Well, I just stumbled across this and haven't seen mention of it yet so I'll give it an entry.
If FEMA had 1,000 volunteer firefighters right now, what would they do with them?
If your first guess is that they'd sit them down in a hotel room in Atlanta and make them sit through workshops on sexual harrassment and community relations as a preliminary to going out and hand out fliers in disaster areas... you're a better guesser than I am.
Of course this is the kind of job that calls for their skills, it's not the kind of thing just ANY volunteer could do...
ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
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.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
AND:
First assignment handed out to a group of 50 skilled fire and emergency rescue personnel?
"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. "