Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA

A bipartisan Senate investigation concludes the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed and recommends FEMA be replaced.

The Associated Press reports the recommendations of a seven-month investigation to be detailed in a Senate report to released next week propose creating a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, that would plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, who led the inquiry, described FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair."

Many of the 86 recommendations were far less dramatic. The recommendations range 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.

It's hard to defend FEMA, but I don't understand how replacing FEMA with a new agency will improve our ability to respond to a disaster on the scale of Katrina. I think we would be much better off with an agency that helps local and state governments develop plans for disater response. We need to regain part of that famous American self reliance.

The big lesson of the Katrina disaster is that everyone must prepare to fend for themselves until help arrives. There will be situations, natural disasters or horrific terrorist attack, in which the calvary won't get there for awhile. That's just the way it is. The government can't always provide immediate relief.

The City of San Francisco has figured this out. The City's Office of Emergency Services has set up a website called 72 Hours. The site implores you to imagine that you have no electricity, no gas, no water and no telephone service, that all the businesses are closed and you are without any kind of emergency services, then asks what will you do until help arrives?

The 72 Hours site offers advice on how to prepare for a disaster and survive until help does arrive. We should all think whether we are prepared and what we would do when faced with a disaster.

Comments

[mary]

It is interesting. Claims were made that Fema was successfully reformed under Clinton, now it's in shambles. Reports of significant improvements in the VA system were also made, now it's underfunded and under various attacks.

I think government can be at least moderately effective, I fear Republicans biggest desire is to destroy it when it is and prove it the enemy.