Why do not we not use the Powell Doctrine for natural disasters.?

Question

Ok obviously we can not ever stop things like hurricanes, forest fires, or earthquakes. That said when they happen how come we do not just immiditatly pour in resources to the area. For instance if a disaster needs 1000 responders why do we not right off the bat send 5000. I know we need to be prepared for contigencies elsewhere but this is America we should have the resources.

I never said every fire truck in the nation should head towards San Diego, but we have resources throughout this nation that can be brought to bear while still leaving enough capabilities to deal with things that could come up elsewhere.

Again why hope for the best ok so with this system they send exactly what is needed. What if things are worse than expected it is should be common sense to send more resources than what you think you will need.

Answer 1

Two reasons -- first, there are only so many resources in any given area -- and shipping them in from other parts of the country costs money -- and somebody has to pay for that.

But more importantly -- taking them away from one area makes another area deficient -- and what happens if you guess wrong?

Example -- let's say they used that logic to send five times as many firefighters to the Malibu and Orange county fires in the LA area -- and then the big fires hit in San Diego county -- suddenly, all those people who were taken away from everywhere else find they are needed somewhere else -- and if they were taken away from San Diego -- that just added hours to the response time, which costs lives.

Answer 2

Here's the major problem we have here in Ca. The experts from the State and Counties told the Legislators that this was going to happen two or three years ago. That they needed to put the special tax for natural disasters into the resources to fight multi-fires in our state. They did nothing but divert the funds to crap projects. Now we have over 1700 homes destroyed over a half million in San Diego County alone evacuated. The San Diego fire is reported to be arson. Another was started by a construction crew welding. The news is reporting some jerk in the San Bernardino Mountains starting spot fires. Look to our State Capitol for the real responsibility for the lack of resources to fight them all.

Answer 3

Not to change the subject but.... as long as the environmentalist continue to adhere to a policy of a "no touching" the natural environment, California is always going to have this problem. Eventually the rest of the nation needs to say enough is enough. Much of this can be solved by using sensible clearing and back burning programs along with a multi-tiered natural resource program. There are ways to prevent these fires from becoming this bad ahead of time but the loony birds in the greenpeace movement have shut down all chances of implementing them. After this round of federal help, I think the nation should insist on following a common sense plan to prevent a widespread tragedy such as this OR refuse to bail these counties and states out anymore!

Answer 4

The government has a system for all risk response to disasters. It's called National Incident Management System (NIMS). When something occurs such as 911, the shuttle crash, hurricanes, fires the appropriate number of resources are sent if they are available. There are Incident Management Teams (IMT) and Area Management Teams (AMT) to manage these incidents.

Answer 5

Why? The federal government didn't send millions of dollars to Californians when there was a huge earthquake there. Why they ever gave money to Katrina victims is beyond me.