Ex-chief blames Bush for FEMA woes

The Bush administration made FEMA the mess it is today, according to the agency's former director.

President Bush doomed the Federal Emergency Management Agency by placing it under the Department of Homeland Security, said James Lee Witt, FEMA director during the Clinton administration.

"They had a premium agency that was probably the best-run agency in the federal government. It was a household name," Witt told the Deseret Morning News in an interview Tuesday. "Now look at it. They basically took that and destroyed it."

Witt was in town Tuesday to speak at a conference of local emergency responders about the need to establish communications systems to use during emergencies and disasters.

That kind of system wasn't in place in Louisiana when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, he said. For a time right after the initial storm, communication was nonexistent. First responders from local communities as well as the Louisiana National Guard weren't able to communicate, he said.

"The communications system totally failed," Witt said. "The inability to communicate can literally cost lives."

Even Bush chided the woeful response: "The results are not acceptable," he told reporters during a September visit to New Orleans.

FEMA has basically lost all power to prepare for national disasters, Witt said. Now it's up to the massive Department of Homeland Security to get everyone on the right track.

"They have taken the decision process out of the people that know how to do it," Witt said. He said proper leadership is not in place in the broken system to adequately respond to national disasters.

Embattled former FEMA director Michael Brown had no experience in emergency management when he took the job. Brown resigned from his post in the middle of the hurricane disaster response because he said he was becoming a distraction both to the rescue efforts and to the president.

Since his resignation, Brown has defended FEMA's response, instead placing the blame on the "dysfunctional" relationship between local Louisiana officials.

"I've overseen more than 150 presidentially declared disasters — I know what I'm doing," Brown told a House committee examining the faulted hurricane response. "The people of FEMA are tired of being beat up, and they don't deserve it."