B. R. Forbes: FEMA Notes from the Field
With the blessing of the NTIA lawyers, I flew to the FEMA Florida Long Term Recovery Office (FLTRO) in Orlando for initial training. The FLTRO was patched together in a business park with additional temporary offices and a gravel field for a parking lot.
Wandering
around the center, I discovered rooms stacked high with
supplies (such as bottled water and Lee clothing), make-shift
offices with flimsy dividers, and noisy call centers
with cables snaking from the ceiling to laptops.
The
first half day was spent primarily in processing us
new recruits: shuffling paper, getting shots (hepatitis
B and tetanus), and getting the general issue FEMA badge,
FEMA cap, FEMA polo shirts, and a can of “Off”
bug spray.
The majority of trainees were teams of firefighters from around the country, with some Coast Guard Auxiliary, Peace Corps, and federal employee transferees thrown into the mix. The rest of the day was free time so I went shopping for more supplies and a bottle of Jack Daniels (for medicinal purposes, of course.)
On Saturday, the first full day of classroom training was conducted in a barely-converted garage. We were taught the history of FEMA, the process of declaring disasters, government ethics, equal opportunity guidelines, civil rights responsibilities, sexual harassment complaint procedures, and other generally redundant topics for higher-level government employees.
To make the point of reminding us to take notes when taking information from a FEMA client (and to have a second person to improve recall of the details), one instructor spent about 45 minutes leading us recruits in the “telephone game.” I almost cut the time short when it was my turn: “OK, Bart, it’s your turn!” “No, thank you.” “Excuse me…?” “I don’t play games. I get your point. Let’s move on.” The instructor was a bit flustered and skipped over me to the next victim. Later, I was told I made an impression as “that Commerce guy that almost went ballistic during training.”
Since the
Center had been running full bore for the past week,
the administrators decided to close down on Sunday –
much to my and many of the other new recruits’
frustration. I nursed my annoyance at Walt Disney World.
Monday
was the most productive day of training. We
were taught about the many FEMA programs, the various
eligibility requirements, and the intricacies of the National
Emergency Management Information System (NEMIS.) Unfortunately,
we could not actually use the system live. A few days
earlier a firefighter trainee did not realize that federal
records were indelible and had written a note to a poor
FEMA applicant's live file. Something about strippers
and sex. He was probably snoozing during the sexual harasssment
training.
At
the end of the day we received our deployment orders:
the firefighters would ship out to Alabama and Federal
employee transferees would travel to the Dallas Disaster
Recovery Center (DRC) for additional training and then
deploy to Tyler, Texas, to open a new DRC.
We were given an address, a contact name, and a telephone number and were sent off to make our own travel arrangements through our own federal agencies. For all other recruits this was not a problem. However, the MOU crafted by the NTIA lawyers that got me to Orlando specifically stated that I was to deploy to Mississippi. And they would not approve my travel orders to Texas. I met with the FLTRO’s chief financial officer (CFO) who informed me that the MOU was irrelevant due to the Mission Assignment signed by representatives of both FEMA/DHS and Commerce. He gave me a copy and I noted that Mississippi was mentioned only in the section titled “Tracking Information (FEMA use only)” which the CFO remarked was only an accounting mechanism.
As
a result of this accounting mechanism, I found myself
sitting in the Orlando airport waiting for the matter
to be resolved back home. After the second Dallas flight
departed, I called the FEMA FLTRO to inform them that
the NTIA lawyers refused to approve my deployment travel
orders. After a flurry of activity, they arranged my ticket
directly through FEMA’s own travel agency. I later
learned that the NTIA lawyers told my supervisor to “order”
me home and then advised him to “write me up”
when I did not return. I later met two other Commerce
employees (one from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration and one from the Census Bureau) who had
no such problems – and, in fact, received a great
deal of support from their offices. I was, obviously,
not so fortunate.
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©
1999 - 2009 B. R. Forbes20 East Linden Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22301
(703) 836-5654 - bforbes @ igc.org