From
The Department of Homeland Security website -- "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS."
Well, what exactly does that mean? You must remember that the current US Government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party. And the agenda of the Republican party is to make the federal government go away so that corporations may cheat and steal with impunity. Basically, they push "states rights" as a way of undoing federal regulations on business. (Federal regulations on gay sex, abortion, etc. etc. are fine because they plan to ignore those laws anyway and it gets them votes).
Now keep that fact in mind while reading this section, also from The Department of Homeland Security website.
"Emphasis on Local Response
"All incidents are handled at the lowest possible organizational and jurisdictional level. Police, fire, public health and medical, emergency management, and other personnel are responsible for incident management at the local level. For those events that rise to the level of an Incident of National Significance, the Department of Homeland Security provides operational and/or resource coordination for Federal support to on-scene incident command structures."
This is a flawed methodology and is the basis for the hurricane Katrina debacle.
Look at it this way. Let's say the father is the incident manager for incidents involving your house. If your house blows up, the father is supposed to oversee the local commanders. Mom in the kitchen. Junior in the family room. The problem is -- THE HOUSE BLEW UP! There is NO infrastructure to support anything. And, following the plans and methods outlined on their own web site, there is NO method for circumventing this process and automatically bumping the incident up the ladder to the next level of response.
WTF?
This is the root cause of all the finger pointing in New Orleans. You constantly hear things like "The mayor should have asked for that." Or, "The Governor should have asked for that." Well, they couldn't because the infrastructure that would allow them to even KNOW what they needed was gone.
This "bottom-up" mentality is a GOP character flaw. They never want to be responsible for anything, but they want all the benefits of the work of their underlings.
There are some really good ideas in some of the Homeland Security plans, but the premise for deciding what level of response is required and who should be in charge is completely flawed.
God Help America if these incompetent idiots keep running things.