Pre-Deploy? Proactive Deployment ? - Brown's Words in 2004

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/09/08/disastrous_response/

Columnist interviews Louis Elisa - worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for 6 years.

- Regional New England director
- FEMA's first liaison to NATO, directing relief efforts in places such as Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia.

"Had FEMA followed its policies and procedures, he charged, many lost lives might have been saved."

"FEMA had the equipment, resources, and know-how to avoid the mad scenes at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, and he can't understand why it didn't better deploy them before the storm."

"They have mobile emergency response teams assigned to Denton, Texas, that have the capacity of running half a city.."

2004 Brown speech re Hurricane Isabel, which struck the mid-Atlantic region.

Brown:

- FEMA successfully committed resources BEFORE the storm
- Preparation allowed for video teleconferencing and other high-tech communications (Frist said communication in LA was nonexistent)
-- Shelter and medical efforts -- SOME OF THEM NOT EVEN REQUESTED -- had been at the ready.
-- In Brown speeches - The words 'predeployed' and proactive deployment appear. How interesting!!!!

Link to Brown speeches:
http://www.fema.gov/library/speech.shtm

Edited to clarify column versus Brown's words

of him receiving a phone call, briefly remembering he had read a memo concerning the same issue and brushed it aside.

The phone call states theat Katrina's a category 5; something needs to be done NOW.

He thinks for a few moments, beads of sweat engulfing his skin, he reaches for the phone, then retracts his hand. "He's on vacation, I can't bother him, I'll get in trouble."

Then he thinks, "No, I'll do something anyway--but what?"

More thinking, more fear for his crony job, "It can't possibly be that bad; we've survived hurricanes before."

So nothing happens, Katrina hits, and another despearate call comes in: "The levess have broken, for God's sake, what are you going to do?"

Now, paralyzed with fear, every ounce of intellect, every briefing he's received, is unable to be summoned. And the tragedy grows by the second.

At least he went down with the ship.