I was -- and remain -- a fan of the creation of this department. Anyone who has worked in the federal government and been privy to the years of dysfunctional management and infighting among the federal employees at our nation's borders knows that the combination of immigration and customs into a coherent border entity was long overdue.
But FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, should never have been folded into this department. When Senator Susan Collins and Senator Joe Lieberman conclude their excellent and exhaustive series of hearings on what went wrong, they should resist the temptation to "appoint a bi-partisan commission" or to help DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff "retool" FEMA, as he has pledged to do. Instead, they should bite the bullet and restore FEMA to its independent status as an agency that reports directly to the president with responsibility for implementing the nation's National Response Plan.
The initial problem was conceptual. In the aftermath of 9/11 we were so taken by the importance of being able to respond to a terrorist attack that we forgot something that Hurricane Katrina brought home to us. In most fundamental ways, when it comes to response a disaster is a disaster is a disaster. A careless, distraught worker high on drugs at a nuclear plant can be as deadly as a terrorist with a dirty bomb. Afterwards, there are people who need medicine, food and water, and places that need cleaning up.
The other problem was predictable. Independent agencies folded into enormous new departments with "new" missions are liable to go through a period of uncertainty in which they lose focus and don't know what their new mission is. In 2004, James Lee Witt, the head of FEMA during the Clinton administration, warned the House Government Reform Committee that FEMA was "buried beneath a massive bureaucracy whose main and seemingly only focus is fighting terrorism while an all-hazards mission is getting lost in the shuffle. ..." Similar warnings were issued by the Government Accountability Office and by a host of state and local emergency preparedness planners who could see that the traditional mission was being abandoned in favor of terrorism.
For example, grant making was taken away from FEMA and moved to a new department-wide office in an attempt to consolidate funding. And when grants were made, local officials complained that they could not get money for the things that they feared most. In Shelby County, Alabama, officials complained that they could get money for chemical suits but not for emergency operations centers that could link computers, phones and televisions to respond to tornados, a common problem in Shelby County. In the summer of 2005, GAO warned the Bush administration that the training of first responders was tilting towards combating terrorism -- and not natural disasters -- as a result of FEMA being buried in DHS.
The loss of focus resulted in a mind-boggling parade of horrors. In one hearing, Senator Collins found out that FEMA denied local officials' requests for rubber rafts to use to save victims. In another report, FEMA issued a press release telling first responders in neighboring states not to respond to the hurricane without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities. They turned away trucks filled with water and refused to accept much-needed generators. They wouldn't allow food to be delivered to New Orleans by the Red Cross, and they left 20,000 trailers sitting in Atlanta.
How did so many people make so many disastrous judgments? This is what happens when an agency is systematically undermined and caught up in red tape. This is what happens when the leadership of an agency is depleted; most of FEMA's most experienced managers had left by the time the hurricane struck. And this is what happens when the leadership of an agency is fearful and uncertain of its own authority and of its relationship to the rest of the government.
A GAO report found that "a single individual directly responsible to and accountable to the President must be designated as the central focal point to lead..." The DHS secretary did not step into this role. The beleaguered FEMA director was clearly uncertain and hesitant in his leadership. No one in the White House stepped in either. This vacuum in leadership did not occur during the Northridge Earthquake in California, the biggest natural disaster of the 1990s. Everyone in the government knew that FEMA was in charge of disasters and that FEMA's head spoke directly to the president.
The ongoing threat of terror attacks and the possibility that we are going to see more and more severe weather because of global warming means that the government's disaster response capacity is likely to increase in importance as time goes on. This agency should be free-standing and headed by someone with deep experience in emergency preparedness and response. Let's not spend years doing everything but what is so clearly called for -- restoring FEMA to its original independence.
Feedback
Needed: Experienced Emergency ManagersFEMA has been disassembled since being folded into the new Department of Homeland Security and, clearly, restoring its independence would go a long way toward repairing the damage done by that transfer. But, while making the agency independent again and rebuilding its direct connection to the White House, it would not assure that the nation's federal emergency management apparatus would be back into the hands of professional emergency managers. A presidential commitment to the appointment of an experienced emergency manager as director of FEMA would be necessary. The appointment of experienced emergency managers at other levels would also be necessary.
The new FEMA would not be the old FEMA. The agency, like other public agencies, has experienced a severe brain drain as experienced managers and executives have retired, transferred to more hospitable agencies, or fled to the private sector for monetary reward and, to put it simply, appreciation of their knowledge and skills. Many of the FEMA employee who remain are counting the days until they escape. DHS has not been a pleasant place to work. Frequent reorganizations, budget cuts, and frustration over the lack of understanding of emergency management at the highest levels have severely damaged the agency's experienced and enthusiastic workforce. FEMA employees had routinely volunteered for disaster work during the Witt years without being ordered to deploy.
The task environment has also changed since the "golden age" of FEMA. The National Response Plan (NRP) that coordinates federal disaster efforts centralizes decision processes. Relying on decisions made in Washington interferes with disaster response, conflicts with state and local decision processes, and inhibits the kinds of collaboration necessary to make effective use of volunteer and private sector resources. The new FEMA needs a strong regional orientation to reestablish working relationships with its state and local counterparts. Hazard mitigation and disaster preparedness have to be under the same organizational roof for the all-hazards approach to work. The NFP needs to be rewritten to reduce conflicts with state and local authority, better utilize nongovernmental and private resources, and better position federal agencies for disasters in which they should be in a supporting, rather than lead role. The National Incident Management System should be revised to reflect our system of shared governance. Rethinking the assumptions that have guided the organization and operation of the Department of Homeland Security will be necessary to assure that FEMA can coordinate federal efforts with those of state and local governments.
Independence may not save FEMA, but it will increase the likelihood that we can repair the nation's capacity to deal with disasters like Katrina and the 9/11 attacks. It may also increase the likelihood that we can save DHS from itself.
William L. Waugh Jr.
Professor
Department of Public Administration & Urban Studies
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University
Atlanta
