Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA

Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA :

"Eighty-six recommendations by the bipartisan panel indicate the United States is still woefully unprepared for a storm of Katrina's scope with the start of the hurricane season little more than a month away."

This Senate committee has been deliberating for 7 months so I doubt it has come up with anything rash and probably has recommendations which can be implemented. Abolishing FEMA is one of them and to have that replaced by the National Preparedness and Response Authority. I would've thought NRA would suffice. You need an emergency response unit that people do not trip their tongues over. A big bureaucracy does need to constantly monitor itself because bureaucracies have so many arms and legs they forget sometimes they are all united to the same body. Systems are only efficient if they feed into each other and an emergency will show very easily whether that occurs or not. That all this time has been spent trying to overcome the ragged rsponse to Katrina should not be seen as saying people are incompetent. The systems were incompetent and people ...all sorts of people, were left in the lurch. That's what bureaucracies often do not acknowledge. They blame people instead of systems. Sometimes, yes, you can point the finger and say...this person did not do this and this and this, so these arms and legs weren't activated. That's rarely the case. It's usually bad communication and lack of authority to act. The Senate report comes out Thursday and I guess everyone will be interested in seeing how things can be streamlined. Given we have had our own set of cyclones which are like a 3 year old trashing the joint, it would probably be a good idea to do some international consultation and brain picking. We are all wiser in restrospect, but the people are still in an unstable situation. Bureaucracies can never work fast enough to keep the dignity and independece of those who suffered. When everything is blown away and flooded you really are at a disadvantage. It's not like you can just clean up and rebuild in a convenient space of time.