Brownie's Back to Give Expertise on Wildfires

By Jeralyn, Section Off Topic
Posted on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 02:50:55 PM EST
Tags: wildfires (all tags)

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Laugh of the day....former FEMA chief "Heckuva Job, Brownie" Michael Brown has sent out a press release announcing he's available for interviews on the California wildfires.

Michael D. Brown, Former FEMA Director and Current Director of Cotton Companies, one of the leading disaster preparedness and restoration organizations in the nation, is available for comment regarding the wild fires that are devastating Southern California.

.... Mr. Brown can speak to the turmoil being caused by the California wild fires as well as to some of the new processes in disaster relief efforts that will help to restore California communities. He can offer advice to residents and businesses on proper relief and recovery efforts and provide suggestions for future disaster preparedness.

Even the Wall St. Journal was surprised.

Related: Check out the You Tube videos on the fires at Voices of San Diego.

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Brownie's Back to Give Expertise on Wildfires | 11 comments (11 topical)

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And the Admin was warned they were (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by scribe on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 03:14:51 PM EST

screwing up fire preparedness (again) in advance of this year's season. The basic failings, as found by the GAO (Summary of report) in a report dated June 1, 2007 (The full report, a 47 page .pdf):

poor planning;
deployment of assets for political, rather than operational, impact;
choking off development of science/scientific managment skills and personnel;
inadequate and improperly allocated budget;
over-reliance on private contractors.

Sound familiar?

In this regard, trotting out Brownie* to give us his expertise is perfectly appropriate, because his administration of FEMA epitomizes the hackery still going on, and will help to highlight that nothing, nothing has changed since Katrina.

It's more disaster capitalism run rampant. Only this time the people being evacuated are white and reliably vote Republican, so when they get to the football stadium, they get cascades of food and water, cots trucked in by the thousands, massages and aromatherapy, and no Blackwater mercenaries or NOLA cops gunning them down for being on the wrong overpass....

-
* Pun intended. He's still a horse's a*s.

here's the link I was looking for (none / 0) (#7)
by scribe on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 05:18:20 PM EST

about the magnificent treatment in SD, particularly as compared to the Superdome.


: And Florida 04 (none / 0) (#8)
by squeaky on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 05:27:45 PM EST

FEMA was a hit. Oh right that was an election year.

FEMA acknowledged that in Miami-Dade County and in other areas of the state, however, the agency took the rare step, given the magnitude of the disaster, of awarding $726 in "expedited" housing assistance to people who asked for it, without immediately sending inspectors to verify damage.
In a Sept. 13 memo to Gov. Bush and other top state officials, Orlando J. Cabrera, executive director of the Florida Housing Finance Corp. and a member of the governor's Hurricane Housing Work Group, wrote after a meeting with FEMA that the agency was allocating short-term rental assistance to "everyone who needs it, without asking for much information of any kind."
Other so-called "standard housing assistance," of up to $25,600, he wrote, is "liberally provided without significant scrutiny of the request made during the initial months; scrutiny increases remarkably and the package is far more stringent after an unspecified time."
Even state officials were surprised at how quickly money flowed to Florida.

Eat yellow rain WORM!!! (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by Aaron on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 09:51:47 PM EST

MSNBC was comparing the superior FEMA response to the wildfires in California with the Katrina debacle, and they had the nerve to call up Michael Brown on the phone so he could defend himself, apparently in the interests of fairness, as if he deserves the opportunity to defend the indefensible.

And of course, ever the Lachey punk of the Bush administration, he took the opportunity to bash Governor Blanco and vaunt the superiority of Governor Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in these situations. I thought I was going to gag.

I absolutely despise this weasel, he represents the worst type of incompetent bureaucratic slime this country has to offer, and if I should ever meet him in person, I'm going to whip it out and urinate all over him. Consider yourself warned worm. :-)

this is comparable to (5.00 / 1) (#10)
by cpinva on Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 08:43:20 AM EST

having a hooker consult on celibacy.

: Heh!! (none / 0) (#11)
by scribe on Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 11:01:25 AM EST

Arson (none / 0) (#2)
by squeaky on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:21:14 PM EST

CBS News has learned a task force of agencies, including the FBI, ATF, the Orange County Sheriff's Office and the California Department of Forestry will announce shortly that the massive Santiago Canyon Fire - which has caused an estimated $10 million in damage - is being officially declared an arson, and a $50,000 reward is being offered to find the arsonist.

link via HuffPo

Sounds like Beck and his friends should be the first ones questioned.

Breaking news from Beck:

So let me be serious for a minute. Let me extraordinarily clear. I clearly do not want anyone's house to be burned down.

digby

Guess that Beck heard that the fire has been declared arson.

Arson or not, once the fire gets started (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by scribe on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:34:30 PM EST

it's gotta be put out. Otherwise, it burns just the same regardless.

Let's not get diverted from the main points - the bogus, shoddy diversion of resources and thought from preparing for the inevitable fires, and the cockamamie way the current administration runs everything (except its grafting).

And, FWIW, if it's arson, it could just as easily be a disaster capitalist contractor looking to drum up business. Once profit, unbridled by law, becomes the only measure of relevance, then setting a fire to be in position to get government business putting out the fire becomes acceptable - because in a purely-profit-driven world, anything that makes for a profit opportunity is OK.


: True (none / 0) (#4)
by squeaky on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:41:25 PM EST

But Beck is not a diversion from this story. He supports, and therefore bears responsibility for all the heckova jobbers and the misplaced corrupt policies that made NOLA and this disaster spin out of control.

Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather told reporters that firefighters' lives were threatened because too few crews were on the ground. He said a quick deployment of aircraft could have corralled a massive blaze near Irvine.
"It is an absolute fact: Had we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire," he said.
CBS

That settles it. Malibu is doomed. (none / 0) (#5)
by scarshapedstar on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:46:44 PM EST

'Nuff said.

: It's quite bad, being in the path of a fire, (none / 0) (#6)
by scribe on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:54:39 PM EST

and my sympathy to those afflicted by it, but if Malibu is doomed and the destruction there results in the loss of a huge collection of Elvis memorabilia, maybe it's not an unalloyed disaster after all.