Fla emer. op. mgr defends FEMA; dealt w/ Hurr. Charley

Wayne Sallade is the emergency operations manager for Charlotte County, Florida. Charlotte County, you may recall, took a hit last year from Hurricane Charley so I was interested in his opinion on this Katrina situation. I was floored by his responses in this article. I've emailed the reporter about her shoddy reporting skills but thought some of you may be interested in the comments made in this article. This article, complete with RW talking points, disturbed me greatly.

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SW Florida leaders defend FEMA, boss

Local emergency management officials believe that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its director, Michael Brown, are being made scapegoats in the slow response to Hurricane Katrina.
...
Wayne Sallade, Charlotte County emergency management director, lays the blame for the breakdown in disaster response at the feet of local and state agencies.
...
"Why were there acres and acres of school buses left to be flooded under 8 feet of water?" Sallade asked.
...
FEMA is not the agency expected to lead the on-the-ground response to a major disaster event, Sallade said. "That has never been relinquished to the locals."
...
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050910/WEATHER01/509100547/1075

Fla emer. op. mgr defends FEMA; dealt w/ Hurr. Charley


Wayne Sallade is the emergency operations manager for Charlotte County, Florida. Charlotte County, you may recall, took a hit last year from Hurricane Charley so I was interested in his opinion on this Katrina situation. I was floored by his responses in this article. I've emailed the reporter about her shoddy reporting skills but thought some of you may be interested in the comments made in this article. This article, complete with RW talking points, disturbed me greatly.

Dear Ms. Wozniak,

I was very disappointed to see the inaccuracies contained in this article, 'SW Leaders Defend FEMA, boss' which was posted today on the News-Press website.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050910/WEATHER01/509100547/1075
I expect journalists to report the truth, not repeat hearsay conversations or talking points without verifying facts.

From your article ...Yet no evacuations were called for until Sunday morning, Sallade said. The school buses meant to evacuate crowds sat empty. "Why were there acres and acres of school buses left to be flooded under 8 feet of water?" Sallade asked.

Sallade implies that the Mayor was somehow slow to respond to the approaching storm by waiting to order an evacuation of the City on Sunday. If you had checked the facts instead of relying on the description of a hearsay conversation between Sallade and Max Mayfield, you would have discovered that on (Sunday) August 28 the National Weather Service issued a bulletin predicting "devastating" damage rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille. At a news conference Sunday morning Mayor Nagin ordered an unprecedented mandatory evacuation of the city.

The issue of the buses is a right wing talking point. If you had bothered to check the facts, you would have discovered that New Orleans Mayor Nagin did use buses to evacuate New Orelans residents to designated shelters throughout the City.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo

Further, from your article...FEMA is not the agency expected to lead the on-the-ground response to a major disaster event, Sallade said. "That has never been relinquished to the locals."
However, if you had bothered to do your job by checking the facts you could have informed your readers that on Tuesday August 30th DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff implemented the National Response Plan thus placing him as the official person in charge of the federal, state, and local response as designated by the law from that date going forward.

According to the department's website, "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation." http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp The emphasis is that Homeland Security will assume "primary responsibilty" which was created to prevent the uncoordinated response of various local, state, and federal in disaster scenarios.

In the article Sallade askes why the Red Cross was kept out of New Orleans by Louisiana DHS. He provides us with this answer....They were told not to because the state staff didn't want to encourage people to stay in those makeshift shelters, Sallade said.

No source is given for Sallade's information but I wanted to know more about this allegation so I began checking the internet for answers. I found out that the answer he gave had been posted on the Red Cross website. After checking further I found this CNN article which was posted yesterday September 9, 2005 and described a press conference that had taken place Thursday September 8, 2005 with pertinent officials discussing this very issue. Here are a few snippets for you. You can read the entire article at the link.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/08/katrina.redcross/index.html
The national president of the American Red Cross, Marsha Evans, first made the request to undertake the operation during a visit to the state on September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck, a local Red Cross chapter official said.
"We had adequate supplies, the people and the vehicles," Howell said at a news conference in Baton Rouge. "It was the middle of a military rescue operation trying to save lives. We were asked not to go in, and we abided by that recommendation."

Mayeaux (deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness), appearing at the news conference with Howell (chief executive officer of the agency's Louisiana Capital Area Chapter), said he had asked the Red Cross to wait 24 hours for conditions to be "set" for the operation.

"To set up a feeding station to feed a large number of people, you need space. You need to escort the personnel into position. ... And we asked Mr. Howell, and he concurred, to wait 24 hours to go to set that in," Mayeaux said.
After reading the bashing of the Louisiana local response I was surprised that no mention of any FEMA missteps had been included in the story to at least give it some balance. I am even more surprised that no mention was made that 5 of the 8 top leaders of FEMA lack relevant qualifications for their positions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165.html

I also refer you to these additional articles that you may want to have a look at.
FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e..

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm

FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=...

FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509..

FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale..

FEMA turns away generators
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470


Since we live in a hurricane-prone area this story has a direct effect on the residents of our community. Minimizing the apparent failures of the federal agency that handles hurricane response is completely unacceptable. I would hope that you would print a follow-up story correcting some of the misinformation contained in this article which would provide your readers with a better sense of what occured in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To allow this type of biased reporting to prevail is a disservice to your readers and not worthy of being called journalism.

Silly Goose

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002484649_pennington10m.html


Local FEMA chief had little disaster experience

By Mike Carter and Susan Kelleher
Seattle Times staff reporters

John Pennington, the official in charge of federal disaster response in the Northwest, was a four-term Republican state representative who ran a mom-and-pop coffee company in Cowlitz County when then-Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn helped him get his federal post.

Before he was appointed regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Pennington got a degree from a correspondence school that government investigators later described as a "diploma mill."

with Katrina, I hope they'll look into the qualifications of people appointed to lead these important agencies. This is a disaster.

that's precisely the kind of an "expert" we need for our local FEMA... Thanks so much, Mr. Bush and Ms. Dunn!

I believe I read that the Hesitant arrived in Fla. about 1.5 days after the storm.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9256525/


Our next guest argues, there sure has been. Eric Boehlert writes for Salon.com and is in the studio with us tonight.

Thanks for your time.

ERIC BOEHLERT, SALON.COM: Glad to be here.

OLBERMANN: Spell this out in brief. Why do you say there was an actual difference in the way FEMA handled New Orleans and the Gulf in 2005 compared with FEMA and how it handled Florida and the hurricane swarm in 2004?

BOEHLERT: Right. They had to deal with four major storms August, September of 2004. And the difference, of course, is, that was an election year. And there was just a completely different mind-set.

If you go back and look at what happened, there was a different mind-set at FEMA; there was a different mind-set with Michael Brown; there was a different mind-set with the Bush administration and the reelection team. I mean, it was top priority. It was all hands on deck. FEMA was standing by, literally, not just Michael Brown talking about it, like in New Orleans. ........

or instead try to be jounalist! This might instill a sense of guilt in her. Who knows, it is worth a try.



http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_anthony__050910...

Cronyism Kills

Building a safety net with lies and fraud

by Anthony Wade

http://www.opednews.com

September 9, 2005

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The speaker was George W. Bush. “Brownie”, is Michael Brown the head of FEMA. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the abhorrent mismanagement of the relief efforts, a lot of attention is being rightfully paid to Mr. Brown and his bungling. As the attention morphs into scrutiny, it is becoming painfully obvious that cronyism kills.

Cronyism is a term defining how the Bush administration hands out important government posts. It is when a person is given a government job not based on experience but rather on the good ole boys network. It is not what you know, but who you know. Michael Brown knew Joseph Allbaugh, the former FEMA Director and former Bush campaign manager in 2000. He actually had no relevant experience for the job, but when you are a crony, you don’t have to. Prior to FEMA, Mr. Brown worked for the Arabian Horse Association, who eventually dismissed him.

Last week, Brown actually went on several news shows to state that he had no idea that there were people being held in the Superdome without food, water or electricity. Never mind that for days, the rest of the world knew, because it was being reported on every channel. Apparently, Mr. Brown does not watch CNN or the weather channel. As the criticism mounted Time Magazine decided to investigate just who Mr. Brown was and they have discovered that he was even less qualified than we thought.

It seems that Michael Brown had to lie just to make himself as unqualified as we thought he was. His resume was filled with embellishments. First of all, Mr. Brown claimed that from 1975 to 1978 he worked for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, overseeing the emergency services division. The obvious nature of this lie was to give the appearance that 30 years ago, he worked in a supervisory capacity in a related field to the FEMA position he was being handed. Unfortunately, he actually was an intern, not a supervisor. Not one single person answered to him. ~more~