Word: fema
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...flames blazed 400 miles away in New Orleans on Labor Day, about 600 fire fighters from across the nation sat in an Atlanta hotel listening to a FEMA lecture on equal opportunity, sexual harassment and customer service. "Your job is going to be community relations," a FEMA official told them, according to Joe Calhoun, an assistant fire chief from Portage, Ind., who was there. "You'll be passing out FEMA pamphlets and our phone number...
...room, filled with many fire fighters who, at FEMA's request had arrived equipped with rescue gear, erupted in anger. "This is ridiculous," one yelled back. "Our fire departments and mayors sent us down here to save people, and you've got us doing this?" The FEMA official climbed atop a chair, Calhoun says, and tried to restore order. "You are now employees of FEMA, and you will follow orders and do what you're told," he said, sounding more like the leader of an invading army than a rescue squad...
...scene in Atlanta was one of the many ways FEMA failed to live up to Katrina's challenge. First, despite being warned by multiple hurricane experts that Katrina would be a catastrophic hurricane, Brown waited until about five hours after the storm's landfall before he proposed sending 1,000 federal workers to deal with the aftermath. While people were dying in New Orleans, the U.S.S. Bataan steamed offshore, its six operating rooms, beds for 600 patients and most of its 1,200 sailors idle. Foreign nations--responding to urgent calls from Washington--readied rescue supplies, then were told...
Just when things seemed to be stabilizing, another FEMA fiasco would light up the news wires. Last Thursday, as the Red Cross began distributing its own debit cards, thousands stood for hours in the 93° heat outside the Astrodome in Houston for FEMA cards that never came. A day earlier, Brown had heralded his agency's cards as a way to "empower" survivors "to start rebuilding their lives." But the agency scrapped the plan late Thursday, saying it would be more efficient for the government to deposit funds directly into evacuees' bank accounts...
...many disaster experts, FEMA's feeble response, just like the massive hurricane that triggered it, was woefully predictable. President Bush began emasculating the agency soon after taking office. Jane Bullock, a 22-year FEMA veteran who ended up as the agency's chief of staff during the Clinton Administration, says she sensed the incoming Administration's disdain during her first postelection meeting with members of Bush's FEMA transition team. "They said we had done a good p.r. job," she recalls. "I got the impression they had no idea what has to happen to deal with a disaster." Joe Allbaugh...