Flood advice should come from real experts

Would you invite the one person in the world most associated with incompetent flood preparation and response to be the chairman of a conference on flood preparation and response?

I wouldn't, but some people would.

Here's the program agenda for a "Flood Fighters" conference starting today in the United Kingdom. It's a "forum for all agencies to plan and work together," according to its Web site. There's a concurrent Flood Fighters workshop, targeted at "individuals who will manage teams of responders and rescuers at water and flood incidents".

The conference chairman is Michael D. Brown, former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during Hurricane Katrina.

You probably remember Brown and FEMA's under-funded, uncoordinated, incredibly slow response to the flooding of New Orleans. U.S. President Bush mistakenly--but memorably--said of Brown's performance: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." That  Michael Brown.

Brown had no emergency management experience prior to joining FEMA as General Counsel in 2001. He had been a lawyer, teacher, legislative staffer and an official with the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association.

He resigned from FEMA in ignominy after Hurricane Katrina, and is now an advisor to a company selling data analysis systems for homeland security.

Flood risk is a serious issue in the United Kingdom. The Association of British Insurers believes that 2 million homes in the U.K. are at risk from flooding. The three-month period from May to July 2007 was the wettest on record in the U.K. The ABI expects ₤3 billion (USD 1.46 billion) in flood damage claims from that period.

If average temperatures rise in the U.K, that would increase rainfall and therefore flood risk. If the ocean around the U.K. were to rise, island countries like the United Kingdom--as well as Singapore--could be flooded.

Flooding isn't just a matter of business continuity for some people, but of survival.

The conference organizers at Crisis Response Journal who invited Brown to chair Flood Fighters are certainly not ignorant of Brown's record of failure in emergency management.

They are, in my view, cynically using Brown's notoriety to attract participants to a conference for government professionals. Doing so seems to me callous to the continuing suffering of thousands of people directly affected by Brown's failure to manage the government's response to the Katrina catastrophe. If the organizers are actually paying  him to chair the event, then they ought to be embarrassed, or ashamed.

Why?

While Brown flies to London to address professionals about flood prevention and response, a topic on which he is patently unqualified to address anyone, victims of Hurricane Katrina are--quite literally--going crazy, two years after the tragedy. Listen to this story Stuck & Suicidal in a Post-Katrina Trailer Park, by the U.S. National Public Radio reporter Alix Spiegel, about some survivors of Hurricane Katrina and the result of Brown's professional failure.

200,000 homes were destroyed in New Orleans, and 800,000 people displaced. Families have been living for two years in trailers.

A FEMA trailer in New Orleans

The population of the city is today barely half of what it was. Half the fire stations still haven't been repaired. The city is still  utterly unprepared for a major hurricane, according to Time magazine. And this is despite 1 million volunteers contributing free labor valued at a quarter of a billion dollars. I was one of them. As far as I know, Brown was not.

Brown is also speaking next week at NEDRIX on "Public Safety, Preparedness and Emergency Management". He must be in rehabilitation, an American pastime for celebrities.

I am all for personal redemption and forgiveness. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Louisiana's legendary venal politicians, among others.

Perhaps Brown intends to apologize publicly at these conferences, to give a "lessons learned" speech, a genuine mea culpa. But I doubt it. And his total lack of emergency response experience had terrible consequences for the Gulf Coast. Those consequences are still being felt by thousands of people who don't get much publicity about their plight.

As an American and a professional specializing in disaster planning, I am embarrassed. As a human being, I am disappointed, frustrated and angry.

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Nathaniel Forbes

Nathaniel Forbes is the director of Forbes Calamity Prevention, a Singapore-based consulting firm providing business continuity, crisis management and emergency response advice and training to multinational companies, with a focus on companies with offices in Asia. The firm is 10 years old. FCP's current and past clients include Singapore Exchange Ltd, OCBC Bank, AXA Insurance, The Gillette Company, Siemens and ABN Amro Bank. A former President of the Singapore Computer Society’s Business Continuity Group, Nathaniel passed the DRII’s Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) examination in 1997. He has lived, traveled or worked in Asia since 1973.