Link

Reports are that Brown's resume was...embelished. As in, his previous position listed as "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" was actually more like an intern position. Nice. This has been confirmed by a former mayor of the city he supposedly did this "emergency services oversight" work.

Notice he's not being fired.

He's just being sent back to Washington.

I have a feeling that pretty soon he will announce that he has "decided to spend more time with my family".

It also turns out that he wasn't the only one that was underqualified.

Link

My question:

When will we start seeing evidence of lessons learned and plans to handle things differently next time?

For example: do "mandatory evacuations" need to become more mandatory? If so, how to make that happen? There has to be a shift in the risk analysis before people will obey the orders. Not evacuating, even if the storm doesn't develop, needs to be worse than evacuating. I can easily imagine deciding that I'd been through bad storms before and survived, and that if I evacuate, I'll live in cramped, noisy quarters with several thousand of my closest personal friends, while my home is looted of anything valuable by those who remained behind.

Especially after this storm -- the Legend of the Superdome will linger and grow and evacuation will seem even less attractive.

So, since mobilizing support services after the storm appears expensive and time consuming, and because support services can't spend the entire hurricane season on alert, what can be done to make mandatory evacuation orders more attractive to follow?

(Also, if a functional solution is found, think about how disaster ready this nation would be. If systems were in place to quickly and relatively easily evacuate populated areas, if evacuated property were protected from looting or other human damage, if shelter areas were safe, sanitary, and as attractive as a shelter can be, and if these evacuations were, of necessity, practiced several times a year in different areas, we would be so much better able to respond to any disaster, whether natural or man-made.)

While I can't respond to the rest of your post, I can say that it seems that this horrific wake-up call really is waking people up. The city I work for has called in the Red Cross to give us a disaster preparedness meeting next week (focused on earthquake, of course). They set up three different meet times so we can all attend. It will include what to do when disaster strikes on the job and at home. I'll report on it later.

I'm sure similar things are happening everywhere.

Of course this has little to do with the specific response here, but I think that this kind of thing helps a lot.

I am just wondering how anyone can be prepared for all possible scenarios.

I could store up tons of clean water. However, if I have to leave in a hurry, what good does having a couple hundred gallons of clean water do for me? Impractical to transport.

I could have a fire evacuation plan for my family if our house catches on fire. In fact, I do. However, if the fire starts in the garage, which two of my three children have rooms over, and happens to spread to the roof of the garage outside their windows and the hallway outside their rooms, I'm screwed. No way to get them out. (smoke alarms would alert me before the access was cut off, but I'm just hypothesizing about what could go wrong.)

I have several drivable evacuation routes from the city. However, pulling out of my driveway, I can only go two directions. What if my road is impassable?

I have some relatives and friends I can stay with locally. What if their homes are as drastically affected as mine is by some cataclysmic event - such as a nuclear bomb exploding?

There is no way for me to plan for every possible scenario. If I cannot plan for every possible scenario for my own family's well being and safety, how can the government of any locality be expected to do it for millions of people in a metropolitan area?

This is not to say that things could not have been done better pre and post disaster in Louisiana.

However, a city spokeswoman told Time magazine that Brown had actually worked as "an assistant to the city manager."

(anybody watch "The Office?")

scaeagles: obviously it makes sense to plan for the most likely scenarios, and then have a general sketch of a plan for "unforseen" events, most of which you hope can take place under whatever the circumstances might be.

For example, in one thought I'd come up with elsewhere, I said that every city ought to choose locations, both within the metropolitan area and some on the fringe of it, designated as "disaster centers" Maps to these centers ought to be widely published in the front sections of phone books, just like stadium/arena seating is. Each location should be equipped with 2 generators in different spots (such as one on/near the roof, and one in the basement, etc). Each location should also be equipped with a portable cell antenna, which could be set up and hooked up to the generators to allow communications. Also, each location ought to have wireless internet access ability - so that emergency workers can race in, armed with laptops, and be able to keep communications open.

Every major metropolitan area ought to plan and designate a location for a "citizen volunteer" center. This would be a place that local people can report to in very short time in order to be the "first line" of help before properly trained help (nat'l guard, red cross, etc) can get there. One or two disaster response people should be assigned to the volunteer center to organize them and to communicate with more "official" groups and their leadership. That way, bands of volunteers can be dispatched out to help anywhere they're needed, and quickly. It would also be where people with enough to spare can make donations, which would help tremendously when there is a wait for outside help.

So let's say that a city (like here) expects earthquakes, but instead gets hit with... oh heck, let's say nuclear attack. All the city's disaster response locations are decimated. But you know what? People can go to the next city, look at a phone book at any public phone, and immediately know where to go for help.

It's unreasonable for every single agency of the government to try and make people learn every fact about something like this - but quite reasonable to only expect them to learn where to find the info they need. And phone books are everywhere.

Of course you can't prepare for everything. But this is a case of preparing for nothing. The events that happened in New Orleans played out almost blow-for-blow exactly as it was predicted. Heck, it happened once before in 1927, just ask Randy Newman. There have been YEARS to prepare for this exact scenario, and instead not one agency from the top to the bottom was prepared in the least.

It's a wake up call that has been going off since 1989 when Charleston complained about FEMA response after Hugo.

FEMA did not become a beauracratic red tape nightmare under Bush and Brown.....when the alarm has been going off for 16 years it might be time to pay attention.