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.
