Political Opportunism

If we are to believe everything we read in the LA Times we would have to believe that the Democratic Party has long held that FEMA should be the "first responder" when disaster strikes. What a bold departure from established ways of thinking! How prescient those Democrats are! Unfortunately, this long held belief seems to have taken holdonly last Wednesday. Looking at the Democratic Party Platform of 2004 FEMA is never mentioned. Hurricanes are never mentioned. Natural disasters in general are never mentioned. When emergency situations are mentioned at all they are in the context of terrorist attack.

Domestic readiness. We need to improve domestic readiness so people on the frontlines have the training and equipment to respond to any attack with all the speed, skill, and strength required.

Our first responders are the first ones up the stairs in the event of the emergency, and it is wrong that today they are last in line when it comes to this administration's budgets. Under the Bush Administration, police departments in small cities have lost more than 15 percent of their full-time paid police and employees. And today, two-thirds of our nation's fire departments are not fully staffed. We can do more for the heroes of 9/11 and we can do more for our fellow citizens. And we will. We will provide direct assistance to our police officers and firefighters on the frontlines.

So, first responders for emergencies caused by terrorist attack (including nuclear, chemical and biological attack scenarios) is assumed to be local officials. This makes sense. After all you never know when or where terrorists might strike. A hurricane you can see coming days beforehand. So the federal government can be the organization to handle first response to natural disasters, right?

Wrong. First of all, not all natural disasters give you warning of their striking. Relying on a federal agency to provide first response services after an earthquake, for example, would be unworkable. The government would have to pre-position disaster teams in earthquake prone regions year in and year out and hope they were not rendered ineffectual (or killed) by the earthquake themselves when it finally did strike. Plus, if you consider that nearly 2/3 or 3/4 of the United States runs some risk of earthquake activity, such an undertaking just becomes too massive to contemplate.

O.K. Maybe, the feds could just handle hurricanes? Well, I suppose so. It might be possible to set up a special "Hurricane Relief Unit" that could be sent to regions to supplement or take over first response duties from local authorities. But, as far as I can see no one in the Democratic party has ever advocated such a thing before last Tuesday. Implying that the Democrats had "a plan" to keep this loss of life from occuring is simply a lie, and political opportunism of the crassest nature.