FEMA Spokesman: “Gustav Is A Big Stinking Disappointment”

A spokesman for FEMA today told a hastily assembled Orleans Parish news conference that Hurricane Gustav was “a big stinking disappointment, kind of a letdown, really.”

Sheldon Bonder, FEMA chief of public relations, told reporters that after the big buildup the storm had received, “You kind of expected more rain, more wind, more destruction. I mean, we’re not in the business of wishing for more human suffering, but frankly, I wish there had been a little more human suffering.”

Bonder explained that FEMA, the Louisiana National Guard, and other state and federal agencies were looking forward to proving themselves capable of handling a major disaster in the wake of their spectacular failure with Hurricane Katrina.

“We kind of feel like we got ready to have a big party,” Bonder told reporters, “and nobody came. We had 20,000 cots in the Superdome, and lots of dump trucks to take the human waste to the Gulf of Mexico. We had a system of beads to give out to people who were trapped in their homes, which they could trade for rescue by helicopter or by rowboat. We had condos with marble bathrooms—120,000 of them—to be airlifted into Jefferson Parish in case people’s houses got flooded away. And now…nothing.”

Bonder said that he and other officials and volunteers would be entitled to free counseling for PNTSD, or Post Non-Traumatic Stress Disorder, “which comes when you think you’re going to be a big hero and instead you’re kind of sitting around the Superdome with Emiril, waiting for someone to cook dinner for.”

Asked by reporters whether he was considered that New Orleans residents might not evacuate the next time a major storm is announced, if they believed that the government had been “crying wolf” this time, a saddened Bonder shook his head.

“If I may speak for all of my colleagues and co-workers,” he said, “quite frankly, from our point of view, there isn’t going to be a next time. You can only get cranked up so many times for a storm of the century before you start to feel a little, well, discouraged."