Professionalism

The hallmark of the Bush administration.

Although federal officials said Monday that new advisory flood maps are critical in guiding thousands of local homeowners waiting to restore or rebuild their homes, they acknowledged they are unlikely to meet their self-imposed deadline of releasing the maps by the end of March.

The advisories, the first step in updating flood maps for the entire New Orleans area, were scheduled to be made public no later than the end of this week, but representatives of FEMA and the federal Department of Homeland Security said producing maps for communities protected almost entirely by levees is a challenging, time-consuming process.

I'm not a cartographer, but I've managed some big projects in the past and I have to say, they're telling us this now?

Was this a surprise? How is it that, if they were supposed to be releasing them by the end of the week, they haven't known for several weeks now that they would miss the target? Did they not have milestone dates? Have they not been measuring their progress as they went along? It's not exactly management rocket science to look at things after the first month and say, um well, end of March isn't gonna happen at this rate. Sure, the maps are complicated pieces of work, but the management of the map-making process shouldn't be.

They need to come out quickly," said R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "But we want them to be right. They have to be right because of such a large percentage of the population living behind levees."

In a meeting at The Times-Picayune, Paulison and other officials declined to say when that might be, although he acknowledged that the lack of new base flood elevations -- they were last done in 1984 -- is delaying many homeowners as they make plans to repair or rebuild their homes.

"We want them out as badly as you do," Paulison said.

In preparing those maps, FEMA personnel have been working with hydrologists from the Army Corps of Engineers to make sure everything is as accurate as possible, Jamieson said. He said federal money will be released to homeowners based on the new advisories, which increases the need for accuracy.

"We don't have all the science and engineering to do it by the end of March," [FEMA's deputy director of Gulf Coast recovery Gil] Jamieson said.

So, like, thousands of people are waiting to start rebuilding their homes, they don't even have all the science and engineering done, and they didn't tell anyone they would miss their deadline until a couple of days before? How thoughtful.

It's the little things that mean so much.

(Scout, at First Draft, points out that, unless Paulison is living in a two-door sedan, he probably doesn't want them out as badly as some people do.)