Christopher (seadragontampa) -
I started this book with a serious amount of trepidation thinking that it would be just another cheap bashing of Michael Brown, FEMA Director at the time of Katrina. This is because I have a bachelors degree in emergency management, Im FEMA Advanced Professional certified, voluntary on an animal disaster rescue team and my day job is in the first responder field in Florida. I was here for the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. I also run a blog on personal preparedness.
After Katrina there was a flood of books that in order to get them out quickly took the easy route which was to blame everything on Brown even though it did not take much research to show otherwise, not so with this book. Disaster is actually a very well research and laid out book. Even for all the stuff that I already knew there was considerable amount of new information in here. The book centers its argument on the behind the scenes action that were going on or not going on as the case maybe at the Department of Homeland Security. Here the book lays most of the blame where it belongs on Chertoff and more importantly the bureaucracy of Homeland Security. While Brown made is share of mistakes he was far from the sole source of the train wreck that became the Federal Governments response to Katrina. There are even examples of things that Brown warned about in the 2003 reorganization that came true in 2005.
In the bid for sensationalistic news Brown became an easy whipping boy for the media in 2005 and Chertoff was more than happy to let it happy because it kept media from looking too closely at his role. To prove and validate this point the authors looked at FEMA and Homeland Securitys actions for Rita and Wilma. Not only did Homeland Security not learn anything they doubled down on the mistakes made in Katrina.
While understanding that the emphasis of the book was an examination of the Federal response there are some instances where Louisiana (Gov Kathleen Blanco) and New Orleans (Mayor Ray Nagin) were given too much of pass.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who thinks that government is always the answer and that the higher you go the better.
After Katrina there was a flood of books that in order to get them out quickly took the easy route which was to blame everything on Brown even though it did not take much research to show otherwise, not so with this book. Disaster is actually a very well research and laid out book. Even for all the stuff that I already knew there was considerable amount of new information in here. The book centers its argument on the behind the scenes action that were going on or not going on as the case maybe at the Department of Homeland Security. Here the book lays most of the blame where it belongs on Chertoff and more importantly the bureaucracy of Homeland Security. While Brown made is share of mistakes he was far from the sole source of the train wreck that became the Federal Governments response to Katrina. There are even examples of things that Brown warned about in the 2003 reorganization that came true in 2005.
In the bid for sensationalistic news Brown became an easy whipping boy for the media in 2005 and Chertoff was more than happy to let it happy because it kept media from looking too closely at his role. To prove and validate this point the authors looked at FEMA and Homeland Securitys actions for Rita and Wilma. Not only did Homeland Security not learn anything they doubled down on the mistakes made in Katrina.
While understanding that the emphasis of the book was an examination of the Federal response there are some instances where Louisiana (Gov Kathleen Blanco) and New Orleans (Mayor Ray Nagin) were given too much of pass.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who thinks that government is always the answer and that the higher you go the better.
