NYT, pg1: Despite Steps, Disaster Planning Still Shows Gaps

[DeepModem Mom]

Despite Steps, Disaster Planning Still Shows Gaps
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: August 26, 2006

....In the last year, FEMA, the federal government’s primary disaster response agency and overseer of state and local efforts, has adopted policies to help prevent fraud and wasteful spending, strengthened its ties with other federal agencies for help with evacuations and emergency medical aid and installed high-tech equipment, like the supply-tracking system. After a prolonged search, it hired a new director, R. David Paulison, a former chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Department, and significantly built up its executive ranks with more seasoned emergency managers.

Despite calls by many FEMA critics, though, little has fundamentally changed about the agency itself, which still has less autonomy and power than it did in the Clinton years and a budget for its core mission that has not significantly increased.

The inconsistencies are apparent elsewhere. Along the Gulf Coast and in other locations struck by disaster, like New York City, important advances have been made to prepare for the next catastrophe. In New Orleans, extraordinary steps have been taken to care for the disabled, the elderly and tens of thousands of others without cars if another major hurricane arrives. In New York, city officials say, up to three million people could be evacuated from coastal areas and 600,000 accommodated in shelters stocked with food and supplies.

But in large chunks of the country, far more limited progress has been made to prepare for catastrophe, a recent federal assessment concluded. The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency, rated only 27 percent of the states and 10 percent of the cities evaluated as adequately prepared “to cope with a catastrophic event.” Dallas, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Philadelphia were among the low scorers....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/26/us/nationalspecial/26katrina.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[BOSSHOG]

1. I hope FEMA doesn't get tested next week

by Ernesto. No telling where that buckeroo is going. And I'm having flashbacks to the Saturday before Katrina last year. Securing everything in the yard and packing the garage to the top. I don't want to do it again.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. God, no, BOSSHOG. I hope you and Ernesto do not cross paths. nt

[BOSSHOG]

3. One thing I'm thankful for now

My wife is flying off to be with her mother in Kansas next week for her birthday. She won't be back before Ernesto should be long gone; so I won't have to fret about her safety.