Weather of Mass Destruction

I have to say I was taken by surprise when the pictures of devastated Biloxi, Mississippi, hit the news. Looked too much like Indonesia, post-tsunami, to me. Now New Orleans is flooded to the point that they're predicting a month or more to pump out all the water, looters are running rampant, and the military forces (that should have been previously mobilized and in place) are just moving now to get into the area. Is there any doubt that Mother Nature is capable of some real WMD action?

In yesterday's Washington Post, there was an op-ed by a county director of emergency management operations in Washington state titled "Destroying FEMA." In the article, he bemoaned the DHS decision to remove the preparedness function from FEMA and to transfer it into a directorate of preparedness (yet to be formed). FEMA's past mantra was "preparedness, prevention, response, recovery." You'll also see reference to an "all hazards" approach in the op-ed; this refers to a (relatively) recent philosophy that all emergency responders should be broad-based in their thinking rather than focused on singular approaches to distinct hazards and emergencies. That means that the same organizational approach ought to be taken if you're facing a forest fire or a terrorist incident. In a way, this makes sense, eliminates confusion that might result with different SOPs for every event. In other ways, it causes problems when one wants to focus on improving one specific area and you're told, "no, it has to be ALL-hazards approach."

Now the background to this issue gets a bit complicated. Back around 1997, Congress directed DOD to conduct a Domestic Preparedness Program for 120 cities, to train them on how to respond to CB terrorism incidents. DoJ got jealous and took charge of the program in 2000, creating a National Domestic Preparedness Office largely staffed by law enforcement types (which the firefighters, typically the guys running into hazmat situations, didn't like at all), and they got to deal with the cities and states on the subject. When DHS stood up, DoJ lost the office to them in the organization shuffle. Now DHS wants to put all the hazard preparation functions into one basket, to include the Fire Administration, BioWatch, cyber security, NCR coordination, and all the state/local grant people to "enhance coordination and deployment of preparation assets."

Our op-ed author is understandably annoyed that FEMA's being reduced to just a response and recovery role rather than covering the whole gamut of prepare, prevent, respond, recover, noting that it may have an impact on how the federal government responds to natural disasters. Maybe he's right. History buffs will note that, when FEMA first stood up in 1979, it's main mission wasn't natural disaster response - it was ensuring the continuity of the government following a Soviet nuclear attack. Most federal emergency agency functions between 1962 and 1979 were along this line of thought, but Congress kept pushing more of the natural disaster response functions from the state/local to the feds, as the natural disaster costs mounted every year. Hurricane Andrew really pushed FEMA into a serious reform period, leading to the organization it had today.

The question is, are DHS leaders allowing the 9/11 mindset, that another terrorist mass casualty attack is coming, overwhelm their sense of priorities? While they all state "it's not a matter of if but when," certainly those terrorist attacks have not occurred and these natural disasters do, every year, right on schedule. If the reorganization is just to better prepare and plan for terrorist attacks, then maybe Chertoff's made a mistake by not allowing FEMA the entire gamut of emergency preparedness and response. On the other hand, maybe directing FEMA to focus on response and recovery will allow them to do what they do best - help overwhelmed state and local governments cope with catastrophes such as this. Keep watching Chertoff, he may actually be one of Bush's better decisions.

Comments

[CKR]

One normal thunderstorm contains the energy of hundreds of the largest hydrogen bombs.

And do we really believe that terrorists didn't think about blowing New Orleans's levees?

[J Thomas]

I doubt al Qaeda thought about blowing up NO levees. It isn't their style. They want to argue that they're attacking the enemy -- the zionist/colonialist enemy that attacks arabs -- and not the befuddled innocent civilians.

Never mind to what extent it's actually true, for 9/11 they attacked stockbrokers and the Pentagon. The data we got about alternate sites as for financial centers, the financial centers that they might naturally believe were part of the zionist conspiracy etc. They weren't interested in attacking a bunch of poor black people. They were going after embassies and warships and commercial centers. Admittedly their behavior in the last couple of years has been different, the new groups have gone after trains and subways etc. I get the impression they don't have as much money and they don't have as much expertise, and they settle for worse targets. And they seem to have a lot less arab support now. Maybe that's partly because they're going after less symbolicly justified targets. Or maybe they're going after those targets becasuse they lack support. It could go either way or both ways. Or it could be wrong.