Jack Kelly: No shame: The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

[Useruser666]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm

Jack Kelly: No shame
The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

Sunday, September 11, 2005

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.



Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio ([email protected], 412-263-1476).


"Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.

But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:

"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.

"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.

"No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above."

"You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere," van Steenwyk said.

Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can't be on the scene immediately.

Relief efforts must be planned. Other than prepositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.

And federal troops and Guardsmen from other states cannot be sent to a disaster area until their presence has been requested by the governors of the afflicted states.

Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.

A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?

[MannyIsGod]

No plan. No mother ing plan.

They may have responded faster, but they didn't respond with enough. We're not talking about previous hurricanes, we're talking about the largest disaster in the history of the United States. How the response of the federal government stacks up against previous responses is irrelevent when reviewing if they had an acceptable response. What makes this worse is the way the Department of Homeland Security was put into place to deal with just these kind of situations.

There is no amount of spin that will leave the pile of known as FEMA and the department of Homeland Security smelling like roses. No ing way. When I have to listen to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal - one of the most conservative publications around - rip the response I know critcism is more than warranted.

[Spurminator]

That's all well and good, but I still think Katrina has taught us that we need to be better prepared for an event such as this. Regardless of how the response compared to other lesser disasters, the timeline for getting food, medication and rescue teams to people who needs to be 2 days maximum. It's a biological timeline: people die after three days with no food/water. So four days is unacceptable.

Should we keep stockpiles of canned food, meds and bottled water in large venues that would be used in a case like this, such as the Superdome? Should we do a better job of evacuating people who cannot (or will not) evacuate themselves?

There is a time for assessing blame, but most of the time could be better spent assessing adjustments to emergency procedures. I would hope that any "commission" would focus on the latter.

[MannyIsGod]

Any post commission will be hijacked for political concerns. Why solve problems when you can better improve your posture for the next time your Senate seat is up for grabs?

[travis2]

"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.

[Marcus Bryant]

A few observations...

Expecting any governmental agency to turn on a dime is wishful thinking. Expecting multiple agencies across three layers of government to do so is absurd.

The federal response to hurricanes has always been about long-term recovery, not immediate short-term rescue on an epic scale.

The NO local govt did what it could and that was to tell everyone who could to GTFO. According to the mayor, they had a 80% evacuation rate in the city. Hard to argue with that.

If you're looking to blame someone, blame those who over the course of three centuries believed that a city bordered by a lake and the sea, built below sea level, was a great idea.

[MannyIsGod]

I just feel the admission of not planning for this event is too much for me to swallow.

[Useruser666]

My point to posting this was not to make excuses, but it does show some insight into the response time issue. I think what happened to NO has just never happened before in US and so never before has a strategy plan been needed to deal with such wide spread disaster. I think it is also ridiculous to believe that we have the resources to simply give aid to everyone that's in trouble the second a hurricane like Katrina passes. It's a nearly impossible feat, yet everyone expects FEMA or someone else to swoop in and rescue everyone in a second. That's simply not going to happen when events like this take place.

[Useruser666]

I just feel the admission of not planning for this event is too much for me to swallow.

I don't think you can fully plan for some types of disasters. More could have been done for Katrina, but sometimes mother nature ruins your plans.

[Marcus Bryant]

Actually, the event was "planned for". Some seem to think it was possible for the Feds, the state of Louisiana and/or the city of NO to have a website set up where all that was needed to do was click a few buttons and voila...crisis over.

You have a natural disaster on an epic scale and governments that behaved like, well, governments. Expecting some kind of swift response to massive flooding is a bit unrealistic.

[MannyIsGod]

The head of Homeland Security disagrees with you, Marcus.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans. (See the video on a local paper's prophetic warning -- 3:30 )

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

Straight form the horse's mouth.

[The Ressurrected One]

It appears all the hand-wringing was unnecessary...

Hopelessness Begins to Lift in New Orleans

It appears the feds got damn near everyone out, in spite of the local and state incompetence. Three cheers for the Coast Guard and National Guard.

Now, we can decide who's responsible for the debacle at the Superdome and Convention Center.

[boutons]

"turn on a dime"

BS. Nobody's asking to anybody to turn on a straw-man dime.

People expect FEMA/etc to be well-planned, and in motion, prepped, stocked, manned, etc as soon as a hurricane is identified and its route predicted, 2,3 days before it hits, so relief can be provided as soon as the hurricane passes. After all the hurricanes in the past 15 years, people really expect the billions spent on DHS/FEMA to provide timely relief. We're talking about hurricanes tracked for days, not tornados that blow up in a few minutes.

And if NO-under-sealevel is to be blamed, then the same blame has to be applied to the entire Gulf coast, from Georgia to Mexico, which is only a couple feet above sea-level. If people insist on re-building, re-building, re-building on the beach, then their cost of living on/near the beach should reflect costs of 10s of $Bs of cleanup after cleanup after cleanup. After the 1993 floods in the upper mid-west, the Clinton govt refused to help with re-building on river-banks. An entire town was re-built on higher ground.

[MannyIsGod]

Would you guys be happy with this kind of response to a WMD attack?

Last night the while watching the WSJ Editorial Report, they mentioned the DoD regards this as as being on the scale of a WMD attack by terrorists. They were pretty upset with the response up and down the board.

I can't say I disagree one bit.

[MannyIsGod]

Also, the response was quicker than most other storms, but there was also a longer warning period than most storms had. They had a full 2 days prior to the storm in order to plan for this event. So, while Star Trek lines may make for comic relief, they add little substance to a situation that has 2 days prior warning.

[Useruser666]

"turn on a dime"

BS. Nobody's asking to anybody to turn on a straw-man dime.

People expect FEMA/etc to be well-planned, and in motion, prepped, stocked, manned, etc as soon as a hurricane is identified and its route predicted, 2,3 days before it hits, so relief can be provided as soon as the hurricane passes. After all the hurricanes in the past 15 years, people really expect the billions spent on DHS/FEMA to provide timely relief. We're talking about hurricanes tracked for days, not tornados that blow up in a few minutes.

And if NO-under-sealevel is to be blamed, then the same blame has to be applied to the entire Gulf coast, from Georgia to Mexico, which is only a couple feet above sea-level. If people insist on re-building, re-building, re-building on the beach, then their cost of living on/near the beach should reflect costs of 10s of $Bs of cleanup after cleanup after cleanup. After the 1993 floods in the upper mid-west, the Clinton govt refused to help with re-building on river-banks. An entire town was re-built on higher ground.

I think FEMA and other aid did start right away. The problem is not when it started, but how large the scope of destruction was. Flooding was also a major hinderance to rescue and recovery efforts. It's hard to get aid through such a landscape.

[The Ressurrected One]

"turn on a dime"

BS. Nobody's asking to anybody to turn on a straw-man dime.

People expect FEMA/etc to be well-planned, and in motion, prepped, stocked, manned, etc as soon as a hurricane is identified and its route predicted, 2,3 days before it hits, so relief can be provided as soon as the hurricane passes. After all the hurricanes in the past 15 years, people really expect the billions spent on DHS/FEMA to provide timely relief. We're talking about hurricanes tracked for days, not tornados that blow up in a few minutes.

It's starting to appear that FEMA was prepared and that the federal response is all that kept this from being a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable magnitude.

And if NO-under-sealevel is to be blamed, then the same blame has to be applied to the entire Gulf coast, from Georgia to Mexico, which is only a couple feet above sea-level. If people insist on re-building, re-building, re-building on the beach, then their cost of living on/near the beach should reflect costs of 10s of $Bs of cleanup after cleanup after cleanup. After the 1993 floods in the upper mid-west, the Clinton govt refused to help with re-building on river-banks. An entire town was re-built on higher ground.

There's a huge difference between being below sea level and even an inch above it. The biggest being how long the water stays.

I do agree that federal flood insurance should be denied those that rebuild in flood prone areas. If it's that special, rebuild on your own dime.

[Marcus Bryant]

The head of Homeland Security disagrees with you, Marcus.



Straight form the horse's mouth.

"Planning" as in that the feds, state, and city have expected such a disaster for quite some time. There was a 'war game' done by at least the state and city late last year with the anticipation of a major hurricane hitting the city.

Anyways, my point is governmental inep ude and inefficiency, which your quote supports.

[ChumpDumper]

It appears all the hand-wringing was unnecessary...

Tell that to the dead.

[Clandestino]

so, then why did people refuse to leave and are still refusing? they had ample time. if the fed gov is supposed to be able to bring in supplies for over 100,000 people at the snap of a finger, then one family should be able to get their ass out too...

the us gov takes months and months to provide all the logistics to soldiers when preparing for battle

[Marcus Bryant]

Also, the response was quicker than most other storms, but there was also a longer warning period than most storms had. They had a full 2 days prior to the storm in order to plan for this event. So, while Star Trek lines may make for comic relief, they add little substance to a situation that has 2 days prior warning.

That's because the federal approach to hurricanes has always been recovery, not rescue.

[The Ressurrected One]

Tell that to the dead.

Hundreds, instead of 10's of thousands...do you not even acknowledge the difference?

[MannyIsGod]

That's because the federal approach to hurricanes has always been recovery, not rescue.

Fair enough, but in a situation that New Orleans was in they should have been prepared for rescue as well. This was an eventuality, not a possibility.

[Marcus Bryant]

"turn on a dime"

BS. Nobody's asking to anybody to turn on a straw-man dime.

People expect FEMA/etc to be well-planned, and in motion, prepped, stocked, manned, etc as soon as a hurricane is identified and its route predicted, 2,3 days before it hits, so relief can be provided as soon as the hurricane passes. After all the hurricanes in the past 15 years, people really expect the billions spent on DHS/FEMA to provide timely relief. We're talking about hurricanes tracked for days, not tornados that blow up in a few minutes.

You know what? The "people" were being unrealistic.

About the only thing the government can do efficiently and quickly is launch military strikes, and even that is wrought with bureaucratic inep ude.

And if NO-under-sealevel is to be blamed, then the same blame has to be applied to the entire Gulf coast, from Georgia to Mexico, which is only a couple feet above sea-level. If people insist on re-building, re-building, re-building on the beach, then their cost of living on/near the beach should reflect costs of 10s of $Bs of cleanup after cleanup after cleanup. After the 1993 floods in the upper mid-west, the Clinton govt refused to help with re-building on river-banks. An entire town was re-built on higher ground.

Well sure. A lot of people live in high-risk areas.

[ChumpDumper]

Hundreds, instead of 10's of thousands...do you not even acknowledge the difference?

Dead is dead.