Telling articles - sign me up for the firing squad. However, there's more to the story. Sorry; this is one of my usual long posts. I think it's important to understand that no one is really in charge of disaster operations. Communities need to stick together and neighbors need to help neighbors. We're all in the same stew pot.

It's easier to do disaster ops oversees than it is here - we can legally send the active duty military, telling DOD and State who is in charge of what, and pour in the kind of central control and massive resources that only a standing army (and navy and air force) can deliver. (There's another dark side to doing that - rarely does congress pay the bill, so the Army especially and to a similar extent, the Navy, suffers greatly afterwards, because the primary missions don't go away. For complex funding reasons, the Air Force is less financially affected). I don't want to take on the debate about using US forces in the US, but y'all should look into that, because it is a VERY real issue with no simple solution that will please many citizens.

I could - but won't - write volumes about FEMA as an agency from my first hand experiences at Federal and munincipal levels (I skipped state and county somewhere along the line). No administration or congress should feel proud about what they have done to or with that agency. Even Witt was not as wonderful as some would think - not his fault, by the way, and he's working on the front end of this sort of thing now as the titular head of the International Code Council (model Building codes).

FEMA has never been capable of actually managing a disaster and I doubt they ever will be - and I'm not slamming the folks who work for FEMA. The general public has gross misconceptions of what FEMA can do. They can't and don't put much on the ground in the way of people who physically get things done.. The "M" in the acronym should be removed. If it was "FEDA" - "D" = "dollars", that would be closer to truth. Important function! But not the whole solution.

There are much larger structural problems than just FEMA. Frankly, no one is ever really in over-all charge (yeah, cries of outrage from those who may *think* they were in overall control in various past scenarios). As only one example, let me talk about a GREAT bunch of folks - the National Guard, whcih belongs to the Governor of each state. In the BEST of cases, I think we had maybe 25% overall effective cooperation with the guard in a massive multi-state regional flood - in one state they were actually extremely counter-productive and truly hostile to our efforts, in another they were simply out wandering around on their own in small units trying to help locals who didn't want anything more than materials and equipment.

In another state, in one major city, I had wonderful cooperation at all levels at one site (the most important one!) because the guard commander and I personally met on the site green-suiter-to-green-suiter and then our staffs coordinated constantly - DESPITE the state level trying to remote-control every little detail - a great guy; an effective commander, but it all came down to just that - one man on-the-ground disregarding the state political pressure and doing what was right. His boss, the TAG, took the heat with the Governor's staffers, and let his Colonel do what is right Governors are all over the political map on this, and FEW really control it - they let clueless and mostly faceless staffers (political hacks) handle the oh-so-important details.

By the way, we WERE the lead Federal agency, but no one can make states cooperate with feds and no one can make towns cooperate with anyone. I cannot stress enough how freaking frustrating it is that no one really has overall control of the resources in a response. It's like the who's in charge fiasco when Reagan was shot, every time. No, it's worse than that. Arrgh! It amazes me that anything actuall gets done, in retrospect.

Oh - It's not just government; I've had "fun" with contractors "helping" who were politically connected with various politicians, so we used this or that contractor instead of ones we would have rather used. And some show up, demand to help, try to take control of various aspects, and then [censored] and leave because we're all stupid governmetn people and they know so much better than us... in the middle of a major disaster, I would occasionally have to call 'way back up the food chain to explain why I wasn't letting this person or that company come in and force his (really BAD) idea on us - not very effective use of my time. Second-guessing the guy on the ground is incredibly stupid.

Of the NGOs that show up, I have always been extremely impressed with the Red Cross. They have certain areas that they concentrate on and they are very good at it. They also "play well" with everyone and are not a burden to the efforts. A great agency. Very limited experience with the Salvation Army, but I would expect them to do a good job these days, or I would have heard lots about it. There are a few others in my encounters that work internationally that get things done as well.

On another, related subject: our county ESDA here is a waste of oxygen. I am envious of those of you who have competent local ESDAs.

Fixing FEMA is really just one gear in a complicated engine - it needs to be fixed, but not much meshes anyway. After all the post-disaster beatings and hangings are finished, there will still be the states vs the feds vs politics at all levels. We'll spend a ton of money to make what will turn out to be marginal improvements. I hate to sound like a cynic, but that's about as opptomistic as I can be.

Tom