As for the evacuation, as I understand it, FEMA officials spent a large part of the Saturday (August 27) talking about buses but never took any steps to carry out this idea, not even in theory, and not even urging local government to do something or offering to help. It was probably beyond human capability to fully evacuate NOLA, under the circumstances, but this was such an obvious step that could have alleviated some of the problems, that the failure to take it has t be reckoned as monumental.

And the failure to get buses in to evacuate the Superdome and the Convention Center after the fact — again, I have a hard time finding good excuses.

There’s a lot of blame to go around, but by definition, a disaster of this magnitude usually renders local officials helpless. That’s where FEMA is supposed to help out. The fact that the local officials could have done a better job just doesn’t excuse the fact that FEMA did so little so late, and in some cases actually impeded the efforts of others.

And didn’t.

You know I really hate when a woman demands a double-standard for herself that is in no way applied to her male peers. Governor Blanco, whom you all know I abhor, gets a free pass on her stupefyingly abysmal repsonse to the Katrina disaster. She ask…

FEMA-I am sure they need to improve their performance-but the bulk of the problem was caused by the failure to evacuate in time-and failure to get the underpriviledged people out on buses-they had the buses-but didn’t use them. If New Orleans had done that-then there would not have been as many deaths-or the situation at the convention center(which was not designated as a “shelter”)

I think that the congressional commitee is asking the right questions-even if they are Republicans-I don’t see a white-wash taking place. The two democrats that appeared made asses of themselves by attaching Brown-and not asking real questions. The political bullshit is nauseating-but is business as usual.

Most people do not understand what FEMA does-and that they do have limitations under law. And that under the circumstances-90,000 square miles of devastation-they are stretched very thin. Everyone expects the federal government to roll up on their doorstep(even if it is underwater)
with food and water(seems like that should be an individual responsibility)
as soon as the wind calms down. I have been in a few hurricanes-and you always have food and water on hand-just like everyone hits the grocery store up north before a big snowstorm.

People want it all-but don’t raise my taxes.

Well, no. You can argue that the head of DHS was also incompetent. You can trace the incompetence far and wide: it’s not a zero-sum game.

But this is precisely the area where the head of FEMA ought to have known what was going on, and whether the situation is that he did know and did nothing, or just didn’t even know about it: either option is one of the indications that Mike Brown was incompetent.

Er… FEMA’s own website says: “FEMA’s continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. ”

When the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana, there was federal paperwork involved. If FEMA was supposed to be “effectively managing” federal response, part of that effective management would have been ensuring good communication channels meant the head of FEMA did know about this agreement between the governors of Texas and Louisiana. It may be that the state departments of Texas and/or Louisiana were also incompetant, but the fact is, if after so many years of knowing a situation like Hurricane Katrina could occur, FEMA’s excuse for not knowing about an emergency response agreement between Texas and Louisiana with regard to Hurricane Katrina is “but no one told us…” then yes, this is yet another example of Mike Brown’s incompetence.

Part of being a competent senior manager - and a pretty large part - is making sure you are told things. One of the sure signs of an incompetent senior manager is one who keeps making mistakes based on incomplete information because “no one told me”. Granted, a newbie in the job may need time to shake down and establish good communication channels, but Mike Brown was appointed head of FEMA in January 2003.

If Katrina had been less devastating to NOLA, we wouldn’t know today how ineffective the evacuation was. We wouldn’t know how many people were actually left behind.

We don’t know how many people were left behind in Galveston/Houston because most of the people are faceless to us.

I’m still trying to figure out how anyone figures Mike Brown’s competence as FEMA head is tied to knowing about an agreement between the governors of Texas and Louisania when so far there’s no evidence that he or his agency was ever told about it.

If you want to indict him or DHS on this score, show me where you have knowledge that they were informed of this agreement. I’m willing to entertain the notion, and will join you in criticizing them if they were. But so far there’s no proof. To say that they should have been informed makes sense to me, but saying that they actually were and did nothing about it is a presumption, not established fact.

Charles said, in part: a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy

You’re presuming that Charles thinks Mike Brown was “a competent FEMA head”. As far as I can see, no one but George W. Bush and Mike Brown himself thinks this.

It’s possible that Mike Brown knew about the agreement and did nothing: it’s also possible that he was so incompetent as a FEMA head that he didn’t even know about this agreement. I think that the second possibility is more strongly implied by Charles’s post.

There is no excuse for this. DHL subsumed FEMA precisely so that federal agencies could work together under the DHL umbrella in case of a terrorist attack. We may presume that had al-Qaeda, rather than a hurricane, managed to breach the levees, the response by FEMA/DHL would have been exactly as incompetent, since it appears that Mike Brown’s idea of forward planning for a disaster is that he should begin planning when he’s told the disaster has actually happened. They’ve had four years to get their act together and this is the result?

Pseudo-Adrienne, I share your pessimism. Regardless of which side of the aisle they sit on, the politicians are likely going to try to use this process to pillory the other side rather than do what they can to see that it doesn’t happen again.

I say, “that can be fixed” because not all problems can be fixed by passing laws and writing regulations and plans. We get the leadership we choose in this country. If we pick leaders on the basis of how well they can make emotional appeals with high-sounding phrases instead of selecting people who seem to have a rational understanding of government and the ability to get things done, we’re going to end up with messes like this. Bad leaders will screw up good plans.

Several Days before Katrina hit, the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana. Unfortunately, the Federal level paperwork didn’t clear until Thursday after Katrina. Now, it is quite possible that TX or LA bureauocrats screwed up their end of the paperwork, but a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy.

Why would you presume that the head of FEMA would have been advised of an agreement between the Louisania and Texas governors concerning the National Guard? The “Department of Homeland Security” (and if that isn’t a Fascist title, I don’t know what is) is a mish-mash of various federal agencies thrown together. I would not be surprised to hear that communications among the various agencies has yet to be worked out well.

The questions I’d ask are, what are the nature of the communications between the Governors of the various states and FEMA? Between the National Guard and FEMA? Do the two governors coordinate this and let FEMA know? Do the two National Guard organizations let FEMA know? Is the structure set up such that a third party gets the information from either the Governors involved or the National Guard commanders and then let FEMA know? Did anyone let FEMA know? Or, maybe FEMA did know, told some other organization whose job it actually is to deal with this, and they did nothing.

If FEMA heard about this and did nothing, that’s one thing. But making the presumption that FEMA heard about this in the first place is unwarranted at this point. There’s also the important point of fixing the problem. By simply presuming that FEMA did hear and did nothing, we miss the possibility that communications are screwed up and miss the opportunity to fix them.

From what I hear, the actions of FEMA pre-disaster was just about what it was in other disasters. Did the Feds take a hand in evacuating for hurricanes in previous years? As far as post-disaster goes, did they get substantial relief into disaster areas sooner than they did here? From what I’m able to determine, the asnwer is “no”. Now, if I’m wrong about that I’d love to see documentation thereof. I’m by no means tied to this.

We are a federal republic, not a unitary democracy. The powers of the Federal government are limited, and quite deliberately so, as the founders of the USA figured that the more distant a governmental body was from the people who were governed, the less they should be trusted (and they didn’t trust any government). In this case, disaster planning and preparedness and the execution of those plans is the responsibility of the local government first, and then the state, and then the feds. The more distant strata don’t step in until asked by the more local one. In this case, it appears from what I have read that the city had an adequate disaster plan, but completely failed to execute it. The state then apparently dithered. The plans at the federal level presume that the local and state levels are doing their jobs. I’m sure that the feds have an alternative for when the local and state levels aren’t doing their jobs because they were wiped out. But they don’t seem to have one for when the local governments are in place but ineffective through panic or incompetence. There’s a lot of legal bars to the feds declaring the locals incompetent and barging in and taking over, and quite properly so.

Who were the disaster chiefs for New Orleans and Louisania? Were they political appointees with no competence or clue? What actions did they take? Had they ever even read the plans? Let’s see them up before Congress and have them account for their actions.

By all means, if the Bush administration’s minions screwed up, flog him and them. But let’s not make a presumption that the Feds are responsible to take charge immediately for disasters, etc. in this country, because they are not, should not, and cannot be. It is a foundation of governmental philosoply in this country that government is not to be trusted, and that the more powerful it is the more it’s powers should be limited.

Let’s see an investigation at the state and local levels too, and let’s see exactly what went wrong, on all levels. If this whole thing descends into “Let’s flog the Republicans” or “Let’s flog the Democrats”, then the real causes will be deliberately obscured for political purposes and go undetected. Then those real causes won’t be rooted out of the political and governmental structures in other cities and states, and when we lose a city to earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, or a smuggled nuclear weapon, there’ll be more unnecessary loss of life.

Several Days before Katrina hit, the governors of Texas and Louisiana agreed that the Texas National Guard would be sent to Louisiana. Unfortunately, the Federal level paperwork didn’t clear until Thursday after Katrina. Now, it is quite possible that TX or LA bureauocrats screwed up their end of the paperwork, but a competent FEMA head would surely have known that the agreement had been reached, and would have had people checking to make sure that the agreement had cleared the Federal level bureaocracy. Given that Brown failed utterly to ensure that that paperwork was expedited, I find any claims that Brown was stymied entirely by State level refusal to do anything simply ridiculous.

The govenor of LA decided that her state did not have sufficient resources to handle what was coming, arranged additional support from a neighboring state, and the Federal government stymied her efforts. While Brown was presumably not directly for fouling up the paperwork, he was certainly responsible for ensuring that the Federal response was not crippling the state response.

This is far from the only example of the Feds screwing up lower level responses in this situation, but it is one in which the potential role of the FEMA head is most obvious.

I wondered how long it would take for the knee-jerk Blame Anyone But the Bush Administration (BABBA) people started crawling out of the woodwork.

I’m not, in this thread, faulting FEMA for not coordinating the evacuation. I’m faulting Brown for saying that he did coordinate the evacuation. I’m faulting Brown for saying that his coordination of the evacuation consisted solely of encouraging the Gov & the Mayor to evacuate sooner. Those two statements of Brown’s, when taken together, certainly seem to indicate that he is either a liar or an incompetent. Neither of those is what I want as qualities of the head of FEMA.

Please also note my comment #6, in which I voice my opinion about major evacuations in the USA.

I am also faulting the Dept for Homeland Security (and, fuck, if that isn’t a frightening name) and Bushadminco for defunding FEMA, for allowing knowledge to leave FEMA without replacing that knowledge, for appointing an entirely unqualified person to head FEMA and for not implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission wrt communications systems among other things.