There has been a lot of discussion lately about the subject of today’s site. A lot of those discussions have focused on how slow it was in responding to the recent hurricane natural disaster in the gulf coast of our country. Some of the criticism was deserved, and some of it wasn’t. What did become clear was that there is a lot of misunderstanding about what the mission of this department really is, and how it is supposed to function. So I thought a visit to the official Web site would be in order.

The name of the site is FEMA, which stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency - a former independent agency that became part of the new Department of Homeland Security in March 2003 - is tasked with responding to, planning for, recovering from, and mitigating against disasters. Many do not realize that it can trace its roots to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire. In the century that followed, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times in response to hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters…

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