192 Steps to Disaster Preparedness February 7, 2007
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Interview with Nick Ballasy “On the Issues” show:
Nick Ballasy: With hurricane Katrina. How do you feel about the Bush administration’s response? Was it appropriate? Would you have done something totally different? Or..
Wes Clark: Well, there are a lot of things wrong with this and there’s plenty of fault finding at every level.
One of the things that happened, of course, that everybody knows about is the Federal Emergency Management Agency was slipped into the Department of Homeland Security and the focus was on terrorism, not on responding to natural disasters. So that was a distraction.
Another thing is, a lot of the key people were taken out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency because these were professional people and it became part of the political spoils. They put guys like Michael Brown, I’m sure he’s a decent guy, I don’t know him personally, but he had no experience for this kind of thing. It wasn’t like he was a, you know, big business leader who knew how to make things happen. He was a lawyer. And I like lawyers, but, unless you’ve run a big organization in a crisis, a disaster like Katrina is a tough.. It’s a tough learning experience and he didn’t do very well. And by the way, the guy over him, Michael Chertoff, he’s another lawyer who’s never, you know Federal Prosecuter, but he’d never actually had his hands on the wheel of a big organization. It’s about how you communicate, how you task, how you review, how you follow up, how you set suspenses and deadlines. It’s a whole lot of things that somebody in the military, for example, I mean, I’ve learned it throughout a thirty-four year career. I know how to do that kind of thing. James Lee Witt, down there helping the Governor of Louisiana, he learned it. He was a disaster manager in Arkansas before he ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
So there’s that problem.
James Lee Witt Associates Receives Award for Gulf Coast disaster recovery program February 1, 2007
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James Lee Witt Associates, the public safety and crisis management firm founded by the former Clinton FEMA director and of which General Clark is Vice Chairman, was recognized by the American Society of Landscape Architects for its disaster recovery efforts in Louisiana. The award specifically applauds the firm’s development of an online planning program for community recovery following natural disasters, to assist FEMA and the State of Louisiana’s Recovery Authority Partnership.
“With the assistance of James Lee Witt Associates, Louisiana and the entire Gulf Coast are better equipped to meet the challenges of rebuilding after the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” said Patrick Moore, Managing Principal, Moore Planning Group and Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architect.
