'Major Disconnects' Cited in Federal Disaster Planning

The Bush administration's new federal disaster-response plan drew harsh criticism yesterday from state and local officials only a day after it was unveiled, prompting fresh calls by House Democrats to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency a stand-alone Cabinet-level agency.

[S]tate and local emergency managers said the new plan offers insufficient detail for guiding the actions of officials in charge of handling specific incidents and leaves unclear the chain of command, from the president to workers on the scene.

Robert C. Bohlmann, emergency manager for York County in Maine and spokesman for the International Association of Emergency Managers, warned at the hearing about a "major disconnect" between that legislation and the new National Response Framework (NRF), which states that the secretary of homeland security is in charge of managing domestic incidents.

Tim Manning, director of homeland security and emergency management for New Mexico and spokesman for the National Emergency Management Association, whose members include his counterparts in the 49 other states, said he "could not object more vociferously" to the framework's concept that separate operational and strategic plans will be developed for 15 federally designated disaster scenarios.

"When you scale up to the level we're talking about, to have very duplicative plans with 30 variations will be disastrous," Manning said.