Department of Homeland Security, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Department/Agency: Department of Homeland Security

Position:
Department of Homeland Security, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Executive Schedule: Executive Level IV - Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation

Major Responsibilities:

• Reduce loss of life and property from natural and man-made disasters, including acts of terror
• Lead the national emergency response system
• Focus on preparedness, protection, response, recovery and mitigation

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

• Seasoned crisis manager
• Leadership and organizational skills
• High level executive experience
• Ability to forge partnerships across the public and private sectors

Insight:

Helping Americans prepare for and recover from disasters is the mission and life's blood of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Few agencies its size receive the public scrutiny that FEMA does. Its work repeatedly thrusts FEMA leaders into the public eye when calamity strikes a community, a state or region. Disasters - natural and man-made - constantly test the mettle of the FEMA administrator, managers and relief workers on the front lines. While FEMA has stood up to many challenges, it was sorely tested and found wanting in three of the largest hurricanes to strike the United States in the past two decades: Hurricane Hugo, which heavily damaged parts of South Carolina in September 1989; Hurricane Andrew, which devastated Homestead, Florida, in August 1992, and the worst of all, Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August 2005.

Congress ordered changes at FEMA following the Katrina fiasco. Former President Bill Carter had given Cabinet rank to James Lee Witt, the experienced emergency manager he brought in to turn around the beleaguered agency. But FEMA lost both its independent status and Cabinet rank in the Bush administration. It was subsumed into newly created Department of Homeland Security in 2002, with FEMA's head not even reporting directly to the homeland security secretary. Some lawmakers and emergency planners worried at the time that FEMA had shifted focus too much to terrorism while falling down on its duties to help states and localities deal with the many natural disasters that strike with regularity each year. Nearly three quarters of the grants that FEMA made to first responders in 2005 were primarily for terrorism training, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

What happened in New Orleans bore out the critics' fears. Some in Congress, including  Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), advocated restoring FEMA's independence, but lawmakers instead passed the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 that elevated FEMA's status within DHS and make the FEMA administrator responsible for all phases of emergency management - preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. While the FEMA administrator now reports to the secretary of homeland security, the reform legislation allows the president to call upon the FEMA administrator to serve in the Cabinet when disaster strikes.

Candidate Barack Obama was sharply critical of the Bush administration's stewardship of FEMA. His campaign promised that, "As president, Barack Obama will professionalize and depoliticize the appointment of FEMA's director. Like the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FEMA Director will have a fixed term of office to insulate him or her from politics. The FEMA Director will report directly to President Obama, serve a six-year term and will have professional emergency management experience."

The New York Times, in a post-election editorial, called for restoring FEMA's Cabinet status. "As the new administration ponders how to grapple with the dysfunctional homeland security mega-agency, one fast fix for public confidence would be to restore the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a separate cabinet-level arm of government," the editorial said. "FEMA was subsumed into the homeland security monolith after 9/11 - to disastrous effect, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated to a horrified nation. When it stood alone, FEMA was a praiseworthy rampart in the face of catastrophe, notably manned by professionals, not political appointees. Under the Bush administration, and inside the Department of Homeland Security, it degraded into a patronage-ridden weakling." Despite improvements since Katrina, "there's stark evidence FEMA remains far from fixed. The agency fumbled for two years before banishing the formaldehyde-tainted trailers used to house Katrina victims. Most glaringly, FEMA has unapologetically missed the Congressional deadline mandating creation of a new national plan for housing future emergency victims. The public's welfare demands the restoration of an independent FEMA focused on disaster, not politics."

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, architects of the post-Katrina FEMA fixes, responded that "today's FEMA is far better prepared than it was in 2005....The agency still needs improvement, but our reforms are working." They added, "FEMA is becoming a far stronger agency. The last thing it needs is another upheaval." But the U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM-USA) also called for  restoring FEMA's status as an independent agency reporting directly to the President, with its head designated as a member of the Cabinet.

Katrina was not the first time FEMA fell down on the job. After coastal South Carolina was devastated in 1989 by Hugo, a Category 5 hurricane that also left ruin across the Caribbean, then-Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) castigated FEMA staff as "bureaucratic jackasses." When Andrew struck Florida three years later, long delays in getting food and water to those left homeless led Dade County's emergency manager to ask plaintively, "Where in the hell is the cavalry?" The fallout created a political problem for then-President George H.W. Bush, who lost his bid for re-election that fall. The victor,  Clinton, put Arkansas's emergency services director, Witt, in charge of FEMA and elevated the job to Cabinet rank (a status it lost when FEMA was subsumed into DHS). Witt, a farmer's son who went into construction after high school and became an elected county executive, was a seasoned emergency planner and manager. He quickly repaired FEMA's reputation. By 1996 President Clinton made this boast: "For many years, FEMA had been regarded almost universally as an agency not up to the job. And I'm very proud that under James Lee Witt's management ... FEMA is now a model disaster-relief agency, and, in some corners, thought to be by far the most successful part of the federal government today."  At the end of Witt's eight-year tenure - longest in the agency's 30-year history - the National Journal wrote: "At a time when Washington seems more polarized than ever, most Democrats and Republicans have been able to agree on one thing: that the little-known Witt represents the very best of the Clinton Administration. He has made FEMA much more responsive to the public. He has worked to prevent disasters. He has cut a significant amount of bureaucratic red tape. And he has helped boost the public image of a once-troubled agency that was about to be placed under the governmental guillotine."

President George W. Bush put FEMA in the hands  of his chief of staff as governor of Texas and national campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh. For a deputy director, Bush chose an Oklahoma-born lawyer and political operative named Michael D. Brown who once led an equine sports federation, but had no emergency planning experience. FEMA's duties took on greater urgency after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. When Allbaugh stepped down in 2003, Bush nominated Brown as his successor.

Brown had been in charge for 2½ years when Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 125 mph at dawn on Aug. 29, 2005. The National Weather Service had warned beforehand of "devastating damage" that would render New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks, but neither Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco nor New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff put Brown in charge of coordinating the federal response. After the levees broke in New Orleans, the nation watched in horror as corpses lay rotting in the streets and tens of thousands of storm victims were stranded without food and water in the downtown Convention Center. Congressional investigators who uncovered Brown's emails from that time said they revealed "that Mr. Brown made few decisions and seemed out of touch." When one of the few FEMA employees on the ground in New Orleans messaged the administrator on Aug. 31 that the situation was "past critical," Brown's only response was, "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" When President Bush flew to the region on Sept. 2 to see the damage, he said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." But a few days later Brown was recalled to Washington and Chertoff put a rear admiral in charge of the recovery; Brown resigned soon after that. Bush tapped a former Miami-Dade fire chief, R. David Paulison, to run FEMA for the rest of his second term.

Now the task of once again rebuilding FEMA will fall to President-elect Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary-designate Janet Napolitano and whomever they select to run this small but vital agency.

Deadly Hurricane Ike and a spate of other large storms during the 2008 hurricane season again underscored the need for better disaster preparation. In a recent speech, Paulison stressed "how vital private sector preparedness is to the overall effort. As part of the `New FEMA' vision, we have worked to integrate the efforts of all partners - public and private, state, tribal, territorial or local - in a holistic approach that will strengthen the national emergency management system and improve the ability of our communities and our nation to address disasters, emergencies, and terrorist events." He added, "The truth of the matter is that government, no matter how effective, is not the entire answer.....  We must continue to develop a culture of preparedness in America, in which every American takes personal responsibility for his or her own emergency preparedness."

Paulison told reporters in 2006 that his priorities included improving communications between federal, state and local governments in disasters, and securing the right equipment, including satellite telephones. He pointed with pride to FEMA's purchase of 20,000 GPS devices to better track trucks leaving its warehouses with relief supplies.

Paulison was called before Congress in 2007 to defend the agency's use of mobile homes and trailers to house Katrina and Rita victims for extended periods. Formaldehyde fumes created health problems for many. Paulison told Congressman Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), then-chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "This was the largest emergency housing mission in our nation's history. Given decades of successful history of using mobile home and smaller travel trailers to provide temporary housing, we had no reason to anticipate problems." He said FEMA had tightened its standards for trailers, ordered better ventilation, and was aggressively "moving disaster victims into better, more permanent forms of housing as they become available." While the link "between formaldehyde, indoor air quality and illness has been vexing health and environmental professionals for over 30 years, FEMA and the entire Department of Homeland Security are committed to ensuring that victims of disasters have a safe and healthy place to live during the recovery period," Paulison said.

FEMA has 2,600 full time employees and 4,000 others on stand-by.  It partners with 27 other federal agencies, state emergency management agencies, the American Red Cross and other relief organizations on disaster planning and response.

FEMA inherited these duties from the old Federal Disaster Assistance Administration in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1979. President Jimmy Carter created the agency by executive order to improve what was seen as a fragmented federal response to such disasters as Hurricanes Carla in 1962, Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969 and Agnes in 1972 as well as big earthquakes in Alaska in 1964 and California in 1971. At the time, according to a FEMA history, "more than 100 federal agencies were involved in some aspect of disasters, hazards and emergencies" and the National Governors Association had urged President Carter to winnow them out.

Carter's Executive Order 12127 folded the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, the Federal Preparedness Agency of the General Services Administration, the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration and other agencies into the new entity. The first disasters FEMA responded to were the contamination at Love Canal in upstate New York and the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

FEMA's parent, the Department of Homeland Security, has developed a National Response Framework to better prepare for catastrophes. The GAO recently urged DHS to clarify that FEMA remains "the lead and coordinating agency to provide evacuation assistance when state and local governments are overwhelmed."

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:
Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security
FEMA Regional Administrators
DHS Chief of Staff and Military Adviser
Commandant of the Coast Guard

Key Relationships – Within the Government:
Defense Logistics Agency
Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration
National Governors Association
Local and state emergency managers
County and municipal executives
Domestic Readiness Group

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:
American Red Cross
The Salvation Army
Other relief and support groups

Nomination Referred to:
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Current Position Profile:

1. William Craig Fugate (Confirmed: May 12, 2009). Former Emergency Management Division Director, Community Affairs Department, Florida. Former paramedic and an emergency manager for Alachua County, Florida.

Recent Position Profiles:

2. R. David Paulison (2006-2009). Career fire fighter. Fire Chief in Miami-Dade, Florida. U.S. Fire Administrator.

3. Michael Brown, J.D. (2003-2005).  Deputy director and general counsel of FEMA. Land use attorney. Led equine sports association.

4. Joe M. Allbaugh (2001-2003). Chief of staff to then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. Managed Bush's first campaign for governor and the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Former Oklahoma deputy secretary of transportation.

5. James Lee Witt (1993-2001). Former director of Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. Construction company founder and youngest elected county judge in Arkansas. Now runs own risk management company. Adviser to Louisiana on recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Former CEO of International Code Council.