Katrina exposes complete disarray at the top

[digital7]

WASHINGTON - The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."

If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a terrorist attack of similar dimensions. "This is what the department was supposed to be all about," said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS's former inspector general. "Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11."

"We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably," said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress." With Katrina, he noted that "we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack," there will be no warning.

Indeed, the warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.

But several current and former senior officials charged that those worries were never accorded top priority -- either by FEMA's management or their superiors in DHS. Even when officials held a practice run, as they did in an exercise dubbed "Hurricane Pam" last year, they did not test for the worst-case scenario, rehearsing only what they would do if a Category 3 storm hit New Orleans, not the Category 4 power of Katrina. And after Pam, the planned follow-up study was never completed, according to a FEMA official involved.

"The whole department was stood up, it was started because of 9/11 and that's the bottom line," said C. Suzanne Mencer, a former senior homeland security official whose office took on some of the preparedness functions that had once been FEMA's. "We didn't have an appropriate response to 9/11, and that is why it was stood up and where the funding has been directed. The message was . . . we need to be better prepared against terrorism."

The roots of last week's failures will be examined for weeks and months to come, but early assessments point to a troubled Department of Homeland Security that is still in the midst of a bureaucratic transition, a "work in progress," as Mencer put it. Some current and former officials argued that as it worked to focus on counterterrorism, the department has diminished the government's ability to respond in a nuts-and-bolts way to disasters in general, and failed to focus enough on threats posed by hurricanes and other natural disasters in particular. From an independent Cabinet-level agency, FEMA has become an underfunded, isolated piece of the vast DHS, yet it is still charged with leading the government's response to disaster.

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."

The DHS experiment is so far-flung that the department's leadership has focused much of its attention simply on the massive complications that resulted from creating one entity out of agencies as varied as the U.S. Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Transportation Security Administration. When Chertoff took office earlier this year, he made his top priority an entirely new bureaucratic reorganization less than two years after the department's creation, dubbed the "second-stage review." The review, still pending, recommends taking away a key remaining function, preparedness planning, from FEMA and giving it to "a strengthened department preparedness directorate."

The procedures for what to do when the inevitable disaster hit were also subjected to a bureaucratic overhaul, still unfinished, by the department. Indeed, just last Tuesday, as New Orleans was drowning and DHS officials were still hours away from invoking the department's highest crisis status for the catastrophe, some department contractors found an important e-mail in their inboxes.

Attached were two documents -- one more than 400 pages long -- that spelled out in numbing, acronym-filled detail the planned "national preparedness goal." The checklist, called a Universal Task List, appeared to cover every eventuality in a disaster, from the need to handle evacuations to speedy urban search and rescue to circulating "prompt, accurate and useful" emergency information. Even animal health and "fatality management" were covered.

But the documents were not a menu for action in the devastated Gulf Coast. They were drafts, not slated for approval and release until October, more than four years after 9/11.

"Basically, this is the rules of engagement for national emergency events, whether natural or manmade. It covers every element of what you would have expected to already have been in place," said the contractor who provided the e-mail to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because he feared jeopardizing his firm's work. "This is the federal government template to engage, and this is being discussed in draft form."

But after 9/11, FEMA lost out in the massive bureaucratic shuffle.

Not only did its Cabinet status disappear, but it became one of 22 government agencies to be consolidated into Homeland Security. For a time, recalled Ervin, even its name was slated to vanish and become simply the directorate of emergency preparedness and response until then-DHS Secretary Tom Ridge relented.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from hurricane-prone states fought a rear-guard action against FEMA's absorption. "What we were afraid of, and what is coming to pass, is that FEMA has basically been destroyed as a coherent, fast-on-its-feet, independent agency," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.). In creating DHS, "people were thinking about the possibility of terrorism," said Walter Gillis Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. "They weren't thinking about the reality of a hurricane."

Hurricanes were not totally absent from the calculations about the new department, according to several former Bush administration officials. Bush tapped his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to supervise DHS's creation; a decade earlier, Card had been personally deputized by Bush's father to go to Florida and take charge of the much-criticized response to Hurricane Andrew.

"We definitely did worry about it," recalled Richard A. Falkenrath, who served as a White House homeland security adviser at the time DHS was being formed. "We knew we should do no harm to the disaster management side. The leadership of the White House knows the political significance of disasters."

[Orisha]

I feel sick.

[funketeer]

little pink houses for you and me?

[koky]

little pink houses for you and me?

john mellencamp isnt happy right now

[liquidx]

Thank You Republicans!! :-)

[digital7]

the country is a complete mess... that monkey we call a president cant tell is ass from his elbow

[obby]

How dare us not win over mother nature!

[sobeton]

it's not a matter of winning over mother nature, but rather being better prepared to help survive the forces of mother nature.

9/11, Iraq, etc we should be more then prepared to address a natural disaster. there is no reason on earth that the largest and one the wealthiest countries in the world, can not adequately care for its citizens.

[funketeer]

it's not a matter of winning over mother nature, but rather being better prepared to help survive the forces of mother nature.

9/11, Iraq, etc we should be more then prepared to address a natural disaster. there is no reason on earth that the largest and one the wealthiest countries in the world, can not adequately care for its citizens.

I believe we are prepared, also believe there was a lack of response from the powers that be...look at the faces of all characters involved...half reflect guilt and the other half a bitter realization that being a minority rears its ugly head when push comes to shove...even Bill Clinton couldn't hide his feelings as he announced yet another Bush Sr / Clinton Relief Fund...he clearly stated he would run FEMA "differently"...when Bush Sr said the president was doing his best, a roomful of international press correspondants broke in laughter, to what he replied "As a father, I do not appreciate your reaction"...Bishop TD Jakes puts it better, "we can put troops in Afghanistan and Kosovo almost overnight but it took us five days to get them to the Mississippi"...I know it sounds as a cliché and it probably is, but this time many deaths will be blamed not to Katrina, not to the floods...but to the inadecuacy found on the rescue efforts...what a shame.

[koky]

ALLS I HAVE TO SAY IS

[rhythmburn]

while i agree that the president made some mistakes, it's funny how everyone is real quick to lay all of the blame squarely on his shoulders. i think the mayor and the governor also should shoulder some, if not most of the blame as well.... (and by the way, they are both democrats for those of you who make the 'damn the republicans' blanket statement)

[sobeton]

as matter of fact the house and senate representatives for that region, have lobbied for years for $$$$ to better prepare that region for a hurricane. each time their efforts where shot down.

the federal government’s initial reaction time was poor, by their own admission. there is no reason why the mayor of a major US city and the governor of a state should be begging for federal government assistance. the state and the city did everything they could evacuate that area, in the limited time they had.

we need to stop the fawking finger pointing, and address the problems at hand. in addition to taking the steps necessary, to see that chaos that ensued after Katrina NEVER happens again..

[marcodavalos]

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com

www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

.

[digital7]

while i agree that the president made some mistakes, it's funny how everyone is real quick to lay all of the blame squarely on his shoulders. i think the mayor and the governor also should shoulder some, if not most of the blame as well.... (and by the way, they are both democrats for those of you who make the 'damn the republicans' blanket statement)

I agree with this too to some extent..

btw, good points Tony

[obby]

Isn't this concidered "Current Events" ?

it's funny how everyone is real quick to lay all of the blame squarely on his shoulders. i think the mayor and the governor also should shoulder some, if not most of the blame as well.... (and by the way, they are both democrats for those of you who make the 'damn the republicans' blanket statement)

I don't find it funny. I find it sad. Alot easier to jump on the "hate bush" wagon than to actually research the chain of command. Local government are responsible for taking care of their citizens.....Mayor and Governor.........They ALWAYS get the first crack at taking care of their own state. They failed, not because they did not follow procedures but because they themselves actually became victims of Katrina......now "daddy",,,aka FEDS are taking care of it.

In a nutshell, The Mayor and Governor ALWAYS get the first crack of taking care of their own states. Sad to see so many try and turn this around on our Commander and Chief. Both the Mayor and Governor had a plan prior to the storm hitting. The press specifically asked about the mayor's plan and he said "the plan was in place and that he was "grateful" for Washington declaring a state of emergency early in order to get the ball rolling on FEMA"

...

The plan obviously did not work due to the strength of the storm. To "try" and now blame Bush is sad.

The only way to know what to do and what not to do during such incidents is to actually experience the incident first hand. We can make all the preparations we want against mother nature but we will not know if our preparation worked or failed until we actually experience the threat.

Either this is too difficult to accept or some here are just lazy and find blaming Bush easier than researching the facts. Those who want to blame Bush are just plain TA-TA-TA....people who don't fully understand the magnitude of this disaster.

You know I love alot of you fuckers on this board but this really gets to my stomach to see so many try and politicize a natural disaster.

Remember what happened:

-Hurricane on the way

-Gov,Sen and Mayor of New Orleans declare emergency and mandatory evacuation of all residents -All of those who cannot evacuate are to find their way to the superdome as a shelter.

-THAT WAS THEIR PLAN! LOCAL STATES/CITIES ALL HAVE THEIR PLANS!

-The hurricane hits, the city has massive damage, but the city is DRY and all news outlets say New Orleans dodged a bullet!

-A day later, the levee break in 2 places. They don't really overflow, THEY BREAK! The whole in the levee grows bigger by the second.

-Day 3, New Orleans underwater!! Coast Guard is rescuing who they can and survivors who are able, flock to Conv. Center and SuperDome -Both places have no resources, sanitation or order?

-Looters are going crazy. People are going crazy. Shooting at rescue helicopters, police.

-Thugs @ the Conv. Cntr and Superdome are raping young girls in bathrooms, many of the few white evacuees and some blacks @ the conv. center and superdome are beaten to death.

-Day 4, Local gov't (of Louisiana, specifically New Orleans) emergency plan HAS FAILED!!! -Fed gov't already has Navy ships en route and Nat. Guard troops are getting together and formulating a plan. -Today, day 5, MASSIVE convoys of FOOD, WATER, MEDICINE, etc...reach New Orleans and are currently being distributed to refugees (as of 1230 pm) via FEMA,,AKA- Fed. Gov't. President arrives in gulf state to survey ground zero of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi.

-Massive aid and support pours in from around the country and the world!

[nexusgroove]

Bush is one of the most hated man at the moment.

[macfunk19]

The world looks at us like a country of cowboys that cant help are own country, but its easy to help other countrys. bush has fucked up usa with economy ,9/11, gas, Iraq, Katrina, and blacks.