Responding to disasters

Michael Brown, or "Brownie," as George W. Bush affectionately called him, was the FEMA director when Katrina hit New Orleans ten years ago. Brown has a talk radio show in Denver these days, and it is a good one, that I listen to every day on my way home from work. Kudos to Politico, which has given Mr. Brown space in their publication to make his case for people to stop blaming him for Katrina. At the end of his piece, Michael has some recommendations:

The American public needs to learn not to rely on the government to save them when a crisis hits. The larger the disaster, the less likely the government will be capable of helping any given individual. We simply do not have the manpower to help everyone. Firefighters and rescue workers would all agree the true first responders are individual citizens who take care of themselves.

Government has a few lessons to learn, too. FEMA was once known for its great partnership with state and local governments. The agency saw its role as an augmenter of state and local response—helping to train, equip and organize first responders at the local level. It was what I always called an “honest broker.” Our role was to assist state and local governments to correct vulnerabilities they faced. When a presidentially-declared disaster struck, FEMA activated the Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, and, acting as that honest broker, brought federal, state and local agencies together to respond appropriately, efficiently and effectively.

That same approach gave us the Urban Search & Rescue Teams, the Veterinarian Medical Assistance Teams, the Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, the Nuclear Incident Response Teams, all of which were made up of local first responders who received training and equipment to use during presidentially-declared disasters.

But after the creation of DHS in 2003, the focus shifted from an all-hazards approach to a focus on terrorism. Money for grants, training and equipment suddenly had to somehow help combat terrorism—and thus the partnership between federal and local agencies began to break down. Grant dollars were moved out of FEMA into the Department of Justice Office of Preparedness grants, thus moving the focus away from all hazards to one of law enforcement. Naturally, state and local governments followed the money, and the marriage between FEMA and state agencies was undermined by the pursuit of terrorism dollars.

I wrote Secretary Ridge in 2003 and warned him that this shift of grant money out of FEMA would ultimately result in FEMA’s failure. And it did. Terrorism became the focus, as did law enforcement. Partnership faded away. You can’t blame state governments; they were simply chasing the money.

Today government needs to affirmatively reassert its commitment to the all-hazards approach to disasters. Whether a disaster is man-made, natural or the result of terrorism, the response is the same. And the federal government must not become a first responder. The more state and local governments become dependent upon federal dollars, the weaker and more dependent upon the federal government they will become.

Why is that important? Disasters happen every day. The federal government should be involved only in those disasters that are beyond the capacity of state and local governments to handle. Centralized disaster response at the national level would destroy the inherent close relationship between citizens and those who save their lives and protect their property in times of everyday disasters. We must not allow that to happen.

Read more here.