA took much-deserved
public heat for awarding no-bid
contracts worth millions to four big
contractors with close ties to the Bush
administration.
FEMA made the changes under extreme
duress. And while they are much needed,
they don't guarantee that things will be
any different if a big one hits again.
FEMA is still plagued by money problems,
staff shortages, a penchant for waste
and its total dependency on the
political whims of Homeland Security.
Its patchwork $5 billion budget is
nowhere near enough to pay the massive
costs of housing repair, relocation and
relief aid for the thousands of people
that another Katrina disaster would
displace. In March, a House Committee
reported that nearly one-quarter of
FEMA's top professionals had quit. In
April, a Government Accounting Office
report that businesses and relief
recipients had scammed FEMA for millions
to spend on such "necessities" as
expensive massages and tattoos ignited
more public fury and even louder
Congressional cries to radically shake
up FEMA or scrap it entirely.
Then in early August, Mississippi NAACP
officials publicly charged that hundreds
of Katrina victims were living in FEMA
trailers tainted with formaldehyde, a
known carcinogen. Despite the complaints
of sickness, it took FEMA months to
agree to make inspections. Even FEMA's
public pledge to toss all contracts out
to open bid rang hollow. The four
Republican-friendly contractors that got
the bulk of FEMA no-bid money to rebuild
Katrina's devastated Gulf home also
received the bulk of the competitive bid
contract money.
In the past, much of FEMA's chaos and
confusion was blamed on Bush's singular
obsession with the war on terrorism.
This resulted in the massive shift of
millions in funds and personnel from
disaster relief to Homeland Security.
The priority change mortally crippled
FEMA's efforts to deal with disaster
relief. A year later that hasn't
changed. FEMA is still under the tight
bureaucratic thumb of Homeland Security.
And the priority of Homeland Security is
to allocate whatever personnel and
resources it needs to fight terrorism.
That leaves FEMA on the same shaky
ground upon which it stood a year ago.
That enraged the Senate Homeland
Security Committee. In May, it blasted
FEMA for its still-underwhelming
capacity to deal with big disasters and
flatly called for its abolition. The
Senate took the hint and in July voted
overwhelmingly to abolish FEMA. The call
and the vote, however, is more about an
image and style change than a
fundamental change in the way FEMA does
business. The Senate gave no specifics
on how or even whether the new agency
would operate any differently than FEMA.
It proposed no major funding hikes, and
did not call for lopping it off from
Homeland Security. It did not even
propose a name change for the "new"
agency.
Even if FEMA were an independent,
well-oiled, disaster-battling machine
that was flush with cash, it would still
likely fall apart in the face of a
titanic disaster. FEMA must have the
firm backing of the White House to act
fast to deal with or head off a crisis.
That didn't happen in the hours before
Katrina hit. An embarrassing video
released by the Associated Press in
February showed that President Bush
ignored warnings from then FEMA director
Michael Brown that the New Orleans
levees could crack. There was no plan
for the evacuation of residents, the
speedy dispatch of disaster aid or the
deployment of the National Guard.
A year later, that lesson of Katrina is
still lost. Louisiana state officials
were livid at Bush in July when he
struck key recommendations from an Army
Corp of Engineers report for short-term
repairs on the levees.
A disaster of the colossal magnitude of
Katrina will almost certainly overwhelm
any single government agency. Yet FEMA
is still the agency that everyone looks
to to cope with disasters. It failed
miserably with Katrina. As it stands, if
another disaster of Katrina's magnitude
strikes, it could bungle it again.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of the forthcoming
The
Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006), a
look at Bush and The GOP’s court of black voters
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