FEMA Rocks!

by

by hilzoy

So you might have been wondering: did we just throw gazillions of dollars at the Department of Homeland Security and get nothing for our money but those ludicrous color-coded threat levels? Gentle reader: I too once worried about this, but thanks to the inimitable Ezra Klein, I am not worried any more. For starters, listen to this (Realplayer)! Pretty nifty, huh? I especially liked the entirely unmotivated use of the word ‘mitigation’.

But wait: there’s more at the FEMA kidz site! You can get free books about twins who live in a town called Eenietown. (I am not making this up.) Wherever they go, disasters happen, which is why people call them the Disaster Twins. But they never get hurt, because they are always prepared. If those people in New Orleans had read The River Rises: The Twins’ Flood Story, they would have known just what to do:

“It’s time to go,” Grandma said. “We’re being asked to evacuate.”

Julia and Robbie were scared and excited at the same time.

Grandma put their suitcases and disaster supplies in the car. She had the twins’ dog, Skipper, on a leash and extra food for him. They all got in and Grandma drove out of the driveway. Other families were doing the same thing.

It was still raining.

“I don’t see anything,” said Julia. “Where’s the water?”

“It’s still far away, but it’s spilling over the sandbags,” Grandma said. “But not to worry. We evacuated in time. Sometimes people wait. That’s not smart. Even six inches of water can sweep a car away.”

If only all those people in New Orleans had read about the Disaster Twins, they would just have told their moms and dads to put everything in the car and drive away! Too bad they hadn’t visited FEMA Kidz.

But wait, there’s even more: a biography of Michael Brown! Did you know that when he was growing up he had “a basset hound named Roosevelt and a dachshund named Eisenhower”? Neither did I. Do you think he also had a Springer Spaniel named Truman which died an untimely death whose details FEMA does not want to inflict on impressionable young minds? Did his parents just dislike ol’ Harry S? Were they perhaps anti-nuclear activists, or KKK members who objected to the integration of the armed forces? Inquiring minds want to know.

FEMA is much cooler than I thought. I feel so much better now.

37 thoughts on “FEMA Rocks!”

  1. People cant even chat about the weather anymore without everything beind political,
    Great, wonderful for you people who want to argue all the time.
    As for my wife and I, all the politicalization of every aspect of our lives has pretty much driven us way farther apart than we already were. I cant say anything about anything without getting into a fight.
    N

  2. to Hell with it, I cant say a goddamn thing in person or anon on blog w/o some response saying how terible i am, to think what i think.
    we all hate each other so much more now than i can ever remember.

  6. I hadn’t read the Brown bio, though. Good thing this isn’t the Department of Education, but what kind of example is this to set for kids?

    Mr. Brown always wanted to be a lawyer and did!

    No wonder so many adults can’t spell or write a sentence.

  7. “Loads a blank blue page for me, Gary. Same with the blame game post, so it might be on my end.”
    Are you sure you’re letting it finish loading? Anyway, no one else has mentioned a problem, and I did get around 2500 page views today, so I’m inclined to think it’s on your end (although god knows the HTML in my template could use some cleaning; too bad I’m not competent to do it).
    “(But did you catch Roosevelt and Eisenhower? Did you?)”
    Nope, nor anything but the song and audio; you definitely added value. I wasn’t trying to say your post (or any of the other posts where I’ve whined about my having previously posted the link and not gotten any attention or credit) wasn’t worthwhile; far from it. It’s just the frustration. I was particularly pleased to have stumbled across that on my own (as so many of my links are found, though certainly not all), and yet no one commented, no one linked, and it seemed as if no one had read it. I thought it was a great little link. But it disappeared without any trace a single person had read it.
    But now, of course, Ezra Klein will, four days later, get the links and comment and praise.
    So I sigh. It’s not like I’m blogging for the high pay and benefits. Attention is the only pay there is (well, in theory, donations, too, but in recent months that’s mostly theory). Anyway, shutting up on this now.

  8. People cant even chat about the weather anymore without everything beind political
    “Awfully wet out there, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Oh, I quite agree. Wait, is that a rescue helicopter?”
    “No, old sport, I’m afraid that’s just the CNN whirligig again.”
    “Ah, well. I’m sure those nice folks from FEMA will be by any minute now. You know, I met that Michael Brown fellow at last year’s derby, and… ”
    [chug chug chug]
    “… I say, is that urine you’re drinking?”
    “Mmm. Old British N. trick, don’t you know.”

  10. Well, Dave, FWIW, I’m not angry with you.
    Now, here’s a fun example of what happens when you let paranoia determine policy:

    Because of worries that terrorists could take advantage of such chaos, FEMA now must abide by post-9/11 security procedures, such as putting air marshals on flights. That meant stranded residents couldn’t be evacuated from the New Orleans airport until FEMA had rounded up dozens of Transportation Security Administration screeners and more than 50 federal air marshals. Inadequate power prevented officials from firing up X-ray machines and metal detectors until the government decided evacuees could be searched manually.

  11. Wherever they go, disasters happen, which is why people call them the Disaster Twins.
    Are their names George and Dick? Disaster Twins powers activate! Form of … a rotting, bloated corpse!
    we all hate each other so much more now than i can ever remember.
    I don’t even know you. Now, in the future, let’s not post while drunk, shall we?

  12. FEMA had a sterling reputation when they were a small independent government agency. It’s only in the post 9/11 world that the organizations abilities have failed. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to blame FEMA for the mess when DHS is responsible for pulling the strings.

  14. DAve C, I am genuinely sorry that you feel the way you do. I am very angry at Bush for the harm he has done to this country but I try not to get personal about it. Sometimes I fail and you have reminded how hurtful it is.
    I reallly do think you should consider the possiblity that Bush isn’t what you believe he is.

  15. DaveC: likewise: I don’t really hate anyone because of this. I do think it matters, a lot, but that doesn’t mean I hate people who disagree with me.
    In fact, I think it also matters a lot that people on both sides come to understand why those who disagree with them think the way they do. That’s one of the reasons I do this.

  16. “Now, in the future, let’s not post while drunk, shall we?”
    Yes, but posting drunk can sometimes elicit great poetry from Rilkefan. 😉

  17. I don’t think I saw this on Gary’s blog:href=”http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470″>here
    Mr Brown ordered first responders away from New Orleans

  23. My question re: that FEMA release — was LA fully NIMS compliant? They were not mandated to be compliant before Sep. 30. Were there known gaps in the system? These questions, and the various responses they generate, could go a long way towards determining precisely where this pooch got screwed.

  24. I resent the insinuation that people who have online meltdowns have to be drunk. I’ve never been drunk and my meltdowns haven’t been the whit less Chernobyl-like for it.

  25. On a slightly less snarky note (having second thoughts about my previous post), DaveC, I don’t think you should worry too much about what people online say. I’d probably want to jump up and down on you in an argument and tend to get really mad at people who support Bush, but when all is said and done, I don’t think a person’s political positions necessarily tell you that much about how good a person he or she happens to be. Well, maybe it says something in extreme cases, like support for neo-Nazis, but Bush support isn’t in the same category. You have no idea how painful that was to type.
    And being right on political issues (as amazingly often I find myself to be) doesn’t rule out the possibility that I am a jerk.
    But given your current situation, maybe it’d be a good idea to avoid the sometimes nasty arguments around here.

  27. “Mr Brown ordered first responders away from New Orleans”
    That’s not what it says at all.
    In point of fact, were FEMA functioning as it’s supposed to, the policy makes perfect sense. It’s vastly better to have a coordinator who assigns the available help to where it can most quickly do the most good, rather than having 8700 different bodies of people randomly going where they think they might be needed, resulting in vast disparities in aid, conflicting lines of authority, and endless duplication and shortages.
    Of course, all that only follows if FEMA is adequately doing their job, as I’ve said before; if they’re not, as has been the case here, random aid is far better than none.
    But it’s not the policy of trying to coordinate people that’s remotely, in any way, at fault.

  28. Speaking of odd policies, Gary, did you see this diary on dKos? I haven’t seen it linked directly, nor have I seen the broader policy referenced anywhere.
    *ritual genuflection commencing in three… two… one…*

  29. “Speaking of odd policies, Gary, did you see this diary on dKos?”
    No, I generally avoid the large blogs and prefer to do my own original source reading. I can either spend my time reading other people’s filters, or doing my own reading, and I’d prefer to do the latter as my priority, and read secondary sources when otherwise alerted to them.
    Which is part of my irritation when I find stuff and Bigger Name sites get credit and everyone assumes “oh, you saw that on X.” No, I saw it where I found it at the source, more than not; if there’s a secondary source to credit, I credit it, as a rule, if it’s a find (I’m sure I forget from time to time) (if it’s something that 20 blogs have already linked to before I noticed, I likely won’t go to the trouble of researching who was first and giving credit, though, I’m afraid, ideal as that policy would be).
    On that cite, conversations with flunkies who answer the phone to the public are worth slightly more than conversations with the people who empty the trash at a government agency, but not much, in my experience and view. They might offer a clue, but they’re apt to offer as much insight into what the top of a federal department are doing as someone assigned to answer the phones for the public has. Which is nil.
    I’ve done that job for several agencies, incidentally. And, strangely, the Secretary never came by to lend me insight into policy. Not even an Under-Secretary or Assistant Secretary or even a Deputy Assistant to the Assistant Deputy Assistant Secretary ever came by.
    About the Red Cross policy, I wrote about it on August 3rd.

  30. everyone assumes “oh, you saw that on X.
    This is just an observation, but I don’t think anyone here has assumed that (I can say that I have never assumed that). I can understand why you might get a little upset when someone posts ‘hey, have you seen this?’ with nothing else, but when someone says ‘I saw this and I think it means blah blah blah’, I’m not sure why it incurs your displeasure, unless you think we should be commenting on it at your blog, to which I have to reply, at least for me, I am monogamous (I was going to say “in that regard”, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am not into monogamy in other spheres as well).
    This is not to dismiss your blogging or your ability to go through lots of sources, both of which I envy greatly.

  31. No, I generally avoid the large blogs and prefer to do my own original source reading. I can either spend my time reading other people’s filters, or doing my own reading, and I’d prefer to do the latter as my priority, and read secondary sources when otherwise alerted to them.
    The reason I pointed out this particular diary was that this was the first person I’d seen or heard of who had actually called the relevant agencies for primary source quotes. [Which, incidentally, makes it an original, if not primary, source.] That’s the interesting question: has anyone else done this? Does the stated policy apply across the United States, beyond merely Louisiana? Is it localized to NOLA? Or, as you say, is the entire post worthless?
    That said, it’s one thing to say that this source is potentially unreliable. It’s quite another to dismiss this out-of-hand, since AFAIK no-one has gone on the record about what, precisely, (or whose) the policy was that explained the refusal to admit the Red Cross into New Orleans. This is a question that needs answering and, for my money, the sooner the better.
    About the Red Cross policy, I wrote about it on August 3rd.
    1) September, not August.
    2) I don’t know who was first — in all likelihood, you — but pretty much everyone wrote about the Red Cross policy in a similar time-frame. That’s no longer interesting to me in itself; to reiterate, what drives me now is why that policy was implemented, and what that policy actually was.

  33. I assume by now everyone’s seen the interviews with Red Cross and Salvation Army representatives, saying that they tried to deliver food, water and other supplies to the the Astrodome and Convention Center, and were prevented from making their deliveries by the Louisiana DHS. More detail here.
    If not, check it out. Take it with as large a grain of salt as you please.

  35. I assume by now everyone’s seen the interviews with Red Cross and Salvation Army representatives, saying that they tried to deliver food, water and other supplies to the the Astrodome and Convention Center, and were prevented from making their deliveries by the Louisiana DHS.
    That was the content of the link to the Kos diary I provided above, only from a slightly different angle.

  36. We could just be good friends, I assure you. Or casual acquaintances.
    We are (I thought). I just don’t want to be putting my comments in anyone else’s blog…
    (sorry)

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