TRIBUNE COLUMN

Another firefighter lashes out at FEMA’s inability to do the job

By TONY MESSENGER
Published Thursday, October 13, 2005

Jay Adams was fired for wearing a gray shirt.

His bosses wanted to see him in blue.

He said no, and their faces turned red.

He laughs about it now, but it’s really not funny.

Adams was among the 1,000 firefighters hired by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to go to the Gulf Coast and help victims of Hurricane Katrina. What could have been – and should have been – an attempt to use America’s finest to bring aid to people who really needed it has instead been shown for what it was – a not-so-veiled attempt to use firefighters to build up FEMA’s flagging reputation.

Adams is a proud firefighter from Charlotte, N.C. He speaks with a slow, Southern drawl that smacks of integrity and common sense. Like a college football coach from the region, when Adams talks, you can’t help but listen. That’s what I did as Adams talked about FEMA’s ridiculous attempt to use firefighters as public relations dummies. I listened to a man with pride talk about feeling used. Adams had come across my column from a week ago detailing a Missouri firefighter’s frustration with FEMA’s bureaucratic waste of important resources during our nation’s real time of need. He had a story that was even more compelling.

Adams and his fellow Charlotte firefighters were fired, not because they didn’t want to work, not because they couldn’t handle the job and not because they complained. They were fired for refusing to wear blue shirts flying FEMA’s flag.

“I am 33 years old,” Adams says. “I have been a career firefighter 14 years. I was a volunteer firefighter 15 years in addition to that. Without a doubt, this FEMA experience is the biggest disappointment in my life.”

Adams volunteered for the FEMA call-up before his department was even sent notice requesting firefighters. Two of his best friends in the world are New Orleans firefighters. After the hurricane hit, he couldn’t get them on the phone. “I was dying to do something,” he says.

Adams knew the job FEMA wanted the firefighters for was some sort of community relations. Still, he figured, firefighters in the field could do some good. He and several members of his department loaded up on the kind of gear they might need. They flew to Atlanta, and then, for a couple of days, they sat around waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. They had been called up for a week before they did anything.

For firefighters, men and women of action, it was anathema. The woman in charge of deployment, they said, quit one night. Their information wasn’t logged into the computer. Finally, they begged somebody to send them into the field. Eight members of the Charlotte team were sent to Mississippi. Their destination changed three times on the drive down. Finally, they ended up at Camp Barron Point, a center set up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Forrest County.

The next morning, the overwhelmed FEMA employee sent to lead them gathered the seven eight-person teams together for another meeting in which he explained he was having a tough time figuring out a deployment strategy.

“Let’s see, seven teams, seven counties,” Adams says. “How in the world do we figure this one out? Get MIT on the phone.”

Needless to say, Adams and his team of experienced professional firefighters eventually got to work. Their first stop was the emergency management operations center in Forrest County. The director of the center, a veteran of many hurricanes, had a suggestion. Ditch the FEMA shirts. “I think his direct quote was, ‘I don’t have the security personnel available for eight people walking around in this county in FEMA shirts,’ ” Adams recalls. “He was serious. We took him at his word.”

The people of the county were dying for FEMA support, Adams says, and there was much animosity toward the federal department. Making it worse was the fact that the firefighters sent out on behalf of FEMA had no information to offer about disaster relief. They were given fliers with phone numbers to call in a county in which working phones were scarce.

“We were there purely for show,” he says.

After a second day of not accomplishing much – they checked in at a shelter as requested and passed out a few fliers – the firefighters from Charlotte decided to speak up. They had been separated from two of their fellow firefighters, who ended up going out on their own, and with other emergency workers helped set up a makeshift disaster relief center in Pearlington, Miss. They sent their team leader to talk to the FEMA folks at the camp.

She came back with the news they had been fired.

“We were relieved of duty for refusing to wear our blue FEMA shirts,” Adams says.

Frustrated, they packed up and left. They turned in their FEMA gear and went to Pearlington to check on their colleagues. And then they made the long trek back to Charlotte, chagrined they didn’t feel like they had helped one bit.

“I consider us to be ‘do-ers,’ ” Adams says, “and we didn’t even get a chance. The whole prevailing FEMA attitude was, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re getting paid.’ That’s just not right.

“Firefighters in this nation have an unspoken bond with the people that need us,” Adams says.

“If you call, we will come as fast as we can to help make your problem better. FEMA needs to adopt this doctrine.”