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01/31/2006: A bit late to the party....
Yesterday was A Busy Day at work--an in-early-and-hit-the-ground-running kind of day--so I didn't get my accustomed time before work and during lunch to do my usual blog-and-news reading, and then the first stop on my regular blogreading (The Hardball Times) inspired a a longer, more extensive post than I normally write (thus blowing the evening's blogreading/blogging all to hell), so this is late and you probably know it already. But if not, check out the story which broke in yesterday's WaPo about how FEMA ignored offers (tendered virtually immediately after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina) by the Department of the Interior to provide assistance to the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast. Eventually, some Interior Department assets simply acted on their own, without FEMA's asking for the help:
Also offered were rescue crews from the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, teams specially trained for urban search-and-rescue missions using flat-bottom boats.Yep, Brownie, you did a heckuva job. You couldn't have been more incompetent if you were trying to be....
"Clearly these assets and skills were precisely relevant to the post-Katrina environment," the memo said. Yet, the rescue teams and boats were not considered in the federal government's planning for hurricane disasters, the memo states.
Ultimately, many Fish and Wildlife teams did travel to the Gulf and assisted in the rescues of more than 4,500 people -- but they were "never formally tasked" for that assignment by FEMA, the document states.
Len on 01.31.06 @ 07:01 AM CST
