Katrina Response Mismanagement

[Name]

The sick part is, almost everyone that is involved with the decisions you mentioned, will get nice fat pensions when their done.

(all speculation, not based in fact at all, just my opinion based on past experience. i.e. the SD city council members that were found guilty in the strippergate stuff down here in SD are going to still receive nice pensions)

[Scrooge McSam]

Maybe more "management" than "mismanagement", but anyway...

CNN reporting FEMA director Michael Brown being sent back to Washington; Homeland Security Director Chertoff to announce new leader for on-the-ground Katrina relief efforts.

No link yet

[scaeagles]

I hears the replacement will be the head of the Coast Guard's relief effort, but I can't remember his name.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

You're doing a fine job, Brownie. Now get the hell out of the way.

[Ghoulish Delight]

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.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

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.

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

(anybody watch "The Office?")

[Scrooge McSam]

Notice he's not being fired.

He's just being sent back to Washington.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

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.

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Link

[Prudence]

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.)

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Prudence

My question:

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

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.