Salt Lake Tribune--Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA

[milkyway]

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
<snip>

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
<snip>

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They are screaming for help and this day was a waste."
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
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This was from yesterday's paper. It's probably been posted before, but it's pretty unbelievable so I wanted to make it available for those that hadn't seen it yet. I first saw a reference to this at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

[goclark]

1. yet another example of Chimpwimp's failure!

[Erika]

2. Yes, it was just posted

Since Utah voted overwhelmingly for Bush let it pay the costs for the photo ops.