Friday, October 14, 2005

Planning for Disaster

I'm hardly the first to notice this -- The Daily Show and at least one blogger got there first -- but it's just too good not to post. The graphic below is an actual diagram from the FEMA website, showing the organization's disaster response cycle.


Note that the process begins with a disaster and leads to... another disaster. As Jon Stewart put it, "In truth, FEMA did exactly what they said they were going to do."

4 comments:

Prof. Wright said...

Er... not to defend FEMA, but I think their point is that disasters are happening all the time and we need to be doing stuff in-between them. It seems clear to me. I've tried to watch the Daily Show on a couple fo occasions, but most of their humor seems to be of this sort -- trying to make reasonable, everyday things look funny. It's the "huh huh, he said 'wood'" type of humor.

Publiix said...

Not to defend FEMA either, I don't think "they" really have a point at all, so I'll make one: disasters don't happen all the time, and the "response" to this last was surely not "reasonable."

But I agree with you in one sense. The humour of the ridiculous FEMA diagram IS lessened because it's representative of such pathetic and sinister bureaucracy, which could really get a guy down...

Oh, wonderful cathartic release.

Prof. Wright said...

I was referring to the diagram as "reasonable." I'm all for criticizing FEMA, and indeed any government agency (I'm a libertarian), but making things up like this is unnecessary and childish. And by the way, natural disasters most certainly do happen all the time, at least often enough for an organization to think in terms of a response and preparedness cycle. The fact that FEMA fouled up the job isn't the point here. If it were, I'd be in total agreement.

David said...

Can anyone say "irony"? That's the point.