Nation's emergency planners take a pass on FEMA post

The White House seems to be having a difficult time filling ol' Brownie's position with FEMA. Understandable, since anyone familiar with the Katrina response (to this very day we're paying some $20,000 a month for unused trailers parked in Arkansas), or with Michael Brown's testimony regarding the hellish bureaucracy of FEMA and Homeland Security, would run screaming in the other direction when the offer came in.

The calls went out across the nation, as Bush administration officials asked the country's most seasoned disaster response experts to consider the job of a lifetime: FEMA director. But again and again, the response over the past several months was the same: "No thanks."

Unconvinced that the administration is serious about fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency or that there is enough time actually to get it done before President Bush's second term ends, seven of these candidates for director or another top FEMA job said in interviews that they had pulled themselves out of the running.

"You don't take the fire chief job after someone has burned down the city unless you are going to be able to do it in the right fashion," said Ellis M. Stanley, general manager of emergency planning in Los Angeles, who said he was one of those called.

Now, with the next hurricane season only two months away, the Bush administration has finally come up with a convenient but somewhat embarrassing solution. Mr. Bush, several former and current FEMA officials said, intends to nominate R. David Paulison, a former fire official who has been filling in for the past seven months, to take on the job permanently.