On Jan. 21, R. David Paulison, resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He served at the national level for almost eight years, first as U.S. Fire Administrator then as head of FEMA's preparedness division before being sworn in as the first undersecretary for Federal Emergency Management in 2006. Since retiring, Paulison has started his own consulting business.

You were asked to become acting FEMA director after the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina — and had the monumental task of turning the agency around. How did find the right people for that task?

The good thing about being the U.S. Fire Administrator is that I knew a lot of people who I really could really trust, and I started bringing them in. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get people, despite the fact that FEMA had been brow-beaten. I think I was most surprised to hear that these people were coming to work for me, not for FEMA. And I wasn't bringing people in because of their political affiliations; I was bringing people in because they were good.

You mention your strong ties to fire, but what about including the police and law enforcement?

FEMA had inherited all these grants — law-enforcement and port-security grants — and we didn't have a relationship with law enforcement. So I created a law enforcement advisory position inside of FEMA. I brought Rick Ensey of Los Angeles, who had been police chief in Salt Lake City during the Olympics. He had a great reputation in the law-enforcement community.

I also started speaking at all the law-enforcement events developed a relationship. I got them to trust me because I had their grants and they needed to know that I wouldn't take the law-enforcement grants and turn them into fire grants. Then I brought law enforcement in to help us write the [grant] guidance, and that helped develop a greater relationship between FEMA and the law enforcement community.

How are you handling not being the FEMA director?

Not very well! Actually, what I really miss is the people. I developed some great friendships inside of FEMA. There are some great people there. They work their hearts out and get very little credit, but they are some of the most dedicated people I have met.

I will admit I did get a little antsy when the floods were backing up in North Dakota. I started thinking, "they need to be doing this" and "they need to be doing that" — and they were. Nancy Ward, who was the acting FEMA administrator, and those career people are doing a great job.

Are they in contact with you?

I have a one-year prohibition from dealing with anyone in FEMA, particularly about work. They could call me for advice about particular issues, but there hasn't been a need to, and to me that's a sign of success. When you walk away from an organization, does it survive? If it doesn't, you didn't do a very good job.

Just before you left FEMA, I saw you were using Twitter.com.

We're missing something with personal preparedness in the community. I don't care how much we push, we have not been able to convince enough people that they need to be taking care of themselves. So we wanted to try different mechanisms that get out to people.

I love to read the newspaper, but a lot of people don't do that, they go to the Web. So these young, really smart kids I've been bringing into FEMA said, "Why don't we do a Twitter?" So we did a press conference to see how it would work. We had a great conference, but it gave our internal affairs an idea that YouTube is [a better] avenue to get the message out. So now we see it happening in the federal government, but I think it started with us in FEMA with that live Twitter thing.