Paulison, 59, has been acting director of the agency since Michael Brown was forced to step down for his mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.
Tens of thousands of New Orleanians, most of them African Americans, were left stranded for days without food, water and medical care while television cameras broadcast the scenes live to a horrified nation.
A number of top fire chiefs around the country have turned down the job because it was a political hot potato, according to news reports over the past week.
Katrina flooded the fabled jazz city of New Orleans on August 29, killing an estimated 1,300 people in the state of Louisiana. FEMA was criticized not only for its slow reaction, but also for failing to prepare adequately for the force 4 storm that experts had been warning about for years.
Earlier Thursday, an international committee ensured that there will never be another Hurricane Katrina, striking the name and four others from a list used to name the storms.
The international hurricane committee of the World Meteorological Organization decided to take Katrina, Rita, Dennis, Stan and William off the list of hurricane names that is recycled every six years.
Rita reached the highest strength on the five-level scale used to measure hurricanes before hitting Louisiana and Texas on September 24.
Wilma reached the lowest central pressure of any hurricane in recorded history and blasted Mexico and Florida. Dennis pummelled Cuba in early July and also caused devastation in Jamaica and Haiti before reaching Florida.
Stan, although a weaker hurricane, triggered torrential rainfall in Mexico and Central America that caused mudslides in the region that killed hundreds of people.
Last year's Atlantic season had 27 named storms and 15 hurricanes, both records. 2005 was also the first year that the list of names ran out and new storms had to be named after letters in the Greek alphabet. The five retired names are also a record - there had only been three years in which four names were retired.
For 2011, the next time last year's list will be used, the five names will be replaced by Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney.
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