FEMA apologizes for FAKE news conference on fires

Who's apologizing now?
Dumb ol' FEMA - what were they thinking?!?

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California's wildfires that no news organizations attended.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.

We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. "Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received." No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.

Sorry, those evacuee numbers are exaggerated

Duh. Only 27,000 registered at Qualcomm staduim. From LA Observed

Today's LAT devotes a story — and three bylines — to casting doubt on the claims of a million fire evacuations that the paper reported earlier. For one thing, many people told to go stayed put. For another thing, nobody counts. For another, the traffic didn't appear to add up to anything close to a million people on the move.

Despite widespread estimates that as many as 1 million evacuees fled Southern California's wildfires, the number of people displaced from their homes at any one time appears to have been substantially lower....

Numerous news organizations, including The Times, had estimated the total number evacuated at more than 800,000, with many outlets placing the number displaced at 1 million. Some San Diego officials have made the comparison to the Gulf Coast's mass evacuation when Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago, when 1.2 million left Greater New Orleans ahead of the approaching storm, according to a study by Louisiana State University.

"We've evacuated more people than were evacuated in Katrina," San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said Wednesday.

That statement now seems imprecise.Ya think? Evacuees did spread out as far as Las Vegas, but even in San Diego only 27,000 checked in at the public shelters, including Qualcomm Stadium. There are about 10,000 hotel rooms in the San Diego area.

Glenn Beck: They deserved to burn

Who SHOULD BE apologizing now?

On the October 22 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, host Glenn Beck stated, "I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." Beck continued: "There are a few people that hate America. But I don't think the Democrats are those. I think there are those posing as Democrats that are like that." Beck's comment came as forest fires ravaged parts of Southern California, leaving one person dead, four firefighters wounded, and forcing about 1,500 people from their homes, according to The New York Times.

What a nutbag. Hey, Glenn, what goes around comes around.