The Show Must Go On
by ChrisSeptember 7th, 2005 10:52 am
Just because you’ve seen this story everwhere else, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see it here too.
From Salon:
From all across the nation, local fire departments have sent firefighters — many of them trained in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue techniques — to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the help. But when the firefighters arrived in Atlanta, loaded down with the firefighting gear FEMA told them to bring, they were sent to a hotel to wait. Some of them have been waiting for three or four days now. Some have been assigned to sit through an eight-hour class on topics that included sexual harassment. And some have been dispatched to the disaster area to work as human props behind George W. Bush as he toured the destruction.
…
FEMA defends the use — or nonuse — of the firefighters, saying that their chiefs knew they were being sent to the Gulf Coast to work as community-relations officers for FEMA. Apparently, that job entails working as human props and passing out FEMA’s phone number. “There are all of these guys with all of this training and we’re sending them out to hand out a phone number,” an Oregon firefighter told the Tribune.On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters’ willingness to help in a time of need. “I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country,” FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune.
I’m sure they’ll be sure to revisit that comitment Mary, because god knows T-shirts and bullshit political imagery are more important than saving lives. It’s not as if there was anything for a trained rescue worker to do in New Orleans last week anyway.
