Fema: Fill & Download for Free

I was one of the federal disaster responders who personally was deployed to NOLA on day three after landfall. I left about 35 days later. (Think sleeping bags, MRES and austere conditions. Longer than we like to leave the early response team in place.) FEMA had and has a large number of highly experienced emergency management professionals internally, in other federal agencies and ESF partners).Major part of the early coordination issues. For the proceeding several years FEMA conducted a major tabletop hurricane exercise in Louisiana that was eerily like Katrina: Exercise Hurricane Sally. Many issues were exposed and identified for local, state and federal officials. Sadly most were ignored by the local and state officials.Much of FEMAs “regular operating money” was diverted from FEMA preparation efforts (such as on-call contracts, etc.) to create other parts of the Department of Homeland Security. These annual preparation activities did not take place due to lack of funds for FEMA staff.FEMA and National Hurricane Center identified Katrina as a likely major storm with the potential of causing major damage. FEMA, NHC and others started federal/state coordination conference calls about a week before the storm made landfall. Those calls included not only Louisiana, but all of the southern states that could be within the possible impact zone.Other states agreed to allow FEMA to preposition federal response resources within their state. Louisiana did not. Federal officials including the President had calls with the Governor of Louisiana trying to negotiate that preplacement.Governor of Louisiana wanted all federal resource including National Guard from other states under the direct control of the Governor. This is contrary to a number of federal laws and is not legally possible. Normally the State Coordinating Official works closely with the Federal Coordinating Official to decide where to use federal resources. By law, federal response resources remain under the operational control of the Federal Emergency Support Function that activated them. See Stafford Act.Without the feds agreeing to #5 the Governor would not authorize federal help, pre-landfall. Feds did preposition resources in a neighboring state pre-landfall and had responders in NOLA by Day Two.FEMA and the federal agencies were trying to respond despite a poorly written revised Federal Response Plan that was confusing as to whom was in change when multiple states were heavily impacted. (The FRP was changed soon after). b) Mike Brown was a poor choice to lead FEMA. He had limited experience in running a large organization let alone one that needs to move quickly and expand quickly from a small core to a large geographically dispersed one. Bush Administration took needed resources from FEMA to start airport security. These all lead up to FEMA not being able to response with the major resources quickly. In Louisiana by the end of the third week post landfall FEMA had over 40,000 federal human responders working not only in NOLA but throughout the state.Brown’s mistake was not letting the highly experienced Federal Coordinating Official do his job. Brown traveled down to NOLA with the President and acted like he was fully informed and in charge. While he was briefed several times a day, things happen quickly in the first several days. Brown should have deferred to his leaders on the ground.Finally, I can personally attest to the fact that Mayor Negan seemed to have his own agenda. His Office of Emergency Preparedness did not fix the problems identified. NOLA did not have an effective Emergency Response Plan. The NOLA government did not knowhow to work together and did not know how to operate a major EOC. His EOC team needed outside help to get organized and conduct basic EOC operations. Thank you EMAC. Even the Mayor’s EOC Director and staff could not impact the Mayor overriding early local/state/federal coordination efforts.In summary, Bush and his administration failed to give FEMA the normal resourses necessary to prepare annually for next year’s unknow disasters. It also assumed that if you can manage one small organization you can manage any complex organization. Approving and not fully training the key participants on implementing a new approach to managing multistate disasters also contributed. But the final straw that made the early response system fail was the lack of leadership at both the state and local levels.

How much would you like to bet that Trump has no idea that FEMA is still in New Orleans?Trump threatens Puerto Rico because the female mayor of San Juan hurt his feelings when she criticized his slow response to Hurricane Maria. Trump doesn't tolerate criticism, especially from women, and his instinct is always to attack. Threatening to take his toys and go home if someone is mean to him is what we should expect from anyone of his emotional maturity.

FEMA is a batch of bureaucratic incompetence. I am sorry to tell you that but FEMA is awful.I live in Alabama. In 2005 with Hurricane Katrina FEMA locked help out of New Orleans and out of Mississippi for long periods of time and generally messed up the situation. Literally thousands of people died in Mississippi that you never heard about due to FEMA.I live in North Alabama, In 2011 we got massive tornadoes in Alabama. FEMA got into Tuskaloosa and made an awful mess. In North Alabama FEMA didn’t get orders for 11 days and frankly we had the situation well in hand so they didn’t cause us trouble.FEMA needs told what to do. It hasn’t earned the privilege of being trusted with such decisions as the Javits Center developments. President Trump is very wise to do what he did.