The Crooked and the Straight

Most of the articles about the hurricane Katrina disaster and it's aftermath have been relegated to the Disaster category on Crooked Links. But not this one.

I'm willing to concede that there were failures and missteps at every level of government during the run-up to and the rescue and recovery efforts after the hurricane, but this article, from the Salt Lake Tribune, made me furious:

Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA [via Josh Marshall]

Here's the gist of the piece (emphasis mine):

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers...

I simply cannot believe the gall and incompetence of an organization that wants to use firefighters as public relations mouthpieces during the recovery from a grave national disaster. This is beyond inexcusable; this is reprehensible. And it gets worse (again, emphasis mine):

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Federal officials are unapologetic.

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

Not only is FEMA depriving the rescue and recovery operations of trained, able, and willing rescuers, but they are depriving also the cities and towns that must do without those firefighters while they are handing out fliers. How can anyone suggest that the men and women who traveled to Atlanta to help need to "revisit [their] commitment to...the citizens of this country"? And even more:

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

This reveals a government that has nothing but seething contempt for the lives of those affected by this tragedy. There are members of this administration who have blood and suffering from Katrina on their hands, and they should be held accountable.

[Update:] More details from NBC. "Firefighters: We Were Misused In Katrina Rescue Efforts" [via]