[StBernard] Senate panel recommends abolishing FEMA

[Westley Annis]

Senate panel recommends abolishing FEMA 
Disaster agency beyond repair, Senate inquiry decides

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:06 p.m. ET April 26, 2006


WASHINGTON - The nation's beleaguered disaster response agency should be
abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government
failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.

Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says
in recommendations to be released Thursday.

Taken together, the 86 proposed reforms suggest the United States is still
woefully unprepared for a disaster such as Katrina with the start of the
hurricane season a little more than month away.

"The United States was, and is, ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic
event of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina," the recommendations warn.
"Catastrophic events are, by their nature, difficult to imagine and to
adequately plan for, and the existing plans and training proved inadequate
in Katrina."

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the
product of a seven-month investigation to be detailed in a Senate report to
released next week. It follows similar inquiries by the House and White
House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on
Katrina to attack the Bush administration.

Bush to visit region again
President Bush will visit Louisiana and Mississippi - which bore the brunt
of Katrina's wrath - on Thursday.

The inquiry urges yet another overhaul of the embattled Homeland Security
Department - FEMA's parent agency - which was created three years ago and
already has undergone major restructuring of duties and responsibilities.

It proposes creating a new agency, called the National Preparedness and
Response Authority, that would plan and carry out relief missions for
domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would have a direct line of
communication with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts
to its budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress.

It would also oversee efforts to protect critical infrastructure such as
buildings, roads and power systems, as well as Homeland Security's medical
officer. But the inquiry calls for keeping the agency within Homeland
Security, warning that making it an independent office would cut it off from
resources the larger department could provide.

The proposal drew disdain from the Homeland Security Department and its
critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling
that they said wouldn't accomplish much.

"It's time to stop playing around with the organizational charts and to
start focusing on government, at all levels, that are preparing for this
storm season," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown said the new agency would basically have
the same mission as FEMA had a year ago, before its disaster planning
responsibilities were taken away.

'Beyond repair'
"It sounds like they're just re-creating the wheel and making it look like
they're calling for change," Brown said. "If indeed that's all they're
doing, they owe more than that to the American public."

But Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who led the inquiry, said the new agency
would be "better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a
disaster."

Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," Collins said the overall
report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures
following Hurricane Katrina."

Many of the rest of the recommendations were far less dramatic, ranging from
creating a Homeland Security Academy to better trained relief staff, to
encouraging people and state and local governments to plan for evacuating
and sheltering pets during a disaster.

Most of them offered common-sense reforms, like better coordination among
all levels of government, providing reliable communications equipment to
allow emergency responders to talk to each other and ensuring urban
evacuation plans are up to date and adequate.

Concluding that FEMA was seriously underfunded, Senate investigators called
for more money for disaster planning and response at all levels of
government. They did not specify, however, how much money was needed and
skirted around whether the federal government should be providing all the
funding.

The recommendations also called for clarifying responsibilities for levee
maintenance - highlighting the structural weaknesses of the New Orleans
flood walls against Katrina. They also urged better contracting procedures
to avoid waste or fraud in the rush to get aid to disaster victims.

"There is no federal dollar that is spent on disaster relief and recovery
for which the government is not accountable to taxpayers," the
recommendations said.

C 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

C 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12505146/