Nobody could have foreseen the post Katrina problems ...could they ?

In June, Pleasant Mann, a 16-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency's government employee union (see pic) , wrote members of Congress to warn of the agency's decay. "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."

But the merger into DHS has compounded the agency's problems, says FEMA employee and union president Pleasant Mann. "Before, we reported straight to the White House, and now we've got this elaborate bureaucracy on top of us, and a lot of this bureaucracy doesn't think what we're doing is that important, because terrorism isn't our number one," he says. "The biggest frustration here is that we at FEMA have responded to disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11, and here are people who haven't responded to a kitchen fire telling us how to deal with terrorism. You know, there were a lot of people who fell down on the job on 9/11, but it wasn't us."

The FEMA program administrator says the crux of the problem is that the agency is buried in DHS, which is regarded as a "do-nothing agency" among FEMA's action-oriented staff. "You know, FEMA could do well by itself, and FEMA was starting to do well by itself. But that's changed."

Being wise after the event ? Monday morning quarter backing? …No. This was written by Jon Elliston a North Carolina-based writer who specializes in national security issues. Eileen Loh Harrist also wrote about “Homeland Insecurity “ , claiming that Louisiana should have been high on the list for FEMA's biggest disaster mitigation grant program -- so why did the state get nothing?

You can find both these articles here. The “Best of New Orleans” published 28th September 2004. Essential and detailed background reading to understand the continuing shambles that is NOLA today. (Thanks to Rob Kettenburg)