Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Congressman Tom Davis

Congressman Tom Davis: "'Today I received a letter from the Committee's Ranking Member, Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for hearings into the preparation for and response to the hurricane. I look forward to working with him on this critically important undertaking, and thank him for sharing our interest. Mr. Waxman raised many important questions that need to be addressed: whether FEMA has been organizationally undermined and under-funded; whether evacuation plans were adequate; whether opportunities to better safeguard the New Orleans levee system were missed; why relief and medical supplies and support were seemingly slow in arriving; and several others.

'However, I believe the letter overlooks many other questions that need to be asked, and prematurely faults the federal government for all governmental shortcomings; in fact, local and state government failures are not mentioned at all in the letter. For example, Mr. Waxman's letter wonders why 'there were no federal plans for evacuating residents without access to vehicles' and why 'the Department of Homeland Security fail[ed] to ensure basic communications capacity' for first responders. We need to figure out why evacuation plans and emergency communications systems were woefully deficient; we don't need to prematurely paint the picture that these are solely, or even primarily, federal government responsibilities.
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