Apparently President Bush has turned FEMA responsibility for the Katrina catastrophe over to a coast guard Admiral, sending FEMA head Michael Brown back home [1].
The tragedy in New Orleans has, from day one, struck me as murder committed with stupid and confused bureaucracy. Why weren’t there several thousand National Guardsmen protecting gathering points *before* the hurricane hit? Why wasn’t there a plan to immediately begin evacuating people from those gathering points *before* they ran out of water and food? Apparently, according to Mr. Brown, its the victim’s fault. [2]
Yes, the people who were still in New Orleans when the hurricane hit should have been evacuated earlier. But many of those people were poor- they didn’t have cars, or bus fare. That’s why I think there should have been a National Guard presence before the disaster, with bus caravans and the like to collect anyone who couldn’t otherwise make their own way out of town. And setting that practicality aside, every single natural catastrophe in recent history has been accompanied by people who refused to leave when warned in advance. The FEMA head, if he had any practical experience with emergency management whatsoever, should have known this and taken steps to protect people from their own poor decisions.
And here we come to the crux of my anger at this situation. Mr. Brown has no…zero…zip emergency management experience. He hasn’t even been a senior manager before. He lied on his resume. He’s nothing but a fricking lawyer with high level connections to the Republican party.
How in the name of all that is fair and true in this world can this man still have a job? How can the people who hired him, promoted him as competent, and defended him from criticism [3]still have a job? Ah well, I guess the thousands of people who died won’t be able to complain…and they aren’t prominent Republican party flacks…
UPDATE: Well, he wasn’t fired, but Michael Brown did resign [4]. I imagine that way he gets to keep his pension and so forth…