How the Bush II administration manufactured the disaster in New Orleans, prologue: the Clinton administration

There was, and to a lesser degree continues to be, a lot of finger pointing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This blog started too late to address events as they unfolded, but I ran across this letter yesterday, so I guess that the issues are still current.

First, I'll point out that our government is divided into three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. Disaster management is an executive function.

Second, to truly understand the issues behind the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, we should probably go back to the Clinton administration. In 1993, Clinton appointed James Lee Witt as the director of FEMA. Witt had been Clinton's director of Emergency Management in Arkansas, and had successfully responded to several major flooding disasters in that state. Witt was also a successful politician in his own right. Thus, when disaster struck the country during the Clinton administration, the man directing the federal response had hands-on experience in disaster management, and knew how to work with other people effectively.

Clinton also emphasized the importance of disaster management by making FEMA a cabinet-level position: Witt reported directly to the President of the United States. This, coupled with Witt's subsequent work with state governments, convinced many states to place a similar emphasis on their own disaster management capabilities.

Finally, under Witt, FEMA focused on mitigation. For instance, they created Project Impact. This program focused on predisaster mitigation, by asking communities to evaluate their own hazards and assets before disaster struck, and to take steps to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of those hazards.

Thus, while disaster responses during the Clinton administration were not perfect, they were generally quite strong (Oklahoma City may be cited as an exception, in part because the criminal nature of the act blurred lines of responsibility), and the Bush II administration inherited a FEMA that was internationally known as a successful disaster management organization, as well as a nation of states and communities that recognized the value of, and were committed to addressing their own disaster management needs.

Stay tuned for Chapter I, where President G. W. Bush dismantles one of the world's preeminent disaster management organizations.

NOTES:
1. Disaster management and emergency management are interchangeable terms.
2. See Haddow and Bullock's Introduction to Emergency Management, 2nd edition, (C) 2006, at chapter 2 for a larger discussion of the above points.