FEMA will take the lead role and the National Response Plan is replaced with the National Response Framework.From WWL…

In the first
overhaul of the nation’s emergency response system since Hurricane
Katrina, government officials announced Tuesday that the Federal
Emergency Management Agency will once again take the lead role in
disaster response and that it will use an amenable, computer-driven
doctrine to coordinate federal, state, and local resources.

The so-called “National Response Framework” announced by Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is a 90-page electronic document
that can be changed by local emergency officials if they find kinks in
its guidelines after responding to an incident. It replaces the
427-page “National Response Plan” that emphasized a response to
terrorists attacks and was set in stone when hurricanes Katrina and
Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005.

And it looks like they may actually have a framework that state and locals can live with. FromWaPo…

State leaders, who condemned an early draft of the 90-page plan as
lacking substance and ignoring their input, praised the administration
this week for listening to their complaints and reestablishing a
federal-state hierarchy that predated the Sept 11, 2001, attacks and
DHS’s formation in 2003.

“They changed. It came around 180 degrees,” said Tim Manning, director of homeland security and emergency management forNew Mexico
and spokesman for the National Emergency Management Association, whose
members include his counterparts in the 49 other states. “The country
will have a much better response with this plan than we had with the
previous plan,” which was finished just nine months before Katrina
struck.

And a quote fromBrownie…

“They’ve finally woken up and gone back to, in essence, the old [plan]
that said who’s on first, which is what we needed,” Brown said. “What’s
most important is for states and locals to know who’s in charge. If
they’re happy with it, that means they’re going back to the earlier
FEMA and that’s good news.”

Andhere is some wanking from …Joey Lieberman:

“I am
particularly pleased the final national response framework, unlike an
earlier draft, recognizes the larger role the post-Katrina act gave to
the FEMA Administrator,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., one of
several officials who applauded the new disaster plan.

“But this is still just a framework,” he said. “The success of the plan
will depend on the operational plans FEMA develops. We still have a
long way to go.”

That from the man who hada big hand in screwing this all up to begin with.