Why is Obama’s FEMA Director in Sunny Florida While Rhode Island is Under Water?

The people of Rhode Island are experiencing the worst flood in two centuries.

The Providence Journal: The worst arrived in the early hours of Wednesday, an indomitable force of water creeping ever higher through the darkness. Thousands of tired homeowners watched their basement steps incrementally vanish beneath it. Soaked National Guardsmen along Route 95 in Warwick saw it spill over the sandbags they had worked for hours to stack.

By dawn, the unparalleled flood had transformed the Rhode Island landscape into islands of isolation, the region’s web of roadways broken, whole sections of neighborhoods stranded and without power.

Gridlock greeted thousands of commuters weaving like mice through a maze of alternate routes around Route 95, the state’s most vital transportation artery, closed in Warwick by the flooding Pawtuxet River.

And with a half-dozen sewage treatment plants compromised or overwhelmed by the most destructive flood in the state’s recorded history, officials braced for an environmental disaster with huge public health and financial ramifications.

As far as I know President Obama hasn’t even flown over the area to assess the damage. That’s kind of odd, considering how the White House website bashed his predecessor just hourss after he took office.

The new White House website unveiled by President Barack Obama’s team Tuesday includes a shot at former President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

Under the “agenda” portion of the site regarding Katrina, it reads: “President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”

“President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina,” the statement on the site continues. “Citing the Bush Administration’s ‘unconscionable ineptitude’ in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims.”

Considering the harsh rhetoric aimed a President Bush, you’d think Obama would show more interest in the disaster in Rhode Island. But no, he’s in North Carolina today campaigning. Well then, what about his FEMA director? He’s busy too, enjoying the sun in Florida.

On Wednesday, one day after President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for flood-stricken Rhode Island authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency “to coordinate all disaster relief efforts” for the state, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate was in sunny Orlando, Fla., giving a speech.

FEMA on Thursday told CNSNews.com that Fugate had been in Florida this week, attending a hurricane preparation conference, but despite repeated inquiries from CNSNews.com, administration spokesmen would not say specifically where Fugate was as of Thursday morning, or whether he had any plans to go to R.I. FEMA’s statement said that Fugate’s deputy would go to R.I.

Someone needs to alert the media to President Obama’s catastrophic failure in emergency planning and response.