Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength - Washington Post 12/23/05

[Coastie for Truth]

On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.

The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."

The inevitable result, he wrote, would be "an ineffective and uncoordinated response" to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

The author was Michael D. Brown, who was FEMA's director as well as a Department of Homeland Security undersecretary. Two years later, Brown would lose both titles after Hurricane Katrina, when his prophecies of doom came true.

Katrina exposed FEMA as a dysfunctional organization, paralyzed in a crisis four years after the supposedly galvanizing attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And it turned Brown -- a former executive of the International Arabian Horse Association who had no emergency management experience before joining the Bush administration -- into a symbol of government ineptitude. But Brown's well-chronicled gaffes in Louisiana had less impact on FEMA than his little-known power struggles in Washington. Brown lost almost all of them -- partly because he was widely despised at DHS for his relentless infighting -- and FEMA paid a price in money, manpower, missions and prestige.

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Initially, Brown's bosses at DHS and the department's architects in the White House shared the same goal of a beefed-up FEMA; their catchphrase was "FEMA on steroids." But that is no longer the vision or the reality. And FEMA's deterioration is not only the most visible failure of DHS: It is also emblematic of the turf battles that have plagued the rest of the department.

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[Coastie for Truth]

1. "Lessons Learned" Meetings - Local Red Cross and CERT Chapters

One high point - everybody failed in Katrina - Rita - Wilma.

* The National Guard wasn't there.

* FEMA was wholly dysfunctional.

* Red Cross and Salvation Army were pushed beyond their limits.

* Red Cross's data system was in transition and crashed.

* The local FEMA auxiliaries (CERT, Radio Hams) were kept out of New Orleans by "The Feds" (as were the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and most "out of town" relief workers)

One thing we did come up with -- check out - state organizations that have attributes of both the National Guard and the Volunteer Fire Department - except the Feds can not mobilize them.

In California - by California State law, and in New York - by New York state law -- these are natural disaster mitigation assets - like a volunteer fire department except state wide.