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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 11:58AM





Michael D. Brown, the Katrina-era head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, panned news reports critical of the pace of response and recovery to last week's Haitian earthquake, urging patience as officials safely deploy teams across the country and arguing that journalists should consider assisting those recovery efforts instead of reporting on the damage.

"My frustration watching this, is listening to, even my friends in the news media who are expressing their frustration that, you know, they have been to a pocket in a little village somewhere and there's not aid there yet," Brown said Tuesday on Federal News Radio. "Well that shows a woeful ignorance of how things work."

Brown elaborated on his frustration:

In this case, because you never want the disaster workers, the response workers themselves become victims, you have to make certain of several things. One, that they can get to where they need to go. And in this case, the airport at Port-au-Prince, we had to make certain that not only was the airport operable, but that the runways were safe to land on. And then once you find that, you have to make certain that there's a place for your equipment to be deployed....

And so while I know people are frustrated when they see those pictures of, when a cameraman will stick his camera in the face of somebody and they're screaming and hollering and crying, they're desperate for food and water. You know, I want to say to that cameraman, put your camera down. Take that canteen of water you have with you and your crew and give it to them. Because it's not fair to compare that to the work that the rescue workers are doing.

Brown's comments revive a debate reporters often face when deployed into disaster situations. Media ethicists have suggested this week that the television network's medical correspondents -- most of whom also serve as active doctors -- should forgo providing fact-based reporting while helping the quake's victims.

Brown also compared the Haitian earthquake response to FEMA's response following Hurricane Katrina:

Look, in Katrina, I had a state and local government that was there. It was somewhat dysfunctional mainly, but at least they were there. In Haiti, you have no government. I mean you have no infrastructure... so our teams had to move in to an area where there was literally nobody in charge, and you had to take charge, do it diplomatically because this isn't New Orleans. This is a foreign country. And in this case we had to be very careful about how we do it and I think they did it exceptionally well.

Brown faced criticism for his leadership of FEMA in the days after Hurricane Katrina. He earned the nickname "Brownie" after President George W. Bush credited him with doing a "heckuva job," despite news reports and eyewitness accounts that suggested otherwise.

Brown called into Federal News Radio to plug the Next of Kin Registry, a nonprofit national depository for contact information during an emergency situation. He serves as the group's CEO.

Update on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 12:03PM by Michael Brown

Actually, Ed, President Bush gave me the nickname long before Hurricane Katrina, way back in 2001. The media just wasn't aware of that until his infamous remarks.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 at 9:32PM by Michael Brown

One of the single most crippling issues during Hurricane Katrina was the ageless question, “who’s in charge?” During Hurricane Katrina the federal government was not in charge. Governors Barbour, Riley and Blanco were in charge and the federal government was there as a supplement to the efforts of those three. Unfortunately Louisiana was wracked with political infighting and a Mayor who fought with the Governor. But Haiti is worse. No functioning government exists in Haiti, and such a power/political vacuum is instantly filled, rightly so, by the United States of America. Appointing both a civilian and military official to be “in charge” is smart and will be effective if both of these men recognize the respective roles each of their teams bring to the response and recovery efforts.

We must remember that the quickest of response teams are limited by factors over which they have no control: non-functioning airports, destroyed runways, emasculated infrastructure, and security problems. All were present (and to some extent will remain present for the foreseeable future) in Haiti and will continue to hamper response efforts. When I see a television anchor talking in front of starving, suffering people and asking, “where’s the aid?” I simply want to scream at the television and say, put down the microphone, go back to the airport, and watch the responders. Only then will you understand why, in such a catastrophe, it takes time to move material, supplies and personnel. That is a fact of life that we don’t seem willing to internalize. And in a catastrophe of this size (geographically, destructively, socially and politically) responders must wade through all of those issues to reach the people in need.

The Urban Search & Rescue Teams (USAR) were first in country after getting clearance they could actually land, deploy their equipment and operate safely (you do not want them to become victims themselves). The American USAR teams are the best and they did – and are – doing their jobs heroically.

Human physiology and mental stress, the dogs’ physical capacity, and the operating environment all limit response efforts. Yet the responders and their dogs strive to stretch those limits daily – and the media should recognize that. We should remember that while those teams are deployed, Yellowstone continues to shake and shimmer with swarms of earthquakes. America will always respond to foreign disasters such as Haiti. However, we must never take our eye off those incidents that can occur at anytime, anywhere in our own country.

Reports I have read and people I have spoken to in-country indicate that communications remain an issue. Satellite communication lines are sometimes jammed. This points out the need for additional capacity in all types of communications worldwide. More importantly, we must continue to watch the lines of communication between those who have boots on the ground and those back inside the beltway. Policy makers should pay attention to those in-country. Those in the field know best the needs, and those needs should only be balanced by the geopolitical and diplomatic concerns of those back home after fully understanding the ground situation.

Elected officials, emergency response experts, disaster planning specialists from those affected by the San Andreas fault, the New Madrid fault, and those from the National Earthquake consortium should, at the earliest possible moment where they will not detract from response and recovery efforts, travel to and embed themselves to watch what works and doesn’t work in Haiti. We can learn so much from this experience. We must not waste this opportunity to learn what works and doesn’t work in our response capacity.

The Obama Administration should receive kudos for responding quickly and efficiently. Those on both sides of the political spectrum should remember that every disaster involves politics. When you learn to manage the expectations, the political and media issues, you can succeed for the disaster victims, and you can succeed politically, too. To say that politics doesn’t enter into a disaster response is naïve. Ignoring politics as one of the many facets of disasters that must be managed is dangerous, even to the response itself. Manage the response and recovery first, the media second, and the politics will handle itself.

Finally, this disaster must teach us the need for catastrophic disaster planning. Our great nation faces similar earthquakes, tsunamis, devastating hurricanes, widespread flooding and other natural disasters. Without catastrophic disaster planning we are certain to face a fumbled response in the future. Elected officials must learn from this catastrophe, too.

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