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Originally Posted by the makeout hobo  FEMA was very effective under Clinton. It stopped being effective when George Bush appointed a man to run it that had no background in disaster relief. It all depends on who is running the show.
Look at NOLA again. FEMA was so busy managing everything else, like the evacuaees, that they didn't have the resouces to spend on managing volunteers that they needed. |
Hmm..I have to disagree on some level. I speak as someone who worked on a contract with FEMA for approximately 2 years. We were tasked with fixing their claim system. It was not designed to handle something as big as Katrina. Much of the failure of FEMA claim handling was a direct result of the department overestimating their systems, underestimating the extent of a major disaster, and not keeping up with technology.
This would have happened no matter who the head of FEMA was since the Head of FEMA would be completely ignorant of something as mundane as what kind of claims processing software they were using, how it worked, and what sort of load it could handle.
The new system we developed for them was finally put to use in the recent midwest flooding. Something I can actually now point at and say, "I actually helped with that! I did something good and significant that is helping to assist a number of people."