IAEM responds to White House ‘Lessons Learned From Hurricane Katrina’ report
In a press statement published late last week, IAEM warned: “The fact sheet issued by the White House indicates that the 125 specific recommendations to the President have been reviewed by relevant departments and agencies and ‘will now enter an implementation process.’ Although hurricane season is fast approaching, a rush to implement some of these recommendations would greatly concern emergency managers. “Before implementing many of these recommendations, we need to get the state and local emergency management professionals who work in this field daily, as well as mayors, county commissioners and governors, at the table to work out what these changes in our relationships will really mean,” said Robert Bohlmann, emergency management director for York County, Maine and government affairs chairman for the IAEM. Mike Selves, IAEM President-Elect, observed, “At a time when the Administration is recommending decreases in assistance to State and local governments in the form of cuts to the Emergency Management Performance Grants, COPs, fire and homeland security grants, this report calls for greatly increased workload and accountability on our part. Without significant collaboration with our Federal partners, how do we ‘sell’ many of these recommendations to our elected officials as anything other than ‘unfunded mandates’?” Larry Gispert, IAEM Regional President representing the hurricane-prone Southeastern region, stated, "Local emergency managers stand ready, willing and able to sit down with our State and Federal partners to fix those systemic problems exposed as a result of the Katrina response. A unilateral approach by the Federal government to fixing these problems would, in reality, just compound an already problematic situation." www.iaem.com
•Date: 27th Feb 2006• Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: Emergency planning |
