Charles Krauthammer Quotes

What we found out with Katrina is that the country is still unable to deal with disaster. God forbid this happens in San Francisco.

FEMA has lost its focus, and Floridians know first-hand of the agency's shortcomings, .. Natural disaster preparedness and response programs have become trapped in a homeland security bureaucracy.

Part of the redesign of FEMA is that they have so many people on standby, whether it is a retired nurse or a doctor who will take time off to go exactly where they are needed.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

There is no question that FEMA and the National Emergency Response System did not fail America the day that Katrina hit. They failed the day before and the days before that.

Commander in Chief of Disasters.

Responding to a natural disaster is a complex problem.

In the '70s, you didn't know who was going to survive in a disaster film.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

I have noticed a marked improvement in FEMA and with the coordination of FEMA and the State agencies.

There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there - have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that's not all that bad.

One of the things government should be around for is to deal with catastrophes. It should do that well. To me, that's a government function, and we shouldn't be playing political games with it.

I'll just tell you, I'm not a big FEMA fan.

We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

During the aftermath of Katrina, National Guard troops were positioned on every block to establish a sense of safety and source of help for the people in need. They did not leave communities until people were safe and sound.

One of my favorite books is 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' The reason is, I'm fascinated by the postapocalyptic recovery. What do we do in a disaster? How do we make do?

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.

During a large disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, warnings get hopelessly jumbled. The truth is that, for warnings to work, it's not enough for them to be delivered. They must also overcome that human tendency to pause; they must trigger a series of effective actions, mobilizing the informal networks that we depend on in a crisis.

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

If you have a sudden emergency, earthquake, hurricane, you name it, we want to be able to have a National Guard officer able to command federal forces.

Over half a billion dollars a day is being spent by FEMA.

A disaster like a hurricane is like a football game. You are going to lose the first quarter. There is no way you will win that quarter. The question is how ugly you will lose that quarter. Then you go into the second quarter – the search and rescue.

The nation’s disaster mechanisms do not seem to be in the hands of those who know how to use them.

There are disasters that happen - Hurricane Harvey came up, and you had people self-organizing through the community and getting in boats and driving around rescuing people coordinated ad hoc through this network. That's not a media function.