FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate Opens up About Haiti, Ethics and Technology

By: Marty Pastula on March 22, 2010

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[Photo: FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate giving a speech in Washington, D.C. Photo by David Kidd.]

Craig Fugate has served as FEMA administrator since May 2009, after having served as the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management since 2001.

Fugate sat down for a rare one-on-one interview with Emergency Management magazine and discussed the Haiti earthquake, ethics in emergency management and technology issues.

We all watched in horror at what happened in Haiti and everyone wanted to help. You put out a reminder to the emergency response community that the State Department has the lead on foreign disaster assistance, and U.S. assets should deploy only if tasked to do so. What will it take to avoid the well meaning responders deploying to disaster sites when not requested?

Self-deployments are the bane of any incident commander. When you have people showing up, they’re adding to your problems, not to the solutions. That's why we always go back to incident command, mutual aid, pre-existing arrangements and training.

It's no different in Haiti. We had a lead agency; we had an international response; we had finite transport capability; we had one runway to get in for initial response. And while many people would like to be there and help, you have to rely on the people on the ground to determine the priorities.

It’s no different from any other disaster we’ve seen. It’s oftentimes easy when you're not there to make decisions. In reality, it becomes counterproductive.

The beauty of the Obama administration’s direction is that even though this was USAID [United States Agency for International Development], the president put the entire federal family behind that response, which is really how it operates if we have a disaster in the United States where FEMA has that coordination role.

It's the ability of the president to say, “This is not your typical international incident. This is a country we have a lot of history with. It's a country whose proximity says we can get there quickly, and we have a lot of resources.” But we need to use our mechanisms, in this case USAID.

If you truly believe in the Incident Command System, if you truly believe in planning and managing emergencies, you must understand that if you go without coordination, if you just show up, you may actually impede the response and cause more damage.

You were noted for having delivered FEMA employees a service message on ethics. Can you elaborate on what you told them and why? Is this part of changing the organization’s culture?

I don’t think it’s a culture change, but I guess it helps to hear from the top that it’s very difficult to be a public servant and accept the fact that people may be using their jobs for personal gain. If you’re a public servant, it’s a high responsibility and there are so many opportunities for people when dealing with large contracts and the private sector, that even the appearance of impropriety can damage our reputation and we lose trust in each other.

I hold myself to a very high standard and hold my managers to a very high standard. If you’re in this for personal gain, to make a profit or steal stuff, people say, “Well, everybody kind of fudges on their time sheets, rounds out their travel.” I don’t. We have a duty to the taxpayers, and if we cannot hold ourselves to that standard, how can we expect the public to trust us in very complex disaster responses where we're making decisions and our ethical motives are called into question?

You’ve spoken about the positive qualities of emergency managers; can you share some of those?

People who get into this business and think that our job is to take charge, lead the response and tell everybody how to do their jobs get very frustrated and don't last very long.

We facilitate, we coordinate and we build teams. Probably the best analogy is we’re like the general manager or the coach of the team in that there are people who are part of the team who are experts in what they do.

For example, if everybody tried to determine how to get fuel for their generators, that would take away from their mission, which may have been search and rescue, law enforcement or public health. But if you have one member of the team that everyone knew was going to take care of the fuel, that’s one less issue tying your time up, and you can focus on your primary mission.

But that’s not something that people are used to doing. In a disaster, we’re oftentimes bringing people together on a day-to-day basis who don’t usually work together. The challenge is to build that trust and environment where people work as a team, give up some autonomy and understand that they’re going to be empowered to do what they do best with the team supporting them.

So I look at emergency managers and say, “If you think you’re going to be looking out over the room barking orders and telling everybody what to do, you’re going to have a very short run.”

But if you’re a person who likes to build teams, get people to succeed and have the ability to deal with a variety of situations, then you’re going to enjoy your job.

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