Fema Efficiency: Volunteer Firefighters Trained To Hand Out Fliers

[wilbill]

Here's an interesting story from the Salt Lake Tribune

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Just another tie-up in the red tape of Federal beaurocracy? Well, apparently not...

Federal officials are unapologetic.
"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak. The firefighters - or at least the fire chiefs who assigned them to come to Atlanta - knew what the assignment would be, Hudak said.
"The initial call to action very specifically says we're looking for two-person fire teams to do community relations," she said. "So if there is a breakdown [in communication], it was likely in their own departments."
One fire chief from Texas agreed that the call was clear to work as community-relations officers. But he wonders why the 1,400 firefighters FEMA attracted to Atlanta aren't being put to better use. He also questioned why the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - of which FEMA is a part - has not responded better to the disaster. Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters' vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.
"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."

Let me restate this - a FEMA PR flack questions the dedication of career firemen who think their skills are being underutilized by having them hand out fliers during the worst natural disaster in the history of the US!

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

And this is not a screw-up. It's intentional. The firemen are being used to hand out fliers with a phone number (in an area with perhaps 100 functioning telephones) because they're already security-cleared. This is part of FEMA's disaster plan.

Oh, by the way, the cities supplying the firemen to FEMA are picking up the tab to pay their replacements during their 30 day federal duty.

And Ms. Hudak won the coveted "Worst Person In The World" award on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olberman" tonight. Richly deserved.

 

[Taliesin]

Does it strike anybody else as repugnant that "community relations" is a matter of handing out flyers-- i.e., propagating FEMA? Shouldn't the flow be in the other direction, from people in the community to FEMA? At the very least "relations" implies give-and-take.

I guess in general the conception of "public relations" as image management-- essentially, propaganda-- disgusts me.

 

[FriendlyFire]

As disturbingly accurately discribe on the daily show (of all places) Bush administration has finally mobolised to save the president.

 

[frekk]

Absolute bureaucratic psychosis. Really, there needs to be a serious change - not just in government, big corporations have just the same problem I think. Idunno what it is exactly. Obsession with form to the total detriment of function.