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In the wake of hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency is expected to come hat in hands asking for more
money from Congress. Like the rest of the government, it is broke. It has
been suggested that any additional funds allocated to FEMA should come from
cuts elsewhere. This seems harsh and lacking in compassion to big government
advocates who do not understand economics, but I would go a step further.
FEMA should never have been established. It is based on misguided ideas of
disaster relief.
This seems shocking to those who have never been subjected to the
secondary disaster that is the arrival of FEMA on the scene of a catastrophic
event. But explaining FEMA’s ineptness is not the same thing as saying
no one should help people affected by disasters. Quite the opposite.
Victims of disasters should get any and all help possible, and there
is virtually no limit to the generosity and compassion of good American
people after devastation hits. One only need to
remember the outpouring after Katrina to know this is true. FEMA, however,
did more to get in the way of relief than to actually provide and facilitate
it. The examples are numerous. When the call was put out for volunteer
firefighters, they volunteered by the thousands. It was FEMA, for reasons of
control and bureaucratic ineptitude, who made sure
they were not, in fact allowed to actually help. When a group of firefighters
arrived from Houston, instead of being put immediately on the job, they were
told to sit around and wait. After waiting for two days doing nothing, they
were simply sent home. One thousand volunteer firefighters
were sent to Atlanta to undergo sexual harassment training while fires
actively raged in the city. The ones that remained through this stupidity
were sent to escort the president around or to distribute fliers instead of
putting out fires. Computer engineer Jack Harrison was told his skills were
needed to rebuild technological infrastructure. After being given the
runaround for about two weeks, he was misallocated as head of security on the
cruise ship FEMA had leased, when he should have been using his skills to
help. All manner of help was turned away or mismanaged by FEMA while people
suffered and waited. Even the Red Cross had its hands tied by FEMA.
It has only gotten worse since 9/11. Compare the stories of two
flotillas – one after 9/11 and one after Katrina. Within an hour of the
9/11 attacks, the largest boatlift in history was organized spontaneously by
locals who saw an immediate need and responded immediately. Over 500,000
terrified New Yorkers were taken off the island by ferries, tugboats,
pleasure crafts, fishing boats and barges when all other access points had
been shut down. A similar flotilla attempt was privately organized after
Katrina. 500 boats caravanned to New Orleans to rescue patients from
hospitals that were out of supplies and desperate. Unfortunately, FEMA had
taken over by then and they were turned away, empty, while the patients
languished, still stranded. Tragically, the Vermont Air National Guard
helicopters were in Iraq when Irene hit, and they were desperately needed
here.
The establishment of FEMA is symptomatic of a blind belief in big
government’s ability to do anything and everything for anyone and everyone.
FEMA is a bureaucratic organization. Bureaucracies, while staffed with
well-meaning people, are notoriously slow and wasteful by their very nature.
When people are starving, injured and dying they need speed and efficiency,
yet FEMA comes along with forms and policies and rubber stamps. This sort of
thing is bad enough at the DMV, but in matters of life and death where
seconds count, this is just not acceptable.
True compassion would be to get FEMA out of the way.
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