After several months as the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in May R. David Paulison took the reins of the agency that was much maligned by media pundits following Hurricane Katrina. Paulison is a former U.S. fire administrator and a past chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department.

Now that you are officially sworn in, what are your immediate priorities?

I think that the immediate priorities are some of the stuff that we have been working on already, taking those lessons learned from Katrina and applying them to get this organization back on track and get ready for this hurricane season. It falls into several areas.

Logistics … it's a matter of having the right things at the right place at the right time. And so I've done a couple of things. One, in some cases, quadrupled the amount of supplies that we had. One example is we had 160 truckloads of [Meals Ready to Eat] prior to Hurricane Katrina. Now we have 770 truckloads of MRES in our warehouses right now. That's enough to feed 2 million people for a week.

On top of that, we have signed a memo of understanding with the Defense Logistics Agency, which is the logistics arm for the military, to be a backup for us, to resupply our warehouses as we empty those. They can also deliver directly down to states if it really gets to something the size of Katrina.

Thirdly, FEMA didn't have a tracking system on our trucks. Once they left the warehouse, we didn't have a clue where they went. So I purchased a very sophisticated GPS tracking system, and now we can track all of our tractor-trailers real time, where they go, down to what street corner they are sitting on. So we know if they've stopped or if they have gone off track, and we can tell what time they are going to be there. So it's a great business tool for us.

The other piece that I really wanted to work on and have is communications. There was a major breakdown in communications between the local and the state, the state and the federal government, and even inside the federal government itself. We did not have a solid unified command system set up, so we have put systems in place to make sure that has to happen. We have worked with [those] who have done hurricane exercises at the assistant secretary level, the deputy secretary level, and even the secretary level in the White House, making sure everyone understands what the National Response Plan is, that the Joint Field Office is going to be the hub and that is where we are going to have a Unified Command System so we're all working together on our planning for our next 12-hour blocks as we go along, so everybody is on the same page of what are goals are, what we are going to accomplish, and how we are going to do that. So that's going to resolve the protocol piece of communications.

The other piece is that we've purchased a lot of sophisticated satellite equipment — cell-type systems, satellite-type systems, even satellite video equipment — so we can beam back to the joint field office and to FEMA headquarters exactly what is going on and what is happening. That's going to work very well.

How many employees do you have within FEMA?

There are different levels of employees. Part of it is the full-time FEMA people: We have about 2,400 people, and we have about 1,800 of those positions filled right now. We also have [Cadre On-Response Employees], which can be two-year or four-year positions, and we have a number of those. And we have what are called Disaster Assistance Employees, and there are literally … 10,000 of those out there. And now they are very seasoned because of Hurricane Katrina. So we have different levels of people. As far as our full-time employees, we are a little less than 85% full. We are on a very aggressive hiring campaign to fill those slots.

Have those positions been posted yet?

Yes, and we're hiring them as quickly as we can. We have a couple hundred in the queue right now who have already applied, and we processed them. It's just a matter of getting them through security clearances and getting them on board. Also, as fast as we are hiring people, people are retiring. Week before last, we hired 40 people and lost 25, so it's like you're on a treadmill trying to play catch-up. But we are going to do that. I think in the long run this is going to be good for FEMA. We are doing a big changeover in people and bringing a lot of new people on board, and that's going to revitalize the organization.

I was with seven recently retired officers, and two of them said they are going to be working with the regional office in Chicago. I would think that getting some of that expertise back into FEMA would be valuable.

Absolutely. Also … the people I am bringing in at the management level are very experienced and very credentialed people. Bill Peterson is the Region VI director. The regional director for Region I up in Boston was the state regional director for Maine. The regional director for Region II was a previous regional director and has a fire service background. The person just brought in as my response director was an emergency manager out of Pittsburgh. My deputy is a 35-year career Coast Guard admiral. His last stint was at the Pacific fleet — Harvey Johnson is his name — tremendous operational experience. So those are the types of people that I am putting around me.… Most all of them have over 30 years of operational experience and a lot of credentials behind them.

Do you see your new position changing your relationship with the fire service?

Well, it's different, because I don't have the hands-on stuff that I had as a fire administrator. But I am purposely going to keep myself involved in the fire service. I didn't make it to the Metro [Chiefs Conference], but I will be at [Fire-Rescue] International, and I have been asked to speak at the IAFF conference, which I have accepted, and I am still going to a few state conferences. Yeah, I'm going to do as much with the fire service as I can because one thing my father told me is, “Never forget where you came from.” The support that I got out of the fire service was, for me, very humbling. So I'm going to make sure I don't forget where I came from.

How do you see the relationship between FEMA and the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy?

It's going to be different because USFA is not inside of FEMA anymore; it's in the DHS Preparedness Directorate. However, the Emergency Management Institute piece that I do oversee is on the same campus, so I'll be up there on a regular basis. I am going to force ourselves to make sure we maintain that relationship because the mission of FEMA and the mission of the fire service are very similar. We are about helping people, so I want to maintain that relationship with the fire academy and the USFA. Of course, Charlie Dickinson is the deputy now, and he is acting fire administrator, and we've been very close friends and are going to maintain that relationship.

What are the weak areas that you see in the relationship between the fire service and FEMA?

I don't know if it's a weakness, but it's where I'd like to see the fire service go — in the area of preparedness. I don't think there's anybody in a given community that has more credibility than the fire service.

One of the weaknesses that I see in this country is a lack of personal preparedness. I saw it in Katrina, I saw it in Rita and saw it very much so in Wilma: Individuals not taking care of themselves and their families prior to the hurricane so the first responders don't have to deal with it. There are people out there who can't take care of themselves, but for the most part, most of us can. The simple things you already know, like food, water, medicine, batteries, flashlights and all those types of things. We see that's not happening like I think it should be happening. I think that the fire service should step up, start preaching that, and really have an impact in their community.

And also in the critical infrastructure arena in individual communities: What I see in these storms is when the critical infrastructures go down — the water plants, the sewer plants, the power plants, all those critical infrastructures throughout the whole community — I think that the fire service can partner with the mayor's office, the emergency management office, the law enforcement side, the public works side and develop a cadre or a team to identify and evaluate the critical infrastructures in the city. How do you protect them or their resilience? How do you respond to them if something happens to them? I think the fire service can take the lead in that. I would like to see them step up and do that. So I don't see a weakness; I see where the fire service could head in another direction.

As part of the plans for FEMA response, is there anything that would help assist local fire departments, emergency agencies or police departments with housing and equipment so they can recover quickly?

That's another major issue that we had to deal with in Katrina and how do we do that within the confines of the Stafford Act, which tells us what we can and can't do. We are working on some of these issues, how to much more quickly get housing back to those areas that are devastated to the first responders.

What we ended up doing in Katrina was using a cruise ship for the first responders. I was criticized for some of that, but quite frankly, it was the right thing to do. It ended up being very cost-effective in the long run despite the initial comments about how expensive it was, as far as the per diem rate in New Orleans, which was much higher that what it cost to put people in a cruise ship.

So we are looking at innovative ways to do that. How do we get the local community back up and running? When they become much more self-sufficient, it makes our job easier. Part of that is getting police, fire, public works, EMS and emergency management back on their feet and in some decent housing.

Speaking of EMS, how do EMS and public health agencies fit into FEMA?

Well, we have the National Disaster Medical System in FEMA still, and of course we have the Metropolitan Medical Response System out there. The basic EMS piece of it is more toward the Department of Health & Human Services side, although we do have pieces of it. It's part of the big picture; EMS obviously has a big role to play in any disaster response that we have. We have USAR teams that go out there. We dispatched NDMS teams to the local hospitals to get them back up and running and handle those emergency needs, so it all ties in together.

Do you envision adding more USAR teams?

I don't think so, not right now. We have the 28 and so far that has been adequate for us. Even in Katrina, we deployed almost all the teams down there. That was a pretty big event. I need to step back and refocus on the USAR teams. I think they didn't receive the attention they should have in the past, and I'm going to make sure they get that attention now. I would rather look at that first before adding more teams.

What advice or direction would you offer fire chiefs on working with local FEMA representatives?

I think they need to start developing those relationships early. We are trying to do it from our side, too, so it's not a one-way street. One of things that we have done at the state level, is we have already pre-identified our federal coordinating officers to work with the states to make sure they know who those people are. The last place you want to develop relationships is on a disaster site. So I would advise the fire chiefs to reach to the local FEMA representatives — in fact, reach out with your whole city and develop those relationships now — so you know what to expect: what we can deliver, what we can't deliver.

Also, set up how you're going to distribute supplies when we deliver them down there. It's a major breakdown that we have. Our job is to deliver the supplies to the state; the state then delivers them down to the local communities; then they are distributed to our [points of distribution]. I was just talking with the Dade County, Fla., people, and they have identified certain departments in their county … to respond to where those PODS are going to be and handle the distribution to the public of the food, water, ice and tarps that we hand out. The quicker that gets set up, the easier it is for us to distribute the stuff.