let's go over this for a second. FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. their sole function is manage emergencies on a federal level. wikipedia puts it like this:
quote:
FEMA coordinates the work of federal, state, and local agencies in responding to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
quote:
* Mitigation: Reducing the severity or likelihood of the hazard.
* Preparedness: Ensuring you have the capability to respond to the hazard.
* Response: Immediate actions taken to save lives, property, the environment, and the economy.
* Recovery: Subsequent actions taken to restore property, jobs, and services.
alright, now, let's review with this in mind.
Wrong. FEMA is not responsible for reinforcing the levees. It is the responsibility of the Orleans district levee board working in concert with the Corps of Engineers.
yes. fema is responsible for reinforcing levees. they are supposed to coordinate efforts with levee boards and the army corp of engineers. they are responsible for managing that sort of thing on a federal level. thus their name.
you see, that falls under the first two categories of their duties. they are supposed to reduce the likelihood or severity of possible disasters, and help prepare for the ones that are foreseeable.
Wrong. It is not FEMA’s responsibility to coordinate the evacuation of cities days in advance. It is the state's responsibility and in particular the local authorities, city officials, parish or county officials who have jurisdiction in these affairs. It is the same scenario all over the country in every major metropolitan area.
actually, it is. that's part of number 2.
Here is the 364 buses operated by the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority (NORTA) that Nagin should have used to evacuate the poor.
Why weren't NORTA's 364 buses used to ferry poor people out of New Orleans before Katrina hit?
good question. why weren't they?
RTA buses never left the RTA lots. There was no water or food provisions brought to the Superdome before Katrina hit. There were no emergency generators brought to either the Superdome or the convention center before the storm hit. These are not the responsibility of FEMA these are local responsibilities.
see that bit above about coordinating federal, state, and local efforts?
FEMA did not do their job. They were too slow to respond when it became blindingly obvious that state and local officials were helpless.
from personal experience here, fema is pretty helpless too. this is not the first disaster they've botched. i happened to be in the other one. fema did a LITTLE of the funding part of the job, until money ran out. then they high-tailed it out of the state, only to return and investigate who bought what with it. nearest i can tell, they didn't do anything else.
in other words, they're about an 1/8th of their job. maybe they're drastically underfunded. but if they're going to essentially do nothing, blame the victims, and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done, why bother having them?
yes, state and local officials are helpless. that's the idea behind having fema. they're supposed to take charge. i don't expect you to understand this, really. you live in kansas. not that there's anything wrong with kansas, but it's not florida. you have no reference for understanding the madhouse an entire state can become when a category 4 or 5 hurricane is beaing down on your coast.
that calm before a storm? it's a myth. the sky might be dead, but the people on the ground are maddly doing everything they can to prepare. grocery stores are a nightmare. no bread, no water, no batteries, no charcoal -- the shelves are empty and the aisles full. home depot sells out of plywood for the next 6 months. people are running around relocating. many try to leave, and clog the highways. the VIDEO STORE is even jumping with activity.
you have no way to understand activity, panic and mass hysteria on a state level. these things don't happen in kansas. but we're pretty familiar with it down here. there are not enough police officers, army reserve, fire fighters, paramedics or whatever in the entire state to deal with even the craziness BEFORE the storm, let alone after.
the trick is to prepare as early as possible. make sure you have all the things you need before you even know there's a hurricane coming. we have a very helpful resource here, the national hurricane center. every june or july they issue a guide before the hurricane season. the people who have to evacuate know when and where they have to evacuate to. we're not as prepared as cuba, but we're not in the dark either.
if we can prepare for forseeable disasters, so should fema. that's their job. they might not have been able to prevent this disaster, but they certainly could have planned for it better, and i dunno, actually done SOMETHING. anything at all.
Some will continue to argue that FEMA should have been involved earlier and that they should have taken over local control of the situation before the storm hit. But that's not how the system works.
Federal, State and Local authorities operate under a system whereby powers and jurisdictions are understood. Not just in New Orleans, but everywhere in this country.
THE SYSTEM: Either live with it or change it.
actually, the whole point of fema is that they have the jurisdiction to suspend local, county, and state jurisdiction. actually, if i recall correctly, they have the authority to suspend FEDERAL jurisdiction too. the system is that they come in, say "we're running the show now. do this, this, this, this, and that. here's money, here's manpower from other states." that's why they exist.
if they're just an extra layer of red tape, sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, shifting blame and spinning propaganda, and not even doing a damned thing then we don't need them, and they should shuttup and go away.
basically they should at least TRY to do their jobs, or get lost.
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