State’s Top Emergency Management Official Blames FEMA For Slow Ike Response

The state’s top emergency management official is blaming FEMA for slow responses and insensitivity to the state’s needs following Hurricane Ike.

From the Dallas Morning News:

“It’s a tragedy what’s going on down there,” Jack Colley, the state’s director of emergency management, told the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee during a hearing on hurricane recovery.

Mr. Colley suggested that FEMA be moved from the federal Department of Homeland Security and placed under presidential oversight.

“They have been extremely insensitive, in our opinion, to the concept that somebody cannot drive 100 miles a day to keep their job,” said Kevin Hamby, general counsel of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. “They don’t seem to care much if we lose these communities down there.”

Mr. Hamby said that more than six weeks after the hurricane, fewer than 200 trailers are available for people to live in on their property while their homes are being repaired. He said FEMA officials promised 300 trailers a week.

The state estimates that 3,000 to 6,000 trailers are needed.

Although FEMA may bear the brunt of the blame for most (although certainly not all) of the post-Ike problems, the state bears the brunt of the blame for most of the problems before and during Ike.

For one thing, the state deployed its resources too far in advance of the storm, and continued deploying resources in different spots until they didn’t have a way to mobilize all of the assets back to the zone of impact by the time the storm struck.

And, there is still the burning issue of the state being the one that screwed up the POD program by deciding at the last minute not to supply logistics which was, of course, because their assets were spread around the southern coastal regions of the state and weren’t fully redeployed in time.

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