Thumbs up to Michael Brown , head of FEMA !!!!

[directfiesta]

Have to bow and give credit to that great man !!!!

Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days

Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.

Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift.

"FEMA? That was a lost case," said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite who made the phone calls. "We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...yed _for_days

I wish that Bush continues to appoint such greatly qualified and devoted individuals to top positions... mainly passing over all his personnal friends ...
Job well done. Continue the hard work ....

Top FEMA leaders short on experience

Published September 7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Top officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have strong political connections to President Bush, but they also share at least one other trait: They had little or no experience in disaster management before landing in top FEMA posts.

Michael Brown, who heads FEMA as undersecretary of homeland security for emergency preparedness and response, already has endured sharp criticism for comments he made last week that seemed to suggest he did not understand that thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina had taken refuge at the New Orleans convention center.

Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management.

An official biography of Brown's top aide, acting deputy director Patrick Rhode, doesn't list disaster relief experience.

The department's No. 3 official, acting deputy chief of staff Brooks Altshuler, also does not have emergency management experience, according to FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule.

Rule said the absence of direct experience managing emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need "the ability to keep the organization running."

But Eric Holdeman, director of the King County Office of Emergency Management in Seattle, said familiarity with the specifics of disaster management is essential.

"Experience is not just general managerial experience, it's experience in the field," he said.

Rhode and Altshuler worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations, which arranges Bush's travel and scripts his appearances.

The credentials of top FEMA managers stand in contrast to the backgrounds of leaders of the agency during the last years of the Clinton administration.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...ationworld-hed

A few more of these highly qualified good hard working officials would really improve the security of the USA...

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

The articles cited explain a lot...

On a separate but related subject:

I find it very heartening to see the ways in which ordinary Americans are chipping in either with money or other means of support to try and help the people striken by Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath.

While this is all good, I'm wondering why the Federal Government (not to mention the insurance companies) are not stepping in and funding the entire recovery. When Bush wanted to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tens of billions of dollars were made available in no time.

I thought the government already had billions of dollars earmarked for disaster relief. Therefore, I'm not really certain why individual taxpayers and companies are being asked to donate so much money to the effort.

I have to believe that people in the U.S. would feel better that their collective tax money was being used to help fellow citizens in their time of suffering, rather than to finance preventable foreign policy disasters which waste billions of taxpayer dollars and cost precious lives.

This is not a call to stop donating. I'm simply curious why the government cannot, or rather seems unable/refuses to do more.

ADG Webmaster

[Red Ezra]

we are so fucked - I'm going to go curl up in the fetal position

[MacDaddyPlaya]

W should go down in history as the most incompetent, under qualified, president to ever hold office. Has he had a single positive impact on this nation?

[xxxdesign-net]

I thought this guy had interesting things to say on FEMA and NO..

Former Assistant Secretary Paul Craig Roberts... talking about sabotage..

http://prisonplanet.com/Pages/Sept05...rainwashed.htm

[Fletch XXX]

Originally Posted by xxxdesign-net

I thought this guy had interesting things to say on FEMA and NO..

Former Assistant Secretary Paul Craig Roberts... talking about sabotage..

http://prisonplanet.com/Pages/Sept05...rainwashed.htm

nice

Roberts agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to "save the day". He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.

Roberts reviewed the way in which the federal government had slashed funding for flood prevention schemes and pumped everything into the war in Iraq and the war on Terror. He also went on to admit that the military was turning on the people, treating them as subjects, overturning the Posse Comitatus Act.

http://prisonplanet.com/Pages/Sept05...rainwashed.htm

[Rinaldo]

Fuck Fema
South florida has over a billion in damages and they claim we don't have enough damage to qualify for federal releif lol

[xxxdesign-net]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/na...al/07navy.html

"Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety

Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast."

"Dozens of military aircraft are now conducting search and rescue missions over the affected areas. But privately some members of the Pensacola unit say the base's two available transport helicopters should have been allowed to do more to help civilian victims in the days after the storm hit, when large numbers of military helicopters had not reached the affected areas.

In protest, some members of the unit have stopped wearing a search and rescue patch on their sleeves that reads, "So Others May Live."


-----------

deliver food and water to military installations? Urgent my ass... That thing arrived nearly a week late to people who needed it...

[xxxdesign-net]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Northe...rina_0906.html

A fracas erupted this weekend after military spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly of U.S. Northern Command noted that his forces were not authorized to aid Katrina survivors until given direction by the President, RAW STORY has found.

After describing in detail how the military had prepared to deal with hurricane relief, he remarked, "The only caveat is we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion; we have to wait for the President to give us permission."

This statement was made Saturday to the BBC. He said that NorthCom had been preparing well in advance (Video).


"Northcom started planning before the storm even hit," Kelly said. "We had the USS Bataan sailing almost behind the hurricane so once the hurricane made landfall, its search and rescue helicopters could be available almost immediately. So, we had things ready."

In the same interview, he also asserted that the ships carried nine million packaged meals that could be made available to survivors, and that at least 100,000 had been provided for those staying in the Superdome.

After progressive blogger Kevin Drum raised questions about these comments, Kelly added that the authorization had made Tuesday, just after the storm passed.

"The biggest hurdles to responding to the storm were the storm itself ? couldn't begin really helping until it passed ? and damage assessment ? figuring out which roads were passable, where communications and power were out, etc.," he added. "Military helos began damage assessment and SAR on Tuesday. Thus we had permission to operate as soon as it was possible. We even brought in night SAR helos to continue the mission on Tuesday night."

The storm had passed by Tuesday evening.

Kelly tried to defuse any sense that he had been criticizing the President.

"The President and Secretary of Defense did authorize us to act right away and are not to blame on this end," he remarked. "Yes, we have to wait for authorization, but it was given in a timely manner."

On Tuesday Aug. 30, the Pentagon also announced it would send five ships to the disaster zone, though some were several days away. This appears to be somewhat different from Kelly's initial assessment that search and rescue could begin "almost immediately."

On Wednesday, military transport planes began to carry some wounded to Houston. Full relief supplies did not arrive in New Orleans until Friday -- some three days after Kelly says they were authorized by President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld.

As many as 10,000 may be dead in the wake of the storm.

DEVELOPING...

[basschick]

i'm going to do the same

Originally Posted by Red Ezra

we are so fucked - I'm going to go curl up in the fetal position

[xxxdesign-net]

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197

"As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.


Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA. "


lol

[directfiesta]

Pathetic....

I hear Osama laughing out loud

[directfiesta]

Washington, DC (AHN)- Internal documents show a top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before proposing his boss send at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to aid local rescue efforts.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, waited five hours after Katrina's landfall to seek approval for the measure from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The memo told employees, among other duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations, and the public in general."

Brown proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours, and 2,000 within seven days.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke says the initial 48-hour gap was intended to ensure Homeland employees received adequate training. Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia.

The same day he penned the memo, Brown urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency crews into disaster areas without first requesting help from state or local governments, citing it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.

As W said:

''Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

[xxxdesign-net]

Well, Bush said he's determined to get to the bottom of it with his investigation...