FEMA's Project Impact (Under Clinton) Canceled Outright by Bush-Privatized

[beetbox]

Read this 16 page article and you will see quite precisely how the pieces fit. Corporate cronyism writ large but shown in detail. Hurricane Katrina. Death in the thousands. No, I'm sorry this is not death this is murder. Bureaucratic savagery.


Among emergency specialists, "mitigation"--the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters--is a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster has been cut in half, and now, communities across the country must compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars.

As a result, some state and local emergency managers say, it's become more difficult to get the equipment and funds they need to most effectively deal with disasters. In North Carolina, a state regularly damaged by hurricanes and floods, FEMA recently refused the state's request to buy backup generators for emergency support facilities. And the budget cuts have halved the funding for a mitigation program that saved an estimated $8.8 million in recovery costs in three eastern N.C. communities alone after 1999's Hurricane Floyd. In Louisiana, another state vulnerable to hurricanes, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer.

Consequently, the residents of these and other disaster-prone states will find the government less able to help them when help is needed most, and both states and the federal government will be forced to shoulder more recovery costs after disasters strike.

<>

"Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded," he wrote. "Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors."

http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover.html

[xultar]

1. That is why Michael Brown (Fucktard) told them they had to contract

out for some of the work people wanted to volunteer for...hummm.

[demo dutch]

2. FEMA also cancelled plan to fix evacuation problems in NOLA

--
Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens. But funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, who also was disaster chief for North Carolina.

see link
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002339.html

[beetbox]

3. For the internet historians

[Toots]

4. Anti Bush* and you are a traitor..Anti government and you are Patriotic

Americans are the stupidest people on the face of the earth.

[RBHam]

5. Kick for christ's sake

wonder where the money went...

dick?

rummy?

condi?

who's buying new shoes?