NYT: US more prepared for emergency, but still 'not ready'

RAW STORY
Published: Friday August 25, 2006

One year after Hurrican Katrina and five years after 9/11, the U.S. is more prepared for emergencies, but still "not ready," due to "uneven preparation," according to an article slated for the front page of Saturday's New York Times, RAW STORY has learned.

"In the last year, FEMA, the federal government's primary disaster response agency and overseer of state and local efforts, has adopted policies to help prevent fraud and wasteful spending, strengthened its ties with other federal agencies for help with evacuations and emergency medical aid and installed high-tech equipment, like the supply-tracking system," writes Eric Lipton for the Times.

"Despite calls by many FEMA critics, though, little has fundamentally changed about the agency itself, which still has less autonomy and power than it did in the Clinton years and a budget for its core mission that has not significantly increased," the article continues.

Excerpts from the Times article:

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The inconsistencies are apparent elsewhere. Along the Gulf Coast and in other locations struck by disaster, like New York City, important advances have been made to prepare for the next catastrophe. In New Orleans, extraordinary steps have been taken to care for the disabled, the elderly and tens of thousands of others without cars if another major hurricane arrives. In New York, city officials say, up to 3 million people could be evacuated from coastal areas and 600,000 accommodated in shelters stocked with food and supplies.

But in large chunks of the country, far more limited progress has been made to prepare for catastrophe, a recent federal assessment concluded. The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA's parent agency, rated only 27 percent of the states and 10 percent of the cities evaluated as adequately prepared "to cope with a catastrophic event." Dallas, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Philadelphia were among the low scorers.

In Philadelphia, for example, emergency radio systems are not reliable throughout city, plans to care for the elderly and the disabled are not complete, shelter space is insufficient and contracts for emergency supplies mostly do not exist -- all lapses that contributed to the debacle in New Orleans last year.

The uneven preparation has left many emergency-response experts, including senior Bush administration officials, uneasy.

"There is not a governor nor major-city mayor in America who does not know that all eyes will be watching them when the next major disaster occurs," said George W. Foresman, under secretary for preparedness at the Department of Homeland Security. "But generally speaking, if you ask the question, Are they ready, it is not where it needs to be. And that is the understatement of the day."

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FULL TIMES ARTICLE AT THIS LINK