FEMA deploys first responders--for PR.(Federal Emergency Management Agency, public relations)

"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 ...