I have seen much press given to the fact that "disaster management in New Orleans had been privatised, the ¡®catastrophic hurricane disaster plan¡¯ having been handed over to Baton Rouge-based Innovative Emergency Management."
I ALSO WANT TO KNOW WHAT THESE ASSHOLES HAVE BEEN DOING BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN MANAGING THE DISASTER.
I found the info about IEM at Crooked Timber:
"Remember my earlier point that disaster management in New Orleans had been privatised, the ¡®catastrophic hurricane disaster plan¡¯ having been handed over to Baton Rouge-based Innovative Emergency Management last year? Watching this nightmare unfold, I¡¯ve been wondering why no fucking one is asking what exactly IEM got paid for. It¡¯s turning out to be very hard to find out, for rather startling reasons. In my first post on this, I quoted their original press release:
IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Don¡¯t bother trying the link to that release on the original post. It doesn¡¯t work any more. Let me explain. If you go here now, you¡¯ll see IEM¡¯s page of press releases. Below is what it looked like at 3am on Friday 2nd September, a few minutes ago. ¡¦ See the highlighted word? There used to be another press release, between May and July, dated June 3, announcing that ¡®IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana¡¯. That¡¯s right. The evidence that hurricane-management was privatised and handed over to IEM has been eradicated from the IEM website. It¡¯s almost as if someone was trying to evade responsibility for incompetence that¡¯s resulted in the deaths of thousands, or something.
It¡¯s hard to find the words."
http://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/02/3741/