FEMA Chief Michael Chertoff was asked at a congressional hearing which part of his head he uses for thinking.Posted: On the door of the flooded city hall in Iowa City
NEW ORLEANS -- After a string of record-breaking floods and disasters in the Midwest, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) instantly sprung into action, dispatching its most elite emergency response team to New Orleans.
"We heard on the news that Hurricane Katrina hit, and we aren't going to let the people of New Orleans down," said Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "That's a promise."
Just the sight of FEMA made New Orleans residents climb trees and strand themselves on rooftops hoping to avoid getting help from the agency, which, according to FEMA officials, just learned about Hurricane Katrina this week after accidentally taking a left at the Mississippi River instead of a right on its way to Iowa from Washington, D.C.
"What's FEMA?" asked Leroy St. Croix, a resident of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.
When told that FEMA was a disaster relief agency overseen by the federal government whose administrator ultimately answers to the president of the United States, St. Croix waved his hand dismissively.
"Black people don't care about George Bush," he said. "Isn't FEMA that company that makes those cancer-filled trailers?"
