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FEMA's new focus on terrorism leaves nation unprepared for natural disasters

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Bush began dismantling then-efficient
FEMA as soon as he took office
by Eric Holdeman, Washington Post

Aug. 30, 2005 [Day 2]

In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

The advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA.

The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt.

Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation.

The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support.

In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.
 
Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?

What follows is an obituary for what was once considered the preeminent example of a federal agency doing good for the American public in times of trouble, such as the present.

FEMA was born in 1979, the offspring of a number of federal agencies that had been functioning in an independent and uncoordinated manner to protect the country against natural disasters and nuclear holocaust. In its early years FEMA grew and matured, with formal programs being developed to respond to large-scale disasters and with extensive planning for what is called "continuity of government."

The creation of the federal agency encouraged states, counties and cities to convert from their civil defense organizations and also to establish emergency management agencies to do the requisite planning for disasters. Over time, a philosophy of "all-hazards disaster preparedness" was developed that sought to conserve resources by producing single plans that were applicable to many types of events.

But it was Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992, that really energized FEMA. The year after that catastrophic storm, President Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to be director of the agency. Witt was the first professional emergency manager to run the agency. Showing a serious regard for the cost of natural disasters in both economic impact and lives lost or disrupted, Witt reoriented FEMA from civil defense preparations to a focus on natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation. In an effort to reduce the repeated loss of property and lives every time a disaster struck, he started a disaster mitigation effort called "Project Impact." FEMA was elevated to a Cabinet-level agency, in recognition of its important responsibilities coordinating efforts across departmental and governmental lines.

Witt fought for federal funding to support the new program. At its height, only $20 million was allocated to the national effort, but it worked wonders. One of the best examples of the impact the program had here in the central Puget Sound area and in western Washington state was in protecting people at the time of the Nisqually earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were protected from high-impact structural hazards. Those involved with Project Impact thought it ironic that the day of that quake was also the day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism.

To be sure, America may well be hit by another major terrorist attack, and we must be prepared for such an event. But I can guarantee you that hurricanes like the one that ripped into Louisiana and Mississippi yesterday, along with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, mudslides, power outages, fires and perhaps a pandemic flu will have to be dealt with on a weekly and daily basis throughout this country. They are coming for sure, sooner or later, even as we are, to an unconscionable degree, weakening our ability to respond to them.
The writer is director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
As originally published
Bush began dismantling then-efficient
FEMA as soon as he took office

by Lisa Friedman, San Garbiel Valley [CA] Tribune

Sept. 13, 2005

Amid mounting criticism over federal response to Hurricane Katrina, California lawmakers and disaster experts questioned Wednesday why FEMA dismantled a model preparedness program nearly four years ago.

The program was wiped out just eight months after it issued a report that found a 67 percent likelihood that the Bay area will sustain an earthquake so severe in the next 30 years that it will inflict more than $4 billion in damage.

Project Impact part of a Clinton-era disaster-mitigation campaign under former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt fell under the budget ax as President George W. Bush entered office.

But that move took on greater magnitude as Congress created a special committee to investigate why Hurricane Katrina caught the government off guard.

A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she does not believe now is the time to consider the dismissal of current FEMA Director Michael Brown, but Sen. Barbara Boxer joined the growing chorus demanding his resignation.

Boxer also demanded to see the agency's disaster plans for California.

"What is the plan on the shelf to respond to a potential earthquake in our state?' Boxer asked. "I'm assuming that they must have a plan at FEMA.'

FEMA officials did not return calls.

Boxer said she requested the plan based on news reports that prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the agency had listed the nation's three most likely catastrophic disasters: a terror attack in New York; hurricane damage in New Orleans; and a major earthquake in San Francisco.

With two down, Boxer said, "I'm going to look at California with a different eye.'

She and others also charged that FEMA is disintegrating amid cuts in federal mitigation funding, the loss of independence when it merged into the Department of Homeland Security, and the dismantling of programs like Project Impact.

The $25 million program, unveiled in Santa Monica in 1997, funded about 250 cities and counties for everything from retrofitting schools and hospitals in earthquake zones to building fortified safe rooms in tornado-prone regions.

It also encouraged municipal governments, local businesses and nonprofits to form partnerships and lay the groundwork for local disaster plans.

Los Angeles was not among the nine California communities that participated in Project Impact. Participants were Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and Santa Barbara; Colusa, Napa, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara counties; and the Las Virgenes-Malibu Council of Governments.

But in 2001, President Bush called the program "ineffective' and zeroed it out of his proposed budget. Congress approved the move later in the year, and FEMA ultimately replaced it with a new program of mitigation grants awarded on a competitive basis.

"Our communities were better prepared for disaster before the fact as a result of this program,' Boxer said. "Cancelling Project Impact is just another sign of the lack of preparation for disasters by the Bush administration.'

Mary Comerio, an architecture professor at UC Berkeley, who worked closely with Project Impact, called it "an incredibly successful mitigation project.'

But, she said, "It wasn't followed up on in this administration. It doesn't exist. It went away, and FEMA has not invested a penny in mitigation.'

Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management spokesman Lee Sapaden said, however the federal agency still does disaster mitigation.

Project Impact was slashed, he said because "this was something President Clinton, a Democrat, was doing,' but the Bush administration replaced it with a requirement that communities develop response blueprints in order to qualify for federal money.

"There's always mitigation funds available to cities and counties,' Sapaden said.

As originally published


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Did you wonder why FEMA disallowed bottled water, and cut the local emergency communications?

Why, even before the hurricane hit, FEMA told first-responders not to respond?

Did you wonder why FEMA wouldn't let hundreds of eager airboat skippers search for survivors?

Why Homeland Security kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans, while people were starving, drowning, dying of thirst?

Have you tried to understand why, as people were still drowning and unfed, firefighters were ordered to undergo an all-day seminar in Atlanta, before being sent to New Orleans ... to hand out fliers?

How come day after day after day, FEMA couldn't or wouldn't airdrop food and drinking water into New Orleans, but the U.S. military was there for "combat operations"?

I'm not an expert on search and rescue or military operations, but it just seems to me, people who haven't had food and water for five or six days could be quelled with food and water, instead of "combat operations."

"I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening."

The police commander came across the street to address our group.

He told us we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City.

The crowed cheered and began to move.

We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us.

The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

*           *           *
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge.

Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.

As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation.

We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances.

The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting.

The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway.

They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.

These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- things are going relatively well."

I'm familiar with how government works, how bureaucracy works, and in a crisis like this I would almost expect moments of grotesque incompetence and idiocy.

I'm not quite prepared, however, for that callous, cold-blooded murder that seems to have been wrought not by the hurricane, not by the flood, but by the bureaucracy that's supposed to help.

Yeah, murder. When the incompetence gets this thick, it smells like murder to me.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.

The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.

"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.


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