FEMA learning lessons the hard way
The Federal Emergency Management Agency learned many lessons about what went wrong in its handling of Hurricane Katrina and the storm’s chaotic aftermath.
Now it has one more lesson to add to the list: Have a better plan for archiving important “after action” data and reports.
It seems FEMA’s “lessons learned” reports reviewing the agency’s performance after Katrina and other disasters were deleted from the computer server on which they were stored, according to a recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
The server failed last May. Then, after the server was finally fixed in November, the software necessary to access and read the “after-action” reports didn’t work.
That meant FEMA, for more than eight months, couldn’t get to the historical data and “best practices” conclusions it compiled during and after Katrina, the California wildfires in 2007, major floods in 2008 and other disasters.
FEMA says that it has resolved the problems and that relevant databases are backed up nightly and servers weekly.
n n n n n
In what some are calling a first step toward integrating women into the Army’s most elite ranks, the service’s special operations force is recruiting women soldiers to join “cultural support teams” to serve in combat theaters.
The Army’s special operations recruiting battalion has put out the call for women troops to join “Female Engagement Teams,” which will work in medical missions, humanitarian assistance, searches and seizures, and civil-military operations in war zones such as Afghanistan and parts of Iraq, where most male interaction with females is culturally verboten.
While U.S. Army commandos have been paired with female troops in the past, the alliances had been temporary. Now, women who are already in uniform are being invited to sign on to permanent units.
The women soldiers won’t go through the full special forces or infantry training, but they will undergo four to six weeks of field and classroom exercises at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. They must be able to carry 35 pounds of gear for six miles in just under two hours, and be familiar with the M4 assault rifles and M9 pistols they will be issued.
Training is slated to start in June, with deployments to follow in August.
E-mail SHNS correspondent Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl@shns.com.