Ex-administrator: 'We've got to stop looking at FEMA as 911'

[RandySF]

Former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long warned Sunday that Congress, local institutions and individuals must help FEMA for it to complete its mission effectively.

"FEMA faces unrealistic expectations by Congress and the American public," Long told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation." "We’ve got to stop looking at FEMA as 911. This is a partnership."

Long, who served as head of FEMA from June 2017 to May 2019, said that “we have to refocus the training” to better equip citizens in terms of disaster preparedness, including emphasizing that “insurance is the first line of defense.”

“Until Congress starts to incentivize putting building codes in place and land use planning in place, incentivizing states and locals for ensuring their public infrastructure, FEMA's job is impossible,” Long said.


https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/459571-ex-fema-chief-weve-got-to-stop-looking-at-fema-as-911?__twitter_impression=true

[nitpicker]

1. Buy them out

Relocate to higher ground and turn the lowlands into parks.

BUT until they are bought out, they Will Not Relocate.

[gratuitous]

2. Emergencies and natural disasters are lagging as profit centers

FEMA used to be a highly efficient, responsive agency. Then the second Bush administration decided that wasn't a good look for government.

[Tanuki]

3. We should also stop stealing hundreds of millions of FEMA $$ to fund MF45's racist border agenda

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-will-divert-disaster-relief-funds-to-us-mexico-border-enforcement-prompting-outcry-from-democrats/2019/08/27/ba20dd30-c903-11e9-be05-f76ac4ec618c_story.html%3foutputType=amp

"The Trump administration is transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster relief funding to boost U.S.-Mexico border enforcement, prompting an outcry from congressional Democrats who panned the action as an executive overreach.
......

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the administration’s action “stunningly reckless,” adding that “to pick the pockets of disaster relief funding in order to fund an appalling, inhumane family incarceration plan is staggering.” And Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the move “backwards and cruel.”
.....
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, also criticized the move, warning that “taking money away from TSA and from FEMA in the middle of hurricane season could have deadly consequences.”

“Once again this Administration is flouting the law and Congressional intent to fund its extremist indefinite detention immigration policies,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “This is reckless and the Administration is playing with fire — all in the name of locking up families and children and playing to the President’s base leading up to an election year.”....(more)