It was an ugly, ugly, ugly plan. Basically, the Powers That Be, notably the military and FEMA, would determine zones that were recoverable fast. Energy would be concentrated on those zones first. As they got back on their feet, they would be used to springboard movement into zones that were just so totally fucked up they hadn't been recoverable. Lightly wounded (not many of them, NYC comes to mind) would be more or less on their own.
So now we turn once again to the Bitch. Tum-tum-ta-dum-tum, Hail to the Chief and all that.
She's been going quietly insane in my opinion. The news media did not agree. The Democrat Congress did not agree.
Everyone else in the world fucking agreed.
In March, in the midst of the worst of the Plague, the Congress had passed the Biological Crisis Emergency Act, effectively surrendering power to the President "for the duration of the biological and economic emergency."
Biological and economic.
What is the definition of an economic emergency? Okay, the world's economic turbine coming apart like an explosion is one definition. But what constitutes the end of the emergency? According to the news media, blips in the stock market pre-Plague were "emergencies." A quarter point rise in the unemployment index was "an emergency."
Okay, okay, fifty percent unemployment, as far as anyone could determine, (and, remember, thirty percent population drop) was an emergency. But at what point did it stop becoming an emergency?
Fortunately, they put a sunset date of one year from its signing for it to end but there was a proviso for an automatic renewal with a simple majority. And there was no stated limits. It suspended just about every right a person could have. Notably, habeas corpus and property rights.
Okay, there were "issues." There were a lot of dead people and stuff that was lying around that could be used. Factories that had been owned by families, the local members of which were dead and the distant ones unreachable. Or, hell, the corporation had just shut its doors and was in receivership. Farms that were lying fallow due to the Plague. Fine, whatever. There's a term called "eminent domain" for those. Basically, if there wasn't an immediately recognized heir or owner the government could and should take it over. Then sell it to someone who can run it.
The Emergency Powers Act cut through that. It also meant that there were no legal roadblocks to forced immunization. (Not that the Bitch ever got around to that.) And there were areas where social order had broken down completely. They were supposed to be placed in the category of "let them die" but . . . There's the Bitch deciding what is Right and What Should Be Done. Despite experts who were advising her that SHE HAD CHOSEN for their EXPERTISE.
Bush had been lambasted for his response to Katrina and New Orleans. Incorrectly IMO; the people who really cocked up were the local authorities. Look at Mississippi if you can find the information. There were entire counties that were wiped out. The storm surge that hit the Mississippi coast was higher than the tsunami that had hit Indonesia. There were bodies on top of a Walmart. They just picked up and did what they could. They called for Federal assistance right away, they followed their pre-disaster plans.
But the bottomline was Bush got hammered. And one of the things he got hammered on, justifiably, was his choice of head of FEMA.
I won't get into the hundreds of thousands of words I've read on that particular issue. Bottomline was that Michael Brown was not the guy to lead the agency. For so many different reasons it's scary.
But FEMA's actual response was as near textbook as you could get. Mostly because Brown realized he was totally out of his depth and let his people handle it.
The problem being, nobody really understood disaster response in the media. And they fucking hated Bush. Even Fox didn't really like him.
Look, in a local major disaster like that, FEMA wasn't even supposed to be up and running for seventy-two hours. Three days. That was after they were requested by local authorities.
But on day two, hell with the skies barely clearing, people were asking "Where is FEMA?"
FEMA doesn't actually have all that many full-time employees. Disasters, by their very definition, don't occur all the fucking time. So most of its response specialists are contractors who do other things, or are retired and hang out, waiting for the next response.
They had to be called in. People had to go in and find areas to set up. It takes time.
Even then, they don't do most of the work. They coordinate the work. More contractors, and military, and local government do the actual work. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Asking "where is FEMA" in a disaster is like asking "Why aren't the managers here?" The managers are important, don't get me wrong. But they don't get the bodies cleared.
So Bush was roundly criticized for responding in damned near textbook manner. Despite Michael Brown.
Warrick, though, knew it was a major political point. So even during her campaign, she found a person that she said was to be her head of FEMA in the event of her inevitable election.
Brody Barnes was a former Army colonel. He'd started as a tanker but then got into specialized areas of what's called "civil affairs," that is dealing with problems of a local populace.
He'd been an unnoticed but major reason that the rebuilding in Iraq, which went way better than the media ever could realize, went as well as it did. His main degree was industrial management so he wasn't an engineer but a guy who understood how to get very disparate parts of a complicated system to start working together.
He retired at twenty years and got a job almost immediately as assistant director of the California Emergency Management Agency. The director was a politically appointed position. A year after Brody joined, the director "voluntarily" resigned and Brody was appointed by the Republican governor. Like similar positions in the federal government, it required the consent of the very liberal California Senate. He passed the vote with acclaim. He was definitely a rising star.
By the time the election of 2016 rolled around he'd dealt with multiple major brushfire outbreaks, three minor earthquakes, mudslide seasons aplenty and one fairly major earthquake. He also looked good on TV. Square-jawed, soft-spoken, dry sense of humor, good soundbites.
He accepted the nod as a potential FEMA head and spoke widely in favor of Warrick. He liked her domestic policies. When asked about her military policies he politely declined to comment. Not his area. Ask someone else.
He was appointed head of FEMA one month after Warrick went into office. He was head of FEMA when the Plague hit.
He was one of the people with testicles trying to get Warrick to stick to some sort of plan. Wasn't happening.