Defining the DHS role vis-a-vis Katrina-type events

Defense Tech: Why Katrina Matters:

"But the City of New Orleans' ability to cope with a crisis isn't a matter of national security. The Department of Homeland Security's ability is. Ray Nagin isn't going to be responding to terrorist attacks. That's what DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and his team have been hired to do."

Except that, when the bomb goes off or the plane crashes, it is the mayor, or township supervisors, or county commissioners who will be in charge until the feds show up which might be anywhere from minutes to hours after the event. It is up to the locals to coordinate police, fire, EMS and other public sector responses.

Anyway, I included this link because it contains quotes from Department of Homeland Security's puff about what they are going to do. And there are links there to the DHS website, etc. All the buzz words are included - coordinated, efficient, comprehensive, pro-active, etc. But, this is all just plain silly.

Does anyone really expect that DHS is going to have a plan to deal with each contingency in each community in each of the nation's more than 2,000 counties? No. They will have some plans for moving in feds to beef up local security at special events like the Superbowl, or plans to protect key sites like the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. They might even come up with disaster plans for the 20 or 50 largest cities. But that still leaves a lot of territory not covered.

And, are they going to do everything with federal resources? They can federalize the local NG, they can bring in the regular and reserve armed forces, the coast guard, FBI, BATF, etc.; but they have no legal means to command local and state police, fire services and EMS, or highway maintenance and public works crews.