FEMA deploys first responders--for PR.

"As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters--his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week--a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta," reported the September 6 Salt Lake Tribune. "Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they ... learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA."

Eager to do what they could to help hurricane and flood victims, many of the firefighters gave voice to their disgust and frustration. This earned a rebuke from FEMA spokesperson Mary Hudak, who chastised the rescue workers for being excessively concerned about innocent Americans and insufficiently devoted to federal image maintenance.

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said Hudak, who insisted that the fire chiefs who had assigned the firefighters to federal duty knew the nature of the assignment. "The initial call to action very specifically says we're looking for two-person fire teams to do community relations," she said. "So if there is a breakdown [in communication], it was likely in their own departments."

That's right: the feds are never responsible for anything that goes wrong.

The FEMA "call to action" requested firefighters with very specific technical skills who were physically fit and capable of working in bad conditions. Yet as Portage (Indiana) Assistant Fire Chief Bill Lundy recalled, "We were going to be given shirts and hats with a phone number on it and flyers, and sent to shelters, and we were going to pass out flyers."

"There was almost a fight" when the nature of the assignment was made clear, recalled Portage Assistant Fire Chief Joe Calhoun. "'There was probably 700 firefighters sitting in the room getting this training, and it dawned on them what we were going to be doing. And then it got bad from there." Lundy and Calhoun, who had specialized training that would have been very valuable in a rescue effort, were required to undergo an eight-hour course on sexual harassment and equal opportunity employment procedures. Neither was assigned to conduct rescues or provide medical aid.