Word: fema
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They worked on a broad range of issues including helping with housing problems, performing intake services for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and analyzing data on the impact of Katrina on the criminal justice system...
...Brown and Chertoff was key objective for the Senators. At a hearing last week, Brown blamed Chertoff for the federal government's botched handling of Katrina and claimed that briefing Chertoff during the crisis would have been a "waste of time." In other comments since he was dismissed from FEMA, Brown has adamantly disagreed with how FEMA was folded into the Homeland Security Department, which he felt shrunk FEMA's authority and compromised its ability to react to events like hurricanes...
...Chertoff said he expected FEMA to play a major role in the government's response to the Katrina, because the agency had so many experienced hands that had worked on previous natural disasters. But he also said that as the week of the hurricane went on, each day he had more questions about Brown's performance. Chertoff said he was initially reluctant about getting in the way of what he repeatedly called "operators"-officials like Brown who were supposed to be doing the work he supervised. "Although I'm the secretary, I am not a hurricane operator," he said...
...sincere desire to fix a key federal agency, but also a need to rehabilitate what had been a sterling reputation from his years prosecuting terrorists and mob men. He said his first immediate goal is to stop "stove-piping"-the term he used for agencies within DHS, like FEMA, not sharing information with each other during crises. Before September 11, the intelligence community had similar problems and Chertoff suggested his task in fixing DHS would be just as difficult. But Chertoff better fix his agency soon. Hurricane season starts in less than four months...
...Brown that the White House wanted him to make his requests through Department of Homeland Security, a change he resisted. "I was an infighter," he told the committee. He was frustrated with what he saw as a lack of focus on the threat posed by natural disasters, saying that FEMA had become a "stepchild in the department." If a terrorist had blown up the levees, he told the senators, he believed the DHS response would have been more aggressive. But after he testified, two officials at DHS suggested that Brown had only himself to blame, since his refusal to provide...