Hallelujah.
From Congressional Quarterly comes this report on Nancy Dragini’s presentation to the Heritage Foundation. Nancy is the current President of the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) and Director of the Ohio Department of Emergency Management.
Here is the article:
Emergency Management Chief Decries ‘Culture of Entitlement’
By Daniel Fowler
CQ Homeland Security
August 18, 2009
National Emergency Management Association President Nancy Dragani said Tuesday the United States has a “culture of entitlement” when it comes to disasters and it is not the federal government’s role to be a first responder.
During her more than 14 years in emergency management, Dragani said there has been a shift from personal responsibility to personal expectation, a course she suggested needs to be reversed.
“I have seen a shift from . . . ‘when the hurricane winds begin to blow, clean out your bathtub and fill it with water so you have drinking water’ to ‘when the hurricane threatens and the winds begin to blow, find out where [the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s] going to deliver ice, food and water,’ ” she said. “And we can’t survive that.
“We’ve got to begin to remind ourselves as a people of personal accountability,” Dragani told a forum at the Heritage Foundation. “It’s my responsibility, to the best of my ability, to take care of myself, my family, my dog, my cats, my mom who lives down the street and the lady that lives next door. I believe that’s my responsibility. I believe it’s your responsibility.”
Dragani, who also is executive director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, said the United States has lost that mindset as a country and a culture. “We’ve become a culture of entitlement,” she said. “Within hours of an event the question is where’s FEMA, where’s my check, where’s my water, food and ice.”
That culture is neither sustainable nor defensible, Dragani said.
“I think we need to change that culture,” she said. “I think we need to go back to a message of personal preparedness and an expectation that to the extent possible people take the time, the energy, the money to prepare themselves and their family so that they don’t have to wait on FEMA to come in on their white charger and fix the day.”
Dragani said she agreed with comments Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made in March when she told attendees at NEMA’s mid-year conference that the public perception of FEMA needs to change.
FEMA, Napolitano said, is not the first responder, a role she said belongs to local government.
The common perception — one promulgated by Democratic critics of President George W. Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — is that in an emergency FEMA is supposed to be there first, and if it’s not, then “something’s wrong” with the agency.
“I think between 9/11 and Katrina, the pendulum shifted to . . . this expectation that FEMA would be there in hours, that they would be passing out food, ice and water in hours as opposed to being there after states and locals had begun to provide those services to their capability,” Dragani said.
Nancy is absolutely correct. However, there is more to the story. Jim Gilmore asks her a question during the Q&A about Hurricane Katrina and how Mayor Nagin abdicated his responsibility, the press jumped on the critics of President Bush, and that the trend toward greater and greater federal responsibility weakens the capacity of state and local governments and increases the risk of more military involvement in responding to disasters (which is happening).
My hat is off to Nancy for saying those things that I said during my tenure, but which was drowned out by the press and the critics of me and President Bush.
Unfortunately, the solution to this problem lies in political leadership. I don’t see that anywhere in the near future.
The entire presentation at the Heritage Foundation is below. It is more than an hour long. Fast forward to 42:41 and you can hear Governor Gilmore’s question and Nancy’s answer.
