Nailing Brown on Hurricane "Pam"
Brown was head of FEMA in July 2004, when the organization completed an exercise for emergency preparedness and response to the fictional Hurricane Pam, during which exercise FEMA worked with Louisiana.
The report on this exercise, from FEMA's website, is here.
Please notice that the response suggestions are very much hands-on, and very much not of the "wallflower waiting for the state to ask her to dance" variety.
An excerpt:
Sheltering
-The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.
-In a storm like Hurricane Pam, shelters will likely remain open for 100 days. The group identified the resources necessary to support 1000 shelters for 100 days. They planned for staff augmentation and how to include shelterees in shelter management.
-State resources are adequate to operate shelters for the first 3-5 days. [which they did ~MA] The group planned how federal and other resources will replenish supplies at shelters.[Walmart??? ~MA]
Search and Rescue
-The search and rescue group developed a transportation plan for getting stranded residents out of harm's way.
-Planners identified lead and support agencies for search and rescue and established a command structure that will include four areas with up to 800 searchers.
Please notice that actions indicated in these plans were not in evidence in the aftermath of Katrina. People at FEMA planned them, but needed authority from someone to act, Federal command structure being what it is. That "someone" would be the director, who was also around when this report was issued and (one would hope) had read it.
How anyone can look at this report, outlining the actions that FEMA defined as its job, and then listen credulously to former FEMA head Michael Brown defend himself by passing the buck entirely back to state and local government and claim a purely advisory role for FEMA, is beyond me.
He had a job to do, a job defined in 2004, and he didn't do it.