Punditician

A place to rant about politics, the media, and especially the electorate. Much like alcohol, the electorate is both the cause of, and the solution to, all of America's problems.

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Location: Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

From the What-Planet-Do-You-Live-On Department....

FEMA (of "you're doin a heckuva a job Drownie" fame) lists the Katrina response as one of its top 3 achievements of 2005.

I'm not kidding.

Really.

http://www.fema.gov/pao/dhs/update-112105.htm#eleven

In case they catch too much shit for it, and take it down like the cowards republicans are, here's the relevant text:

11. Top FY05 DHS Accomplishments: FEMA

DHS Today will highlight FY05 Accomplishments in this column over the next several weeks. This week’s focus is on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The top FY05 FEMA accomplishments included:

* Hurricane Katrina: The response to Hurricane Katrina was FEMA’s largest response in its history. The aid given within six weeks of landfall included almost $3.8 billion for more than 1.24 million households. More than half a million people visited 100 Disaster Recovery Centers that had been quickly created across the Gulf Coast. Working through the American Red Cross, FEMA supported the nation’s largest-ever sheltering operation, with more than 273,000 evacuees at the peak. In addition, again working with the Red Cross, FEMA paid to house more than 600,000 people in emergency hotel housing. Almost 70,000 temporary roofs had been put on damaged homes through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, more than 16,000 manufactured homes or travel trailers had been placed on site, and 20 million cubic yards of debris had been picked up.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm just curious - if the numbers that are quoted are accurate, how can you not think that it is an amazing accomplishment for FEMA?

You do realize we are all only human beings? And human beings make mistakes. Given the magnitude of Katrina, I would say that the response was more than comendable. Were mistakes made? Of course. But quite a few of those mistakes were blown WAY out of proportion. The US has never had to deal with such a catastrophe. You can plan and prepare all you want, but until such a situation arises, you really have no clue as to how you will need to react. Afteralll, that storm was over a hundred miles wide! Now at least we do have some experience with which we can plan a more effective response. Lessons learned.

Given the circumstances, I think we can all be very proud of the accomplishments the federal and local governments have made to continue even a semblance of normalacy in that region of our country.

8:42 PM  

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