This lengthy Washington Post story documents how the Bush Administration destroyed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the governmental entity that has performed so ineptly throughout this crisis:
[A]fter 9/11, FEMA lost out in the massive bureaucratic shuffle [that resulted in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)].
Not only did its Cabinet status disappear, but it became one of 22 government agencies to be consolidated into Homeland Security....
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from hurricane-prone states fought a rear-guard action against FEMA's absorption. "What we were afraid of, and what is coming to pass, is that FEMA has basically been destroyed as a coherent, fast-on-its-feet, independent agency," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.)....
DHS in reality emphasized terrorism at the expense of other threats, said several current and former senior department officials and experts who have closely monitored its creation, cutting funding for natural disaster programs and downgrading the responsibilities and capabilities of the previously well-regarded FEMA....
"The federal system that was perfected in the '90s has been deconstructed," said Bullock. Citing a study that found that the United States now spends $180 million a year to fend off natural hazards vs. $20 billion annually against terrorism, Bullock said, "FEMA has been marginalized. . . . There is one focus and the focus is on terrorism."
The White House's Homeland Security Council developed 15 scenarios for the department to concern itself about -- everything from a terrorist dirty-bomb attack to a Baghdad-style improvised explosive device. Only three were not terrorism scenarios: a pandemic flu, a major earthquake and a major hurricane.
By this year, almost three of every four grant dollars appropriated to DHS for first responders went to programs explicitly focused on terrorism, the Government Accountability Office noted in a July report. Out of $3.4 billion in proposed spending for homeland security preparedness grants in the upcoming fiscal year, GAO found, $2.6 billion would be on terrorism-focused programs. At the same time, the budget for much of what remained of FEMA has been cut every year; for the current fiscal year, funding for the core FEMA functions went down to $444 million from $664 million.
New leaders such as Allbaugh [a Bush flunky from Texas, with no pertinent experience] were critical of FEMA's natural disaster focus and lectured senior managers about the need to adjust to the post-9/11 fear of terrorism. So did his friend Michael D. Brown, a lawyer with no previous disaster management experience whom Allbaugh brought in as his deputy and who now has the top FEMA post. "Allbaugh's quote was 'You don't get it,' " recalled the senior FEMA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If you brought up natural disasters, you were accused of being a pre-9/11 thinker." The result, the official said, was that "FEMA was being taxed by the department, having money and slots taken. Because we didn't conform with the mission of the agency."
"I'm guilty of saying, 'you don't get it,' " Allbaugh said. "Absolutely." The former FEMA chief said he had encountered bureaucratic resistance to thinking about a "monumental" disaster, such as Katrina or 9/11, rather than the more standard diet of "tornadoes and rising waters."
But experts in emergency response inside and outside the government sounded warnings about the changes at FEMA. Peacock said FEMA's traditional emphasis on emergency response "all went up in smoke" after 9/11, creating a "blind spot" as a result of a "police-action, militaristic view" of homeland security. When it came to natural disasters, "It was not only forgetting about it, it was not funding it...."
On the Friday before Katrina hit, when it was already a Category 2 hurricane rapidly gathering force in the Gulf, a veteran FEMA employee arrived at the newly activated Washington headquarters for the storm. Inside, there was surprisingly little action. "It was like nobody's turning the key to start the engine," the official recalled.
Brown, the agency's director, told reporters Saturday in Louisiana that he did not have a sense of what was coming last weekend.
"I was here on Saturday and Sunday, it was my belief, I'm trying to think of a better word than typical -- that minimizes, any hurricane is bad -- but we had the standard hurricane coming in here, that we could move in immediately on Monday and start doing our kind of response-recovery effort," he said. "Then the levees broke, and the levees went, you've seen it by the television coverage. That hampered our ability, made it even more complex."
But other officials said they warned well before Monday about what could happen. For years, said another senior FEMA official, he had sat at meetings where plans were discussed to send evacuees to the Superdome. "We used to stare at each other and say, 'This is the plan? Are you really using the Superdome?' People used to say, what if there is water around it? They didn't have an alternative," he recalled.
In the run-up to the current crisis, Allbaugh said he knew "for a fact" that officials at FEMA and other federal agencies had requested that New Orleans issue a mandatory evacuation order earlier than Sunday morning.
But DHS did not ask the U.S. military to assist in pre-hurricane evacuation efforts, despite well-known estimates that a major hurricane would cause levees in New Orleans to fail. In an interview, the general charged with operations for the military's Northern Command said such a request to help with the evacuation "did not come our way."
"At the point that we were all watching the evacuation and the clogged Interstate 10 going to the west on Sunday, we were watching the storm very carefully," Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe said. "At that time, it was a Category 5 storm and we knew that it would be among the worst storms to ever hit the United States. . . . I knew there was an excellent chance of flooding."
Others who went out of their way to offer help were turned down, such as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who told reporters his city had offered emergency, medical and technical help as early as last Sunday to FEMA but was turned down. Only a single tank truck was requested, Daley said. Red tape kept the American Ambulance Association from sending 300 emergency vehicles from Florida to the flood zone, according to former senator John Breaux (D-La.) They were told to get permission from the General Services Administration. "GSA said they had to have FEMA ask for it," Breaux told CNN. "As a result they weren't sent...."
[M]any outraged politicians in both parties have concluded that the federal government failed to meet the commitments it made after Sept. 11, 2001. Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said DHS had failed. "We've been told time and time again that we are prepared for any emergency that comes, that we're ready," he said. "We're obviously not."
Apparently, the Bush shills succeeded in getting one of their lies about the failure of local officials inserted into the Post story: details here.
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