[Mb-civic] FEMA Director Singled Out by Response Critics - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

FEMA Director Singled Out by Response Critics

By Spencer S. Hsu and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page A01

Michael D. Brown has been called the accidental director of the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency, caricatured as the failed head of an 
Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become 
President Bush's point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Amid the swirl of human misery along the Gulf Coast, Brown admitted 
initially underestimating the impact of Hurricane Katrina, whose winds 
and water swamped the agency's preparations. As the nation reeled at 
images of the calamity, he appeared to blame storm victims by noting 
that the crisis was worsened by New Orleans residents who did not comply 
with a mandatory evacuation order.

By last weekend, facing mounting calls for his resignation, he told 
reporters: "People want to lash out at me, lash out at FEMA. I think 
that's fine. Just lash out, because my job is to continue to save 
lives." More broadly, the 50-year-old Oklahoma lawyer and the agency he 
leads have become the focus of a broad reappraisal of U.S. homeland 
security efforts four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In recent days, politicians and officials in both parties have derided 
Brown's qualifications to head the nation's chief disaster-response 
agency -- as well as the performance of the agency and its federal, 
state and local partners.

At a time when homeland security experts called for greater domestic 
focus on preparing for calamity, Brown faced years of funding cuts, 
personnel departures and FEMA's downgrading from an independent, 
Cabinet-level agency.

As recently as three weeks ago, state emergency managers urged Homeland 
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his deputy, Michael P. Jackson, 
to ease the department's focus on terrorism, warning that the shift away 
from traditional disaster management left FEMA a bureaucratic backwater 
less able to respond to natural events such as hurricanes and earthquakes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501590.html?nav=hcmodule
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