Word: fema
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Coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), new national civil defense plans announced recently concentrate on "crisis relocation"--evacuating 145 million people from 450 sites expected to be principal targets in a Soviet nuclear attack. The refugees would receive instructions under the federal plan to hop in their cars and drive en masse to various rural "host communities...
Cambridge sits in one of the 450 "high-risk areas." But when FEMA officials presented the city's relocation route to the Cambridge City Council at a public hearing last spring, the nine councilors rejected the plan, the first such rebellion by a local government. A spokesman for the Cambridge Civil Defense Agency, who refuses to be identified, says that preparations in the city "are in limbo, the whole plan is in a state of flux...
...Washington, meanwhile, the Reagan Administration's proposal to raise civil defense spending to an estimated $4.2 billion in the next seven years is meeting stiff resistance from a Capitol Hill contingent led by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.). FEMA authorities complain that without more funding, they cannot move from planning to implementing any measures...
...have never claimed we had a perfect plan," says FEMA official Russell Clanahan. "But the alternative would be to not do anything and let people die needlessly...
...some cases, tiny details render grandiose plans suspect. In California, the regional headquarters of FEMA is located just a jiggle away from the San Andreas Fault. In western Missouri, the strategy currently calls for people to pass missile sites that make the area a prime target for nuclear attack. In Arizona, FEMA'S program offers elaborate details for moving 70,000 residents of Phoenix 78 miles north to Prescott, a town of 20,000. Officials have not figured out how Prescott, which barely survives the annual deluge of tourists at its July 4 Frontier Days festival, will house...