FEMA to New Orleans:
Sink or swim, we're outta here
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by Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press
May 2, 2006
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing its long-term recovery office in New Orleans, claiming local officials failed to meet their planning obligations after Hurricane Katrina.
The office is responsible for helping the city devise a blueprint to rebuild destroyed houses, schools and neighborhoods.
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Commentary by Helen & Harry Highwater:
FEMA's arrogance is a good match for its incompetence. It takes my breath away -- but not literally, as FEMA took the breath away from so many in New Orleans last September.
Helen & Harry
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"FEMA cannot drive the planning -- our mission is to support it. We can only do so much and then we look to the city to embrace and begin planning and managing," said FEMA's national spokesman Aaron Walker. "Once they begin planning, we can re-engage with them."
Of the 35 employees who initially worked in the long-term recovery office, only five remained Tuesday, and they were waiting to be reassigned. Those five may continue to work on long-term recovery in a different office, Walker said.
City officials were angered by the move, saying New Orleans is again being abandoned by the federal government. Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert said the FEMA office and the city worked in tandem initially, but had a falling out over funding earlier this spring.
"We have a city that has an enormous planning need and you need planners. To date, we haven't gotten any monetary support to bring in planners," Meffert said.
Several employees of the disbanded office agreed with Meffert, saying that at the beginning the office worked closely with city officials, helping implement their plans. The relationship soured after the mayor's rebuilding commission, a group of businessmen and community leaders asked to create plans for redevelopment, requested FEMA money this spring to help fund their planning effort.
Brad Gair, then-director of FEMA's long-term recovery office, made a verbal promise to city officials to fund the effort, Meffert said. Gair has since left the New Orleans office.
"It appears the mayor's office misunderstood the commitment made: While FEMA is committed to the long-term recovery of the Gulf Coast region, providing funding for planning does not fall under the federal guidelines of public assistance," Walker said.
Eight months after Katrina, rebuilding has barely begun. One major hold-up was the late release of FEMA's flood elevation advisories, which offer guidelines on how high homeowners should raise their homes to qualify for flood insurance. Many residents also have faced delays settling claims with insurance companies, and city and state officials say they've received only a fraction of the public assistance needed to overhaul the blighted city.
As originally published
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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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."
Excerpted from"Mission accomplished" for FEMA
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