President to Tour Southern California To Gauge Fire Efforts

FEMA and DHS also have a much more limited role in responding to wildfires.

Every year, authorities from local fire departments, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management work at a coordination center in Riverside, Calif., where they triage calls for firefighters, trucks and aircraft. Meanwhile, the governor's emergency services office prioritizes help from outside the state.

"FEMA really historically is not a player in that at all," said Richard A. Andrews, interim director of California's Office of Homeland Security in 2004 and 2005 and head of the state Office of Emergency Services from 1991 to 1998. "They basically are there to help pay the bills afterward."

In fact, Washington has followed California's lead. California's system for managing large fires was the model for measures adopted by the federal government after the 2001 terrorist attacks to help local, state and federal agencies jointly manage national emergencies and to share aid.

In that sense, California is both cursed and blessed by its frequent exposure to fires, floods, landslides and earthquakes, which increase training and funding for local emergency responders. San Diego, for example, installed a "reverse 911" phone system after the 2001 attacks that was used this week to automatically dial warnings to more than 350,000 homes in evacuation areas.

More broadly, state and local coordination, communication and planning for fires and other events are well advanced, built on decades of experience sharpened by the onset of dry inland winds each fall. "There is no hazard that is better practiced and experienced more frequently than the fire hazard in the state of California," agreed Dennis Mileti, professor and director emeritus of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Natural Hazards Center. He said that the response this week "is as good as it gets."

There is one area in which FEMA is indispensable: money.

Deborah Steffen, who retired last year as director of San Diego County's Office of Emergency Services and who served for more than a decade as a regional administrator with the state Office of Emergency Services, said FEMA's biggest role is in helping people and communities recover from disasters. But haggling over rebuilding payments is often bitterly disputed.

"The response ends up looking easy compared to the recovery, which goes on years and years," she said.

Yesterday, however, Bush delivered a simpler message: "I want the people in Southern California to know that Americans all across this land care deeply about them. . . . They can rest assured that the federal government will do everything we can to help put out these fires."