New Orleans Back to Normal....

['Card]

I hate to burst your bubble...

[quote='Card]That money had to come from somewhere, and "decentralizing disaster response" (read: giving more money/responsibility to local agencies)...[/quote]

...the hazmat suits, instrumentation and all the toys it takes to operate safely at a hazmat incident are paid for by the federal government

Ummm... you realize that in the process of "bursting my bubble" you just said exactly the same thing as I did, right?

The point I was making was pretty simple and not really a matter of opinion. FEMA's budget was cut, and funding to local agencies was increased. Whether or not that was a good thing is debatable, and as you said, was probably good in some cases and bad in others.

However, in the context of a discussion about Katrina, FEMA, and the utter failure of New Orlean's local agencies, I think it's a relevant point. We made the choice to de-emphasize large Federal government response, and placed our priorities for both funding and responsibility with local agencies. Here in North Carolina where hurricane response is a very big deal, I feel like we've done a decent job with that and we're a lot less dependent on the Feds now than we were a decade ago when Fran plastered us. In New Orleans, that was clearly not the case - which is why I think it's so offensive when the media and the citizens of New Orleans try and place the blame entirely on the shoulders of FEMA.

 

[Texfire]

Not exactly the same thing. In your initial post you said that most of the money went to Podunk, Arkansas VFD so that when Abdul popped a nuke there, they could do something (rough paraphrase).

I was rebutting and saying that the lionshare of funding has always, and continues to be, earmarked for law enforcement, not primarily disaster response, of which law enforcement is a secondary response.

Other than that I agree with you that decentralization has been happening, but is mostly a good thing as long as local responders are properly funded and can and do assume responsibility for areas originally beyond their scope. In Katrina the responders were hamstrung by alot of factors. Political bosses who wouldn't make the decisions necessary until too late, years of underfunding of Corps of Engineers projects which left the levees ripe for failure with a hurricane that size, loss of the support network which was assumed would still be in place if the flooding had not been so complete and complacent public who didn't evacuate until much too late.

As far as placing blame on FEMA, it was also hamstrung by a tradition of placing unqualified political appointees to leadership positions, which bit it this time. When mistakes were made and the need to scale up operations was identified too many resources were dithered away.

That said, Katrina showed alot of good things about our country's responders. Serveral agencies, including mine and others in the area, sent personnel and resources to the area, and with a lack of direction from upper levels did what they could opeating a triage point on I-10. We also sent staff to the local convention center where refugees were housed. Any failures were on the preplanning and resource managment level, not the individual responders.

Tex

 

[TomFromTheShade]

It is not even in the same ball park, as far as danger goes, when comparing Bagdhad to Washington DC. The only reason that the death toll is comparitively lower in Bagdhad is because of the training and tactics used by todays' soldiers. If you walked around Bagdhad like you walk around Washington DC you would be killed, end of story. The death toll then would probably be 500:1 in favor of Iraq as the more dangerous place to be.