The biggest issue I can see from the entire mess was the lack of infrastructure and resources allocated to obtaining up to date information. From what I understand simply knowing what is going on is the first step to doing anything. For example during the interview with the FEMA director 3 days after landfall he said that they had just discovered a convention center with people in it, that was near to one of the large refugee centers of the disaster… The entire thing was a catastrophic failure in preparation.
Another major issue that I can see is that the people who are best at handling intense large scale situations like that were not even used until several days after the incident. This was confirmed in a statement from President Bush at the bottom of the article. (I sort of wrote this before I had read that part.) My uncle was in the logistics division of the Army and he was telling me how much more organized they are compared to most any civilian entity. His example was in Haiti, where they sent in his old team to take charge because all the non-governmental entities had much less training than the military for routing supplies and people around. They are trained to be the most efficient because they are expected to be able to do it while somebody is shooting at them.
I would have to say is that you really couldn’t blame the FEMA director Michael Brown for the job that he did. It was probably the best job that anyone could have done with the resources that were in place.
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