This story is absolutely unreal to me. While President Bush is telling "Brownie" (FEMA director Mike Brown) that he's "doing a great job", here's what FEMA is actually doing with 1400 firefighters who volunteered to go to the areas ravaged by the hurricanes to help rescue victims:
Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
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.
But wait, there's more. Listen to the FEMA spokeperson's rationale for why they asked people with the training to aid in rescue operations to travel hundreds, some thousands, of miles to hand out fliers:
But Louis H. Botta, a coordinating officer for FEMA, said sending out firefighters on community relations makes sense. They already have had background checks and meet the qualifications to be sworn as a federal employee.
Sworn in as a Federal employee? Did he really say that? Did they stop and give civil service exams to people to make sure they're qualified to hand out fliers to people, most of whom don't have phones or electricity? This is stupidity on a cosmic scale, folks. You've got 1400 firefighters trained in rescue operations, emergency medical treatment, haz mat situations - you know, skills that you would think they could find a use for when you've got tens of thousands of people trapped inside houses and needing rescue.
Rather than getting them out into the areas they're needed to do what they're trained to do, they had them in an Atlanta hotel sitting through a sexual harrassment seminar. Believe me, I wish I was making that up. Oh, and here's the punchline to this sick joke. Monday morning they did send a plane to Atlanta to take 50 of the firefighters to New Orleans. To take part in rescue operations? Nope. To travel with the President as he toured the ravaged areas. To be props in a photo op.
Oh, and then there's this. When asked about those firefighters who objected to being used as PR flaks rather than putting them to good use, here's what a FEMA spokesperson had to say:
"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.
I've got a better idea. How about we all rethink our commitment to paying the salary of incompetent morons like this? They aren't fit to run a chinese firedrill, much less a rescue operation. Word has it that they may finally get around to getting some of the firefighters into helping with rescue operations, but not until they finish filing their TPS reports. It was in the memo.
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If FEMA would follow the Incident Command System (or at least work through agencies that implement it), they wouldn't have to worry about "swearing in" people. Every year, thousands of people work as pickup fire-fighters (AKA Administratively-dispatched employees) for federal agencies. Once they've had training for a certain position in ICS, there shouldn't be any worry about being qualified as federal employees.
I'm not sure what planet FEMA is operating on.
I felt the need to reply here but I'm at a total loss for words! So, here's me making an entrance, standing dumbfounded, and leaving again.
Exit, stage right, ephen.
AS someone pointed out on AirAmerica yesterday: Why does this administration seem to gloss over legal issues in regards to the War, Gitmo and torture, but must have every form signed in triplicate to rescue citizens in distress?
"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.
This sounds like the self-criticism that Maoist China used to publicly impose, and that post-Maoist China now privately imposes, on political dissidents.
Wow, questioning the patriotism of firefighters who voluntarily came, fully loaded, to save lives, as soon as they ask why they're not actually saving lives. These scumbags give new meaning to the word "chutzpah."
Further proof that none of this is real to Bush and his self-infantilized administration.
This goes beyond politics at this point. We're talking basic common sense and survival. Anyone of us could be in a tight spot, a terrorist attack, a disaster, whatever, and we'd be depending on these clowns?
Oh my God, this is so... ugh. People are just so stupid. I can't help but laugh though. We're just so screwed, it seems. We're not ready for another terrorist attack.
What's really scary to me is that so many Democrats believe it would be different under a Democractic administration. It wouldn't. Government has built-in incentives to be stupid and incompetent. This is about as good as it gets folks. There is no Santa Claus at the North Pole, neither is there one in Washington, DC. We're all on our own, and pretty much always have been.
Excuse me, Perry, but it WAS different under Democratic administrations: Carter created FEMA, and Clinton upgraded it, making it one of our more admired agencies. Then Bush broke it and found a totally unqualified crony to run it, who even lied in his resume:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003,00.html
The Republicans fall on their asses with a basic function of any government, and all you can say is a reflexive "no one else could have done any better?"
Did someone say "soft bigotry of low expectations?"
Actually, FEMA also performed well in Florida 2004. Of course, that was a swing state in a close election, so the few competent members of the Bush team probably were actually doing the work.
Swearing in? This is a joke, right? One would assume that FEMA had never heard of a "volunteer fire department." Much of the US, and, indeed, much of the world, is covered by such volunteer departments. And the personnel are highly trained and quite competant.
What is this "swearing in" silliness?
In addition, aid was offered by 84 foreign countries. Was the Secretary of State there to handle these calls? From the New York Daily News article:
Un #$(*%^&% believable!
Un #$(*%^&% believable!
Yes, but damn those are some nice shoes!
Sometimes I wonder if the leaders of the FEMA are a bunch of closet sadists.