From: John Cuccia 

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:21:54 -0400, James Adams
 wrote:
>I would prefer to have FEMA send someone with
>a bit more practical experience.

But from FEMA's perspective, the only emergency that needed managing was
public perception of the agency's performance, so it made perfect sense to
have PR people on the scene instead of experienced managers.

And lest anyone think that FEMA's struggled due to Louisiana's
"dysfunctional" environment,  while working well with
former-RNC-chairman Haley Barbour's Mississippi, here's the situation in
Biloxi today. Note that you may have to enter a zip code and year of birth
to enter the Plain Dealer site:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1129894236136740
.xml&coll=2
Biloxi, Miss. - In the poorest of neighborhoods here, people sleep outside
with no running water or power. They live among starving cats, rotting
heaps of garbage and constant, buzzing flies. The bathroom is anywhere and
everywhere. The filth is inescapable.

Weeks after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their homes and jobs, many people
in east Biloxi are living amid the rubble of their own houses, waiting for
the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver the trailers they have
applied for - or for other federal assistance.

"We just wait and pray," said Kenneth Albus, 45, who has spent
weeks in the wreckage of his rented house, taking care of friend Margaret
Nevels, a 65-year-old woman with swollen ankles and a heart condition.
People subsisting in similar, squalid conditions can be found all over east
Biloxi, this city's ver sion of the lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and
only blocks behind the wealthy casinos that line the coast.

Those interviewed - black, white and Vietnamese - feel that FEMA has
forgotten them. Nobody cares about the poor, they say. Never have, never
did. Katrina didn't kill them, but they fear the coming weeks might.

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