Maybe Somebody Saw 'Gone With the Wind' and Got Confused?

This instalinked Salt Lake Tribune story is to blame for the new forehead-shaped dent on the top of my desk. Summary: 1,000 search & rescue experts spent Sunday in a FEMA orientation class in Atlanta. Excerpts:

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.

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.

On the other hand, there is often a lot of humdrum work that needs to be done in things like this, as well as lots of groups tripping all over each others' feet in their zeal, so I understand the need to have participants assembled and ready in a staging area until they can be assigned specific tasks. And, there were probably plenty of rarin'-to-go, impatient alphas who look forward to telling their grandchildren that they "were there after Katrina" in the same way the therapists referred to earlier wanted validation from Oklahoma City. But back to the first hand again, why were all those trained firemen in Georgia while Sean Penn and Jesse Jackson were in New Orleans?