Comments on: Does FEMA need more power? http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/ Protect yourself from government gaffes, bureaucratic blunders and incumbent incompetence Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:25:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Securing the homeland, one liberty at a time - Homeland Stupidity http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17825 Securing the homeland, one liberty at a time - Homeland Stupidity Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:06:17 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17825 [...] partners and the American people during a major disaster.” Chertoff says he’s given FEMA more power, improved emergency communications somewhat, and improved coordination with other government [...] [...] partners and the American people during a major disaster.” Chertoff says he’s given FEMA more power, improved emergency communications somewhat, and improved coordination with other government [...]

]]> By: Ray http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17824 Ray Mon, 26 May 2008 02:26:49 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17824 By the way I love it trying to come up with a reliable system based on cell phones. In any disaster the one thing you can pretty much count on not working is the cell phone system. #1 It is designed to work with normal loads and even if it is working, it is automatically overloaded by the traffic generated by people checking on each other and the like in a disaster. Heck I live near a University, and we can count on all of the cell systems being down from overload for the weekends of student move in and move out. An actual disaster is ten times that bad. #2 Plus the cell system is dependent upon to many individual items all of which are easily damaged in about any disaster. #3 The media uses cell phones and other services from the cell companies and they get priority. So as soon as they show up, even if the system is up, and nobody is overloading it, they will. By the way I love it trying to come up with a reliable system based on cell phones. In any disaster the one thing you can pretty much count on not working is the cell phone system.

#1 It is designed to work with normal loads and even if it is working, it is automatically overloaded by the traffic generated by people checking on each other and the like in a disaster. Heck I live near a University, and we can count on all of the cell systems being down from overload for the weekends of student move in and move out. An actual disaster is ten times that bad.

#2 Plus the cell system is dependent upon to many individual items all of which are easily damaged in about any disaster.

#3 The media uses cell phones and other services from the cell companies and they get priority. So as soon as they show up, even if the system is up, and nobody is overloading it, they will.

]]> By: Ray http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17823 Ray Sun, 25 May 2008 01:46:20 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17823 Chris: If we expect the federal government to come in and bail us out then we have to give them the power to do so. Of course that is a BIG IF. I say drop some of the power of FEMA. At the same time lets get it out of the department of homeland security. But then lets tell New Orleans they are totally on their own next time around. No federal disaster aid PERIOD. Chris:

If we expect the federal government to come in and bail us out then we have to give them the power to do so. Of course that is a BIG IF.

I say drop some of the power of FEMA. At the same time lets get it out of the department of homeland security. But then lets tell New Orleans they are totally on their own next time around. No federal disaster aid PERIOD.

]]> By: Chris http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17822 Chris Sun, 25 May 2008 01:35:56 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17822 Giving FEMA more power would be a huge mistake. They have been empowered for the past 30 years by one executive order after another. They have such a huge budget and yet it is never implemented. People need to start looking at the bigger picture. Why does the president think he should have sole control over the national guard? Why does FEMA, need more emergency powers? Why are Americans giving up more and more freedoms for more supposed "security"? Why are we allowing this to happen?? Giving FEMA more power would be a huge mistake. They have been empowered for the past 30 years by one executive order after another. They have such a huge budget and yet it is never implemented. People need to start looking at the bigger picture. Why does the president think he should have sole control over the national guard? Why does FEMA, need more emergency powers? Why are Americans giving up more and more freedoms for more supposed “security”? Why are we allowing this to happen??

]]> By: Just another victim http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17821 Just another victim Thu, 22 May 2008 23:13:28 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17821 It gets worse, with regard to IPAWS, FEMA delegated the design and deployment of the program to Sandia National Laboratories who promptly wasted over half the money they spent on internal bureaucracy. All they really did was to spend a tremendous amount of money on their own project management and planning while they purchased, more or less, of the shelf technology from five smaller companies which did the vast amount of the work that was actually done on the system. Despite the lack of scoping and requirements definition from FEMA and confusion at SNL there was actually a Spiral 0 program deployed and an expanded Spiral 1 program ready to be deployed in January 2008 that would have greatly enhanced the safety of the citizens of the hurricane belt. It was capable of notifying affected populations by phone and cell phone, SMS text messaging, email, traditional EAS alerts, TTY/TTD and by using a unique video interpretation service offered by a company named Deaf Link. The system also had the ability to securely and rapidly integrate with other alerting software to provide for an easy and secure way for various federal, state and local jurisdictions to share information. In addition, FEMA was working with the FCC to help put a system in place to enable the cell phone system to reliably broadcast messages to the population by cell phone in a disaster, which doesn’t work too well now for a variety of complex technical reasons. At the time it was shutdown IPAWS was already partially installed, the security and interoperability pieces were all but finished, and a unique geo-spatial routing capability to ensure everyone that needed an alert would get one was ready to go. Sandia National Laboratories repeatedly asked FEMA to meet to discuss approving Spiral 1 and to release the funding necessary to support the deployment but FEMA refused to meet with them. The political infighting got so bad that FEMA cancelled meetings that had been scheduled in Washington at the last minute despite the fact that the Sandia personnel had come in from New Mexico specifically for the meeting on more than one occasion. Despite Sandia’s continuing efforts, the program manager, Lance Craver, stonewalled the SNL folks and eventually got around to cancelling the Sandia agreement. He unilaterally ordered the system turned off denying this vital capability to the American people. Over a month after he had cancelled the existing efforts the Director of FEMA, David Paulison, and the Secretary of DHS, Michael Chertoff, were going around telling the people around the country including Alabama and Mississippi, how great IPAWS was, how successful it was going to be and used it as a premier example of how they were helping the citizens of the region. They got away with this for a while because the small companies that had contracted to do the work thought it was immoral to turn the system off. For as long as each of them could sustain it they kept employees on staff that were dedicated to the IPAWS effort and kept the system running at their own expense. Eventually they have had to cease their valiant efforts one by one as they teetered toward bankruptcy trying to do the right thing for the nation. The visionary leadership of two FEMA employees, David Webb and Kevin Briggs has been destroyed by petty bureaucratic infighting and revenge seeking by Lance Craver and Martha Rainville. The leaders of DHS and FEMA continue making idiots out of themselves talking about how great IPAWS will be even though it doesn’t exist anymore as an actual capability. Evidently they still have not even been told about FEMA shutting IPAWS down given Secretary Chertoff’s comments of May 20th, 2008. http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1211396127538.shtm The result, the country has flushed another $17 million down the toilet and FEMA has given the state and local emergency managers in the hurricane states proof that FEMA could care less about the lives of their citizens and that it puts the political aspirations of people like Lance Craver and Martha Rainville ahead of public safety, the will of congress and the direct orders of the president. As a sidebar, Martha Rainville may have committed perjury in front of a congressional sub-committee last week when she said that there was a sudden last minute ruling that FEMA didn’t have the authority to proceed with IPAWS in February. Lance Craver was publicly talking about his theory that they didn’t have the appropriate authority in the spring of the previous year, in plenty of time to seek clarification, direction or changed legislation to correct any problems that might have really existed with their authority to act. Oh, one more thought, if he had this theory, backed up by FEMA counsel didn’t Lance Craver have the legal responsibility to shut IPAWS spiral 0 down on the spot? When he and Martha chose to bide their time did they break the law and violate their respective legal and fiduciary responsibilities? As Former Senator Howard Baker once asked, "What did he know and when did he know it?" This whole debacle is a disgrace, and the mouthpieces for FEMA get up in front of congress and continue to lie and mislead and in the meantime citizens along the gulf and Atlantic coasts wait for another storm. It gets worse, with regard to IPAWS, FEMA delegated the design and deployment of the program to Sandia National Laboratories who promptly wasted over half the money they spent on internal bureaucracy. All they really did was to spend a tremendous amount of money on their own project management and planning while they purchased, more or less, of the shelf technology from five smaller companies which did the vast amount of the work that was actually done on the system.
Despite the lack of scoping and requirements definition from FEMA and confusion at SNL there was actually a Spiral 0 program deployed and an expanded Spiral 1 program ready to be deployed in January 2008 that would have greatly enhanced the safety of the citizens of the hurricane belt. It was capable of notifying affected populations by phone and cell phone, SMS text messaging, email, traditional EAS alerts, TTY/TTD and by using a unique video interpretation service offered by a company named Deaf Link. The system also had the ability to securely and rapidly integrate with other alerting software to provide for an easy and secure way for various federal, state and local jurisdictions to share information. In addition, FEMA was working with the FCC to help put a system in place to enable the cell phone system to reliably broadcast messages to the population by cell phone in a disaster, which doesn’t work too well now for a variety of complex technical reasons. At the time it was shutdown IPAWS was already partially installed, the security and interoperability pieces were all but finished, and a unique geo-spatial routing capability to ensure everyone that needed an alert would get one was ready to go. Sandia National Laboratories repeatedly asked FEMA to meet to discuss approving Spiral 1 and to release the funding necessary to support the deployment but FEMA refused to meet with them. The political infighting got so bad that FEMA cancelled meetings that had been scheduled in Washington at the last minute despite the fact that the Sandia personnel had come in from New Mexico specifically for the meeting on more than one occasion.
Despite Sandia’s continuing efforts, the program manager, Lance Craver, stonewalled the SNL folks and eventually got around to cancelling the Sandia agreement. He unilaterally ordered the system turned off denying this vital capability to the American people. Over a month after he had cancelled the existing efforts the Director of FEMA, David Paulison, and the Secretary of DHS, Michael Chertoff, were going around telling the people around the country including Alabama and Mississippi, how great IPAWS was, how successful it was going to be and used it as a premier example of how they were helping the citizens of the region. They got away with this for a while because the small companies that had contracted to do the work thought it was immoral to turn the system off. For as long as each of them could sustain it they kept employees on staff that were dedicated to the IPAWS effort and kept the system running at their own expense. Eventually they have had to cease their valiant efforts one by one as they teetered toward bankruptcy trying to do the right thing for the nation.
The visionary leadership of two FEMA employees, David Webb and Kevin Briggs has been destroyed by petty bureaucratic infighting and revenge seeking by Lance Craver and Martha Rainville. The leaders of DHS and FEMA continue making idiots out of themselves talking about how great IPAWS will be even though it doesn’t exist anymore as an actual capability. Evidently they still have not even been told about FEMA shutting IPAWS down given Secretary Chertoff’s comments of May 20th, 2008. http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1211396127538.shtm The result, the country has flushed another $17 million down the toilet and FEMA has given the state and local emergency managers in the hurricane states proof that FEMA could care less about the lives of their citizens and that it puts the political aspirations of people like Lance Craver and Martha Rainville ahead of public safety, the will of congress and the direct orders of the president. As a sidebar, Martha Rainville may have committed perjury in front of a congressional sub-committee last week when she said that there was a sudden last minute ruling that FEMA didn’t have the authority to proceed with IPAWS in February. Lance Craver was publicly talking about his theory that they didn’t have the appropriate authority in the spring of the previous year, in plenty of time to seek clarification, direction or changed legislation to correct any problems that might have really existed with their authority to act.
Oh, one more thought, if he had this theory, backed up by FEMA counsel didn’t Lance Craver have the legal responsibility to shut IPAWS spiral 0 down on the spot? When he and Martha chose to bide their time did they break the law and violate their respective legal and fiduciary responsibilities? As Former Senator Howard Baker once asked, “What did he know and when did he know it?” This whole debacle is a disgrace, and the mouthpieces for FEMA get up in front of congress and continue to lie and mislead and in the meantime citizens along the gulf and Atlantic coasts wait for another storm.

]]> By: Ray http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/05/18/does-fema-need-more-power/#comment-17820 Ray Mon, 19 May 2008 12:38:55 +0000 http://www.homelandstupidity.us/?p=1626#comment-17820 The authority someone should be given to prevent a repeat of this is the authority to shut down New Orleans. Lets face it, New Orleans in already almost an island with water on almost all sides. Because of erosion the coast is fact approaching. Couple this with the fact that most of New Orleans is below sea level and you have a recipe for unavoidable disaster. We forget that Katrina actually missed New Orleans. Had a storm like Katrina hit dead on, even the new proposed dike system would not have stopped the storm. In fact it would have been much worse. The French Quarter, which survived the last time because it is actually slightly above sea level, would be under 15 foot of water. The dome where everyone was evacuated to, would have been so badly hit that the people who took refuge there would have all died. Why in the world are we allowing this to be rebuilt? The authority someone should be given to prevent a repeat of this is the authority to shut down New Orleans. Lets face it, New Orleans in already almost an island with water on almost all sides. Because of erosion the coast is fact approaching. Couple this with the fact that most of New Orleans is below sea level and you have a recipe for unavoidable disaster.

We forget that Katrina actually missed New Orleans. Had a storm like Katrina hit dead on, even the new proposed dike system would not have stopped the storm. In fact it would have been much worse. The French Quarter, which survived the last time because it is actually slightly above sea level, would be under 15 foot of water. The dome where everyone was evacuated to, would have been so badly hit that the people who took refuge there would have all died.

Why in the world are we allowing this to be rebuilt?

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