Senate is right: FEMA must go.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

A Senate committee's recommendation to abolish FEMA is proper, but the new disaster response agency created in its stead "cannot be just a reshuffling of the deck chairs," cautions David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

"The new FEMA, whatever it may be called, must be an organization with broad responsibility to both prepare and respond to natural disasters and terrorist incidents--and the leader of this organization must have authority and support directly from the president to organize and control activities of other Federal agencies when responding to a disaster. It needs to be clear, from moment one, who is in charge."

Schanzer, the former Democratic staff director of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, indicates that, if a new agency is created, it should, like FEMA, be part of the Department of Homeland Security. "Removing this function from the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], as some have proposed, would be a mistake," Schanzer contends.

"We needed a new agency after 9/11 to better defend the United States from a...