Trump's FEMA Director Faces His First Test

[babylonsister]

Trump's FEMA Director Faces His First Test
Brock Long's drive to change U.S. disaster response crosses paths with Hurricane Harvey.
By Christopher Flavelle
August 24, 2017, 5:04 PM EDT


Brock Long knew it was just a matter of time.

"We've gone 11 years without a major hurricane land-falling in the U.S.—that's a one-in-2,000 chance," said Long, President Donald Trump's administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in an interview at his office on Monday. "We're gonna get hit by a major hurricane. I worry that a lot of people have forgotten what that's like."

The country is about to be reminded. As of Thursday afternoon, Hurricane Harvey was expected to hit the Texas coast as a Category 3 storm, with top wind speeds of 85 miles an hour and flooding as high as seven feet. The storm will be Long’s first challenge as FEMA director. He was sworn in just two months ago.

Long's appointment was welcomed by experts on extreme weather, who praised him as neither overtly ideological nor hostile to the mission of the agency he was chosen to lead. Before being appointed to the top job, he was director of Alabama's Emergency Management Agency from 2008 to 2011, as well as a regional hurricane program manager for FEMA.

"He is a rare Trump appointee who is a well-known professional in the field in which he was appointed," said Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a Washington research group that promotes market-based solutions to climate change. "Every part of his reputation suggests he’ll take a careful, deliberate, technocratic approach to the job."

If Hurricane Harvey is as severe as predicted, the toll will certainly test Long and his agency. It could even pose a political risk to the Trump administration, whose first budget proposal sought to cut FEMA's funding by 11 percent.

more...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/hurricane-harvey-trump-s-fema-director-faces-his-first-test

[RKP5637]

1. We're lucky the ass in the WH even got around to having a FEMA director. n/t

[TubbersUK]

2. Yes

From 2012:

Link to tweet

Donald J. Trump?Verified account
@realDonaldTrump

Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars.
2:05 PM - 30 Oct 2012

[procon]

3. Why did FEMA rate getting a qualified director while most of the other

top agencies got a bunch of ignoramuses and drooling oafs, all determined to undermine the key functions of the departments they head?

[RKP5637]

4. Good question, I was wondering the same. Maybe he slipped by the ass in the WH somehow. n/t

[malaise]

6. Because the season started early

and even Groper hasn't forgotten Bush and Katrina.

By the way the word is chaos in stores and on the coastal highways in Texas

[RKP5637]

7. The traffic must be horrible. I could never forget Katrina and the mess Bush and

Brownie made of it. I just am not sure what I would do if one were headed here.

[PoorMonger]

5. Golf Courses??

My thought is maybe Trump wants someone semi competent if his golf courses in places like Florida and NJ might be in danger at some point. You know vital infrastructure...

[RKP5637]

8. Yeah, he would probably put all the FEMA funds into protecting his crap properties. n/t