A new ePluribus Media story What Will Become of FEMA Now? investigates how FEMA was crippled and made inadequate in its response to Katrina.
As the article elaborates:
Many “backgrounder” research reports on the Heritage Foundation’s Web site suggest that Chertoff’s Second Stage Review (2SR) plan came directly from the Heritage Foundation/CSIS research, one of which is “Who’s on First? A Strategy for Protecting Critical Infrastructure,” a report arguably concluding that human death and suffering are immaterial to the Heritage Foundation/CSIS/Chertoff Second Stage Review plan except as a source of liability risk.
Indeed.
Of the original 14 infrastructures considered critical, the Heritage Foundation’s CSIS research considered only 4 essential: energy, finance, telecommunications, and transportation sectors.
But, the ePluribus Media researchers and writers reveal what the CSIS inspired Chertoff Second Stage Review plan designates as less essential by their omission.
follow us to the jump to see what they found.
Here are the remaining 10:
● Chemicals sector
● Continuity of Government Services sector
● Emergency & Law Enforcement Services sector
● Fire Services sector
● Food sector
● Health Services sector
● Higher Education sector
● Insurance sector
● Water sector
…
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, could any of these 10 not-so-critical infrastructures have been key in the DHS/FEMA failure to respond?
Copyright 2005, used with permission of Sheldon Morton
Read the rest of the article, with the photojournalism of Sheldon Morton, World Eye Press, at What Will Happen to FEMA? and please join us on the Congress Responds to Katrina: Five Bills to Take FEMA Back where we need your help examining the proposed legislation for FEMA.
Special research and writing contributions from Wanderindiana, Luaptifer, HeyThereItsEric and Kfred.
Other ePluribus Media Contributors include: BarbaraS, SawcieLackey, Sue in KY, Susie Dow, Stoy, JeninRI, Standingup, Beverly in NH, XicanoPwr
I give me great pride to know that I’ve worked with the fine people who put this story together. Nice work, people!
Timely, and a good companion article to the (in-depth) article in Rolling Stone: Looting Homeland Security:
Katrina may have been a natural disaster — but President Bush created the bungled response by gutting FEMA and turning the nation’s security over to corporate cronies and for-profit contractors
[Dec 15th, by Eric Klinenberg and Thomas Frank]
This may sound nuts, and maybe its the PTSD of being down here in New Orleans, but someone please explain to me why FEMA shouldn’t be disbanded?
To me, FEMA is a layer of bureaucracy between the American people and our elected officials. Blame it on FEMA, while Congress guts the programs that assist the working poor and middle America.
Homeland Security is another layer that needs to go. It is an excuse for cronism: monies being shifted around in Washington on the merry-go-round of what programs are in favor now, and how can I profit from them.
FEMA under James Lee Witt was (in the end) an effective organization. The tension now in Congress is between those attempting to restore FEMA to a cabinet level independent, and those who argue for simply elevating FEMA within the DHS structure. The beat goes on.
. . . why FEMA shouldn’t be disbanded?
Operating under the previous construct, FEMA acted as a federal coordinator with as many as 40 government agencies at all levels. No State has that reach, and a multi-State catastrophe compounds the problem.
The system was not broke, but the “fix” was in.
I was off looking for a link to Susan’s diary about how different FEMA was under Clinton. Here it is.
Unfortunately, the link in her diary to Shelby’s article no longer works, but I was able to Google around until I found it here.
So the answer appears to be – when FEMA is doing the job it’s designed to do, as it was under Clinton, it can literally be a life saver. The problem is that now, under Bush, we are seeing a confluence of “make sure nothing in government actually works, so we can justify cutting services to ordinary citizens – real goal cut taxes for the rich – and, since we’re trying to destroy it anyway, let’s use it as a gravy train for our buddies like Brown.
I’d say, don’t disband it. If we can get sane people elected, it could be the life-saver it once was in the future. In the meantime, we just have to keep raising hell.
about the FEMA turnaround performed by Clinton and Witt in response to Bush I disasterous performance, which helped cost him re-election. There’s at least one good link I found but I’m swamped with getting my last Holiday® orders out just now.
It’s a great story and it highlights the Bush family anti-competence in both generations as well.
If I don’t see a link I’ll add what I found later this evening when the shipping deadlines are mercifully past.
Do … and we have to be armed against the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying to keep FEMA second tier… no looming on the horizon, just under the radar.
There are a lot of pieces to the debacle and so important to trace what went wrong to fix it… as well as identify what did work so that those policies and procedures can be supported and enhanced.
I’ll read the story tonight over a couple of cold Noncoors beers.
I added a commentary to complement the discussion, Scenario 10: Chertoff’s Hurricane Scenario That Didn’t Exist that describes one of the three natural disaster scenarios of fifteen total designed for assessing readiness of state and local governments. It helps to illustrate that Homeland Security policy as rolled out from the Admin shows what I think has proven to be a criminal negligence and atrophy of FEMA’s onetime strength.
That Chertoff denied the existence of Scenario 10 and other exercises tells me he should not be doing that job, especially not as directed by the Heritage Foundation!
I see Cherthoff as the real weak link in this picture. He was part of the design crew for the Patrio Act, he’s screwing up FEMA, he’s the one who put the “invisible fence” on our borders. I wish we could derail him somehow.