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Originally Posted by wolf
Thanks for the vote of confidence, tw.
The responsibility for Katrina management needs to be at the local and state level. Everything else is just blame and fingerpointing. Everybody in emergency management/services knows this, but public perception is everything.
So, who do you think will get the rebuilding contracts for New Orleans? Ghirardelli, Godiva, or Herseys?
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I think having an entire city flood is beyond the responsibility of the city or state. It's why we have disaster declarations to begin with.
The situation was mismanaged from the city level, but part of that was because no additional support came in. How long are local police and rescue supposed to hold in a disaster like that 12 hours? 36? 72? How much worse would 9/11 been if the federal response waited for 3 days?
Clinton appointed one of the best FEMA directors ever. The governor of LA was smart enough to hire him last fall.
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Louisiana’s governor has hired James Lee Witt, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the Clinton administration, to help coordinate state and federal agencies managing the disaster-relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
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As FEMA’s administrator in the 1990s, Witt was lauded for turning around what had been a moribund and ineffective government agency by responding quickly to the Mississippi floods in 1993, the Northridge earthquakes in 1994 and the TWA 800 crash in 1996. Clinton elevated FEMA to a Cabinet-level agency.
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Even if Bush suddenly got an attack of intelligence and offered Witt the job as head of FEMA, he would probably turn him down. He's too smart to work for someone like Bush, recognizes the peril of working under Homeland Security, and realizes that being a cabinet level agency was part of what made FEMA effective. Also, having to watch out for a backstabbing move by Rove would interfere with the job.
In some ways Brown was perfect for the job because he was too stupid to see what pitfalls were and attempt to fix them before a disaster happened.
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