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May 17, 2007

FEMA is no Longer About Aiding Disaster Victims

Republicans are constantly harping these days on the need for limited government and self-reliance. To that end, they attack the social safety net of Social Security, Welfare, Medicaid and Medicare, the food stamp program, etc. When government steps in, they say, charity goes down, and if the government backed out of these programs and let people help each other, then efforts to help the needy would actually cost less and be more effective. These efforts should be an activity of churches and neighbors and families, they say. So why it is that with a Christian Republican president, our government is actually turning away volunteers who want to help the victims of disasters?

A very compelling account of one group's efforts to help the victims of the tornado that flattened Greensburg, Kansas on May 4 shows how entirely heartless and anti-volunteer FEMA has become. The group, like all volunteers who were bringing food, supplies, and manpower to Greensburg, was denied entry by armed guards at checkpoints set up outside of what was left of the town – because those were FEMA's instructions. It was a week before Americorps was given permission by FEMA to establish and coordinate volunteer efforts.

This sounds all too similar to FEMA's actions after Hurricane Katrina, where volunteers were turned away from helping victims who were trapped in their homes. FEMA also turned away water, aid, and fuel and cut emergency communication lines – all in the name of security and safety. Would-be volunteers told of days upon days of sitting in tents while people were dying, waiting for permission to enter and provide assistance. But until the city was "secured," FEMA would not let them in. And the same thing happened this month in Greensburg.

Shortly after the tornado, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took control of the recovery efforts in Greensburg. The United Way became the coordinating organization for relief volunteers but, after orders came from FEMA, halted the flow of volunteers into Greensburg. FEMA demanded that Greensburg needed to be “secured” by the National Guard before the area could be opened to real recovery efforts.

So, as hundreds of recovery volunteers were told to not come to Greensburg by the United Way, hundreds of police from dozens of Kansas jurisdictions were mobilized to enter the city and establish “control.” …

FEMA’s mission was to safeguard the property of businesses in the area and offer “low interest” loans to property owners affected. The National Guard was on hand along with the local police, to act as the enforcement mechanism for FEMA, while occasionally hauling debris and garbage out of the city.

In another similarity to FEMA's actions in New Orleans, legal firearms were confiscated from residents of Greensburg.

Something stinks pretty badly here. Once again, we have a devastating disaster hitting a poor area, FEMA rushing in and blocking all volunteer assistance efforts while doing little or nothing itself (rumor has it that all FEMA has done for those people is mail a packet of information to them – which, of course, cannot be delivered as their homes and, therefore, mail boxes, are gone), destitute people looting, and those whose stuff is being looted being disarmed, only to finally receive help when they have reached a state of utter desperation. Why?

It is tempting to think of this as an effort to get Americans to distrust the government's ability to be there for them in their time of need and then to dismantle the safety net, but I don't think that's what's going on here. Just two months ago, James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., wrote a piece for the free market Heritage Foundation upholding the role of the federal government in disasters. Rather than concluding the federal government should butt out, as you might expect, he said it plays an important role in providing national assistance in disasters. But, he said, federal assistance should be supplemental to local grassroots responses because "community-centered disaster preparations are far more effective than Washington-centric planning."

[A]s the scale of the disaster increases, so does the likelihood of confusion and ambiguity. Under these conditions, improvisation and adaptation are crucial to eliciting an effective response, particularly in the first hours and days of a catastrophe before organized responders can reach the scene. Research has found that the communities themselves are the best source of innovation and ingenuity, and the stronger the community, the more resourceful and robust is the nature of its adaptive qualities.

And of course we know that. Volunteers have always turned up in droves - loaded up with food, water, fuel, medicine, blankets, etc. - to help disaster victims. And it has always been the local churches and civic organizations that coordinated volunteer responses. Until FEMA became part of Homeland Security and its counter-terrorism efforts in 2003. And that leads me to what I think is going on here.

FEMA's entire angle has been changed. It is treating natural disasters as it would terrorist attacks. That is why before any assistance can be provided, it must first disarm and establish military control. Only then, after lives have been needlessly lost, can volunteers be allowed in to help the victims.

Posted by Becky at May 17, 2007 11:52 AM