You're Doing a Heck of Job Brownie

[richlevy]

It appears that Michael Brown is tired of being a national scapegoat and is rolling on Bush and Chertoff. Maybe

WASHINGTON - Former federal disaster chief Michael Brown, the face of the government's listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday he told top Bush officials the day the storm howled ashore of massive flooding in New Orleans and warned "we were realizing our worst nightmare."

More defiant than defensive, Brown told senators he dealt directly with White House officials the day of the Aug. 29 storm, including chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.

He also said the Homeland Security Department was among a half-dozen government agencies that received regular briefings that day from him and other officials by way of video conference calls. Administration officials have said they did not realize the severe damage Katrina had caused until after the storm had passed.

Under oath, Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he could not explain why his appeals failed to produce a faster response.

In related news, Karl Rove promised a focus on using national security as an election tool. He'd just better hope that the hearings are over by then.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Michael Brown was canned, why should he take the fall for them anymore.

[Tonchi]

Gee, poor Brownie is really pissed that after getting an undeserved political appointment in a field he knew nothing about with an overblown paycheck, they actually expected him to do something. Now he feels like it was unfair that the corrupt politicos who put him in that cushy chair won't let him keep the money while they should have done all the work. Hey, that's not how friends are supposed to treat friends!

[wolf]

Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean

You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.

[tw]

Originally Posted by wolf

Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean

That is exactly what is happening here. It should have been obvious to everyone that this was going to happen when Karl Rove took over Katrina management about two weeks after the event.

Step one - blame Brownie. Put all failure upon him. A good soldier will take blame and lie down. Brownie has decided to stand up for himself.

If step one fails, then blame Chertoff. Nothing new here. This is what Richard Nixon did all through Watergate. Unfortunately, too many Republicans were more interested in the United States than loyal to the dictatorial president. It is why the Saturday Night Massacre occurred. It is why the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wanted a court united in its vote - fearing that the long shot would be a coup d’etat.

This 'Brownie inquisition' is what happens when leadership demands loyalty above all else. Unlike in Watergate, there are too many partisan Republicans on that Senate Committee to do anything but hang Brownie in effigy. Brownie made too many mistakes - soiled himself too many times - to be defensible. It will take an Oliver North stand before Congress just to break even. Chertoff has little to worry about.

Meanwhile, most every FEMA senior manager has qualifications equivalent to Brownie's - political appointee without any experience or underlying training. As noted long ago, Wolf had better FEMA qualifications than Brownie or Chertoff.

[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?

[richlevy]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

[wolf]

Having Witt as Louisiana's head of emergency management really made a difference for them, didn't it?

FEMA only comes when called. You don't call, they don't come.

You don't implement the emergency management plans that are recommended identifying deficits in your system, you tend to find out exactly how good those recommendations were in the first place, and how much you should have followed them.

As a result of the "Hurricane Pam" drills one year prior to Katrina, New Orleans knew exactly what would happen if a Cat-5 hit, and what they had to do about it.

None of it got done.

30 years worth of federal funding to improve the levees did everything except improve the levees.

You reap what you sow.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by wolf

Having Witt as Louisiana's head of emergency management really made a difference for them, didn't it?

They hired him after Katrina. He's there to clean up the mess.

During Katrina FEMA was called. Gov Blanco did ask for help. I can't think of any state that could lose most of a major city and not need federal help.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I just occured to me that when they canned Brown he was probably prepared to take one for the team and be benched. But when he found out he wasn't allowed on the bench or even the locker room and he was out in the cold....a pariah....he got pissed and decided to lay it all out in his testimony.
Just a guess.

[Beestie]

Maybe I'm not very well informed about these things but I thought FEMA was a post-disaster agency.

How much blame shoud we assign to FEMA for the gross negligence of the local authorities? I'm not defending FEMA and think Brown's appt to head it up was a colossally stupid decision typical of Bush's appointees but why is FEMA being blamed at all? What was FEMA supposed to do that New Orleans couldn't do themselves?

This kind of situation is exactly why I advocate a smaller role for the Feds and a bigger role for the local governments. The local government sits on its thumbs as Katrina approached - they had 72 hours to prepare and they did virtually nothing. How is it then that a post-disaster agency 1,500 miles away is more to blame? Either I don't get it or this whole blame the Fed thing is just a way for NO to shift the spotlight off their own incompetence.

I wish I had someone to blame and someone to compensate me every time I make a stupid mistake. And I'm dead set against giving credence to platforms constructed on assumptions as transparent as the Emporor's new clothes. I don't recall FEMA doing anything different during hurricane Andrew or hurricane Iniki. I lived through Iniki. In Hawaii, there's nowhere to evacuate to - you just grit your teeth, hide under a mattress and pray. I at least had the sense to double-wrap my computer in Hefty sacs. I saw a video just yesterday of a NO house where the computer was covered in mud. What were these people doing before the storm hit???

The sad fact is that too many people in NO sat on their backside as the storm aproached because their leaders sat on theirs. Any responsible person would have gotten the hell out of dodge 48 hours before the storm hit. The most striking photo of the post Katrina damage was that parking lot full of busses in six feet of water.

That pic told the story in its entirety.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Beestie

Maybe I'm not very well informed about these things but I thought FEMA was a post-disaster agency.

Federal Emergency Management AgencyAgency of the US government tasked with Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning.

FEMA is a soup-to-nuts agency. While it does not get involved with every landslide, it is supposed to handle the big disasters that cities and states can't handle alone.

I agree that in the first six hours the city should have had an effective evacuation plan. After that, it was FEMA's show. 4 days for food and water? Turning away corporate shipments of food and water?

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by richlevy

FEMA is a soup-to-nuts agency. While it does not get involved with every landslide, it is supposed to handle the big disasters that cities and states can't handle alone.

I agree that in the first six hours the city should have had an effective evacuation plan. After that, it was FEMA's show. 4 days for food and water? Turning away corporate shipments of food and water?

The first six hours? When a climatic meat grinder the size of Texas is heading in your general direction at speeds that would piss off an old lady driving to church on Sunday you have more than 6 hours notice.

I guess my point is that there is nothing that FEMA could have done in advance of the storm that NO could not have done and done better. FEMA would have had to start from scratch whereas NO knew everything and everyone they needed to know to empty the city. NO's failure was not due to a lack of resources and, in advance of a storm, resources are all FEMa can offer. And its not like FEMA knew something that NO didn't know - they were both looking at the same radar images.

FEMA's role, imho, didn't begin until the day after and I'm sure there is plenty of blame to go around regarding its completely disorganized and bumbling response. But as far as I'm concerned, they are largely blameless for the mistakes that occured prior to the storm's arrival. If the folks in the crosshairs couldn't get it done then it certainly isn't reasonable to expect that a bunch of buffoons inside the Beltway could have done better.

When a storm that big hits a city in what amounts to a topological salad bowl, then the results shouldn't be that surprising. To my knowlege, FEMA barely got involved when Iniki leveled Kuai'i. They sent money but that was about it. They didn't put anyone in hotels, they didn't feed anyone, they didn't fly in pallettes of Evian, they didn't distribute ATM cards and I don't remember anyone making a big deal about it. I didn't have a problem with FEMA then and I don't have a problem with FEMA now - other than the specific issues you raised about the delay in distributing needed resources.

I'm not defending FEMA or Brown. But I think FEMA is being made a convenient scapegoat for the scale of the destruction and for the complete lack of any effort by those suffering from it to mitigate it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I guess my point is that there is nothing that FEMA could have done in advance of the storm that NO could not have done and done better. FEMA would have had to start from scratch whereas NO knew everything and everyone they needed to know to empty the city. NO's failure was not due to a lack of resources and, in advance of a storm, resources are all FEMa can offer. And its not like FEMA knew something that NO didn't know - they were both looking at the same radar images.

FEMA, like the military, should have contingency plans prepared and if possible rehearsed, for every county in the country. If a flood hits St Louis, FEMA should have people designated to do what has to be done far in advance of the flood. Same for a Frisco quake.
There will always be surprises and unanticipated consequences but if they are prepared for the things that are anticipated and have their team in place they can respond to anything.
Like you said, there was plenty of warning for this storm. FEMA should have been massing the troops before it hit, not 3 days later. You don't wait for the shit to hit the fan before you put the contract out for bid.

Sure, the City of N.O. fucked up, but they have no authority outside the city limits. This sort of thing is regional not local. Even the state governor doesn't have juristiction over a large enough area.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by richlevy

FEMA is a soup-to-nuts agency. While it does not get involved with every landslide, it is supposed to handle the big disasters that cities and states can't handle alone.

I agree that in the first six hours the city should have had an effective evacuation plan. After that, it was FEMA's show. 4 days for food and water? Turning away corporate shipments of food and water?

You're not supposed to expect anyone to show up for help for at least 72 hours after a disaster.

Mitigation means fema provides consulting services to reduce the overall impact of a disaster BEFORE it happens. Communities can listen to FEMA or not.

New Orleans did not.

The Presidential disaster declaration was made BEFORE Katrina made landfall. This released the resources, like FEMA, to be available when the local government called for them. They didn't call. As I've said before, FEMA doesn't just go. They have to be invited. If local resources are able to handle a situation, that's what's supposed to happen.

That the city did manage to evacuate a large number of residents prior to the storm hitting indicates that there were some plans in place, but not all of them were followed. Even if the busses had been used, that would be one trip out ... with the contraflow in place, egress from the city was possible, reentry wasn't. I haven't seen numbers on how many seats were available on those flooded busses, but probably far fewer than were needed. Lifeboats on the Titantic fewer.

It was a mess, but Brown didn't cause it.