Blogosphere on FEMA and Brown

Updated 4.55 PM PDT
The scorn being heaped upon ex-FEMA Chief Brown and his agency crosses political stripes; some is now being directed at the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is the cabinet-level agency involved; news reports now show that DHS head Chertoff was in charge all along, according to the National Response Plan.

Talking Points Memo references the Knight-Ridder story: DHS Chief Cherfott "may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department." TPM goes on to note that the feet-dragging by DHS/FEMA is even more troublesome than it appeared yesterday. Knight-Ridder missed this from the National Response Plan:

"[W]hile all Presidentially declared disasters and emergencies under the Stafford Act are considered Incidents of National Significance, not all Incidents of National Significance necessarily result in disaster or emergency declarations under the Stafford Act."

Thus, not only was the 36 hour post-landfall declaration of "incident of national significance" unnecessary, DHS/FEMA could have acted as soon as President Bush declared a state of emergency, which he did on Saturday - two days before landfall. Does the right hand know what the left is doing?

The libertarian Ludwig von Mise Institute calls for FEMA to be dismantled (SOP for libertarians), noting that:

Other news reports noted how FEMA prevented the Coast Guard from delivering fuel and the Red Cross from delivering food, barred morticians from entering New Orleans, blocked a 500 boat flotilla from delivering aid, and ignored a Navy ship equipped with a 600-bed hospital — all while thousands died. Let's face it: If Michael Brown wasn't a political appointee and operated instead in the private sector, Congress would be going after him with criminal charges like he was Ken Lay.

More surprising is this news from Hammer of Truth about power in Mississippi: Vice President Cheney's office called the Southern Pines Electric Power Association two times (30 and 31 August), asking the company to immediately restore power to substations that served Atlanta-based Colonial Pipeline (profile).

Colonial provides 96 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, aviation, and military fuels per day to the Southeast and the mid-Atlantic (Maryland, Delaware, southern New Jersey). Also on Wednesday 31 August, the Department of Energy called Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan; they told him that opening the fuel line was a national priority, that fuel was needed in the Northeast. But Colonial doesn't deliver to the Northeast!

Later on Wednesday, gas prices hit $6 in Georgia upon news that the pipeline was down; the Governor declared a state of emergency. The effort required to restore power for Colonial, which took 16 hours and half the crew, delayed - by 24 hours - getting power restored to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems.

According to Kevin Drum, the Wall Street Journal reported that FEMA did not request transport buses until two days after landfall. The initial request was tripled before being finalized; buses arrived in a trickle, not a wave.

Her conservatess Michele Malkin called on Bush to fire Brown on Sunday 4 September. The conservative Weeky Standard pulls no punches, either (from Andrew Sullivan) :

FEMA was holding up everything, they didn't have a clue... They were an absolute roadblock, nobody was getting anywhere with those idiots. Everybody just started doing their own missions." While opinions on the ground differ wildly as to who deserves the most generous serving of blame pie among George W. Bush, Louisiana's governor, and New Orleans' mayor, everyone I speak with agrees that FEMA officials should spend their afterlives in the hottest part of Hell without any water breaks.

This first person account of a family trying to help with the Falls Creek Southern Baptist youth camp in Oklahoma turns out to be misleading ... in the sense that at the request of FEMA, relief efforts at Falls Creek are no longer needed (12 September). Nevertheless, "[o]ver 5,000 Buckets of Blessing care packages were prepared by hand and over 3,278 beds were made in less than 24 hours."

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DHS, FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, Politics