FEMA not the master of disaster

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) submitted a strategy plan which was a year overdue to the Disaster Recovery Subcommittee, according to Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.). Landrieu added that not only was the strategy late but key annexes of the report, required by Congress, were nothing but blank pages.

In a hearing to discuss FEMA’s lack of an effective strategy for housing large numbers of citizens displaced by disaster, Landrieu said that FEMA’s failure to meet strategy needs was “absolutely unacceptable.” Landrieu noted that, after Hurricane Katrina and Rita, FEMA ordered travel trailers for people to live in. She cited reports that the trailers were full of formaldehyde and this caused great concern.

When asked why the strategy report was late and incomplete, Admiral Harvey Johnson Jr., Deputy Administrator of FEMA, said that FEMA would not have produced such a good report a few days ago. Johnson also said that the strategy report was late because of FEMA’s desire to produce a quality product, to be thoughtful in how the strategy could be accomplished and to be “truly collaborative” with agencies such as the National Advisory Council, Federal Departments and Agencies and the general public. Johnson would offer no definite deadline for the submission for the finalized strategy other than “early fall.”

Johnson explained the blank pages in the report were present because Landrieu was looking at a draft of the strategy and promised that the final publication would have all the blank pages filled in. Johnson said that the several other pages in the draft strategy offered a good foundation and compensated for the blank pages of the annex. In what seemed to be a rhetorical question, Landrieu asked why the 325 witnesses called, 22 public hearings and 833,000 pages of information gathered by the Congress were not good enough a foundation to allow for a complete strategy.