Last week, when fires were popping up all over Southern California like Pinkberry Yogurt Shops — and doing almost as much damage — the wonderful folks at FEMA staged a bogus press conference. You may have heard about it. It looked like reporters were asking questions but it was really FEMA staff members asking prearranged questions and…well, it was another embarrassment to an organization that you'd think, by this time, would be darn hard to embarrass.
The director of external affairs of FEMA, John "Pat" Philbin, is now the former director of external affairs for FEMA. In an interview today (a real one, oddly enough), he made the following statement that I felt needed to be stared at for a few minutes…
I did not have good situational awareness of what was happening.
Well, there's part of the problem right there. "Situational awareness?" We have a guy here who doesn't even know how to say, "I didn't know what the hell was going on," let alone figure it out.