**August 31, 2007 FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project
Report**

\(1\) DISASTER BOOK:

Roychoudhuri, Onnesha. \"From Apocalypse to Disaster, America Is
Obsessed with the Prospect of Bad News.\" AlterNet, August 31, 2007.

Accessed at:
[[http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/61008/]{.underline}](http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/61008/)

\[Interview excerpt with author of new disaster book, \"The Culture of
Calamity\" by Kevin Rozario:

\"Given the windfall profits reaped by corporations like Halliburton in
the wake of Katrina and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the concept
that disasters can benefit some will surprise few close observers.
However, when Kevin Rozario set about researching the dark days of the
American experience, he stumbled across something unexpected. Americans,
at large, viewed catastrophic earthquakes, fires and hurricanes with
surprising optimism. Whether seeing it as a religious opportunity to get
back on the straight and narrow, or an economic opportunity to rebuild
bigger and better, Americans are uniquely steeped in the potential of
crisis. Rozario\'s recent book The Culture of Calamity explores the role
that massive catastrophe has played in American culture. Why did the
stock market radically jump despite the prediction of thousands of jobs
lost in Hurricane Katrina? Who benefits from disasters? How did it come
to be that, in the wake of 9/11, an average of \$2.1 million in tax-free
payments were made to the families of those killed in the attacks? Why
are mainstream media outlets inundated with images of destruction?

Rozario, having spent years exploring primary documents from fires
during the time of the Puritans, overcivilized San Franciscans living
through the great earthquake, to the fallout of 9/11, has a unique
perspective on America\'s crisis-oriented imagination. He joined
AlterNet in a recent interview to explain how the American economy and
self-perception has become dependent upon catastrophe.

\(2\) FEMA:

Gearino, Dan. \"Huckabee Would Revamp FEMA.\" Waterloo Courier News
(IA), 30 August 2007. At:

<http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2007/08/31/news/politics/5bed4f69df514bb486257347004b737e.txt>

\[Excerpt: \"DES MOINES \-\-- Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee, speaking on the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,
said Wednesday that federal disaster relief needs to slash bureaucracy
and become more sensitive to victims\' needs. \'When you have a
catastrophe, you shouldn\'t treat people like boxes. They ought to be
treated with respect and dignity. You shouldn\'t put paperwork above
people,\' Huckabee said in a telephone interview\.... One way to cut
bureaucracy, Huckabee said, is to make the Federal Emergency Management
Agency a free-standing agency that reports directly to the president,
instead of its current status as part of the Department of Homeland
Security. He said his state was overwhelmed by federal bureaucracy after
Katrina. Basic decisions needed to go through several levels of
approval, which caused a backup in the delivery of services. \'I quit
even expecting to get answers. In fact, that\'s what I said FEMA stood
for: Forget Expecting Meaningful Answers,\' Huckabee said. He recalls
that the system broke down so badly that he advised Arkansas agencies
provide services immediately, regardless of what had been approved by
the federal government. \'I told our people, \'We\'re rowing our own
boat. We\'re going to get forgiveness, not permission. We\'re not going
to sit around waiting on some bureaucrat in Washington to tell us what
we can and cannot do. We know what we need to do\',\" he said.\"\]

\(3\) KATRINA:

Children\'s Defense Fund. Katrina\'s Children: A Call to Conscience and
Action. Wash., DC: CDF, 2006, 40 pages.

<http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/DocServer/KatrinaReport.pdf?docID=1421>

Children\'s Defense Fund. Katrina\'s Children Still Waiting. Washington,

DC: CDF, 2007, 28 pages. At:

<http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/DocServer/Katrina_report07.pdf?docID=3721>

\[Excerpt: \"Over a year and a half after the storm flooded their
houses, schools and neighborhoods and took away their family members,
pets, sense of safety, trust in their nation and belief in the future,
tens of thousands of children, teenagers and Katrina survivors are
languishing in a purgatory of uncertainty. Few or no doctors. Little or
no mental health treatment. No school space. No safe place to play. No
affordable decent housing. Few family jobs. A dearth of after-school
programs. Few summer alternatives to the streets. And too little child
care when parents work. No light at the end of a long dark tunnel
plastered with broken promises from their political leaders in the
richest nation on earth.\"\]

\(4\) NUCLEAR INSECURITY:

CBS News, 60 Minutes. \"Nuclear Insecurity,\" August 29, 2007. Accessed
at:

[[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/12/60minutes/main599957.shtml]{.underline}](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/12/60minutes/main599957.shtml)

\[Excerpt: \"Of all the places in the United States that you\'d think
would be prepared to defend against a terrorist attack, the nine nuclear
weapons factories and research labs operated by the Department of Energy
would be at the top of the list. But recent federal investigations have
found that the department may not be up to the task.\"\]

\(5\) NURSING HOMES AND ISSUE OF EVACUATION OR SHELTERING IN PLACE:

Kern, Emily. \"Doctor Supports Sheltering In Place \-- Testimony
Continues in Trial of Couple in Nursing Home Deaths.\" Baton Rouge
Advocate, August 31, 2007. Accessed at:
[[http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/9487482.html?showAll=y&c=y]{.underline}](http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/9487482.html?showAll=y&c=y)

\[Excerpt: \"A New Orleans doctor called as the first defense witness in
the trial of St. Rita\'s nursing home owners testified Thursday that he
would have supported a decision to shelter in place during Hurricane
Katrina rather than force patients to endure the trauma of an
evacuation. \'If I was the medical director at St. Rita\'s and they
called me and said, \'We have food, water and fuel for a week and we\'re
going to shelter in,\' I\'d say, \'You never flooded before, it sounds
like you\'re prepared\',\' Dr. Brobson Lutz, an expert in internal
medicine and public health, testified during the trial of Salvador and
Mabel Mangano\....Lutz, who told the jury the defense paid him \$250 an
hour for about 20 hours of work, said he reviewed the medical
information available about the condition of St. Rita\'s patients before
the hurricane. Lutz also said he reviewed several national journals that
have explored the question of whether to evacuate nursing home patients
for hurricanes\.... With nearly 60 patients at St. Rita\'s, Lutz said,
loading them onto buses with all their equipment could have taken hours.
He cited one case in which a facility started loading patients at 9 p.m.
and didn\'t finish until 10 the next morning. \'Literally, patients have
to be pulled on and almost tossed about to get them where they need to
be on a bus,\' Lutz said. As a doctor, Lutz said, he would have been
concerned that one or more of the patients would have died during the
evacuation. The risk to special-needs patients - those unable to take
care of their own bodily needs and who rely on equipment - would have
been even greater, he said. If a patient dies on a bus, \'You\'ve even
got more problems,\' he said. \"\]

Rioux, Paul. \"Expert: Fleeing Nursing Sites No Safe Bet.\" New Orleans

Times-Picayune, 31Aug2007. At:

[[http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1188540382]{.underline}](http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1188540382)

239140.xml&coll=1

\[Excerpt: \"ST. FRANCISVILLE \-- Calling their first witness Thursday
in the St. Rita\'s nursing home trial, defense attorneys challenged a
basic assumption underlying the case: that evacuating nursing homes in
advance of hurricanes saves lives. Medical studies on nursing home
evacuations show that the number of elderly residents in an evacuated
region who die in transit is about the same as the number who would have
been killed by the storm if they hadn\'t left, said Dr. Brobson Lutz, a
New Orleans physician and public health expert.\"\]

\(6\) PANDEMIC:

Department of Health and Human Services. \"HHS Announces \$75 Million in
Supplemental Funding to States for Pandemic Flu Preparedness.\"
Washington, DC: HHS News Release, August 30, 2007, 2 pages. Accessed at:
[[http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2007pres/08/pr20070830a.html]{.underline}](http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2007pres/08/pr20070830a.html)

Kruzel, John J. \"Pentagon Official Shares Lessons of Simulated Flu
Outbreak.\" American Forces Press Service, August 30, 2007. At:

[[http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=47242]{.underline}](http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=47242)

\[Excerpt: \"To prepare portions of the Defense Department for a
possible mass outbreak, some 1,000 Pentagon employees participated in an
exercise Aug. 14-15. \'The goal was to test how well we could operate
should there be an event like pandemic flu,\' said David S.C. Chu,
undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. \"Healthy\"
exercise participants in the building wore masks over their faces and
maintained six-foot barriers from coworkers while working through a
script of challenging tasks. Personnel members deemed \'infected\'
worked from home. The overarching lesson learned from the 1918 flu
epidemic, which killed more than a half million Americans, is that
infected employees should stay home, said Chu, who noted that convincing
people to remain home during work likely would be the most difficult
challenge. \"This is not our work ethos. Our work ethos is \'I can work
as long as I\'m still breathing,\'\"he said. \"Part of our post-exercise
discussion was how do you get people to realize you ain\'t doing us a
favor by coming in? \'This is going to be a real challenge for some of
our senior leaders, who are accustomed to showing up, who are accustomed
to being there,\" he continued. During the exercise, department
directors \'killed\' or \'incapacitated\' by the simulated flu outbreak
remained away from the office. This focused the department\'s attention
on the importance of maintaining up-to-date organization charts that
indicate orders of succession and delegations of authority. Chu said the
simulation underscored the need for enhanced technology. \'We are going
to have to invest more in our information technology infrastructure if
we\'re going to succeed long-term,\' Chu said. \'We\'ll have to be sure
people have a government-issued computer\.... That\'s an expense.\'
Technical concerns include the need to maintain sufficient bandwidth for
personnel working from home, and adjusting the Pentagon\'s firewall to
allow at-home users access to department information, he said. Chu said
the department will address procedures in dealing with employees who
become sick while at work. He noted the department will consider
creating a temporary quarantine and treatment center for those affected
by the outbreak in the office, and said the department might develop
transportation plans to get people safely home.

\'For example, what if I come down sick at my desk?\' he said. \'Now in
the exercise \-- since I wasn\'t really sick \-- I could drive home. But
in real life, I might be too sick to drive home. The last thing you want
to do is put me on the Metro (subway system) and infect everybody else.
So what are you going to do? And that\'s one of the issues our team is
now exploring\'.\"\]

Seattle-King County Public Health. An Influenza Pandemic Planning Guide
for Homeless and Housing Services Providers (Edition #1). Seattle, WA:
December 2006, 32 pages. Accessed at:

[[http://www.metrokc.gov/health/pandemicflu/panflu-guidelines-homeless.pdf]{.underline}](http://www.metrokc.gov/health/pandemicflu/panflu-guidelines-homeless.pdf)

\(7\) RESOURCES:

EMPOWER (Emergency Management Professional Organization for Women\'s

Enrichment) Website:
[[http://www.empower-women.com/mc/page.do]{.underline}](http://www.empower-women.com/mc/page.do)

\[From website: \"The emergency management organization for

women\...(EMPOWER) was created to build a platform where professionals
can come together to share experiences, build skills, and expand and
deepen industry knowledge. This vision will facilitate the advancement
and enrichment of women in emergency management. EMPOWER is about
strengthening and uniting women to encourage and enthusiastically
support their growth and success.\"\]

\(8\) SPECIAL NEEDS POPULATIONS:

King County (WA) Public Health. Vulnerable Populations Action Team

(VPAT) Website:
[[http://www.metrokc.gov/health/VPAT/]{.underline}](http://www.metrokc.gov/health/VPAT/)

\[From website intro: \"Public Health - Seattle & King County has formed
a Vulnerable Populations Action Team (VPAT) to coordinate countywide
preparedness efforts with a wide variety of community partners. The team
includes a diverse cross section of staff with public health expertise
in vulnerable populations, preparedness and infectious diseases. First
efforts focus on influenza pandemic planning, with other emergencies
included as partnerships and networks are strengthened\.... We will
assure access to public health preparedness, response and recovery
information and services for the most at-risk and hardest-to-reach
residents in King County. We will do this through mutually respectful
relationships with vulnerable communities and the organizations that
serve them.\"\]

B.Wayne Blanchard, Ph.D., CEM

Higher Education Project Manager

Emergency Management Institute

National Emergency Training Center

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Department of Homeland Security

16825 S. Seton, K-011

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

\(301\) 447-1262, voice

\(301\) 447-1598, fax

wayne.blanchard@dhs.gov

[[http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu)

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