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September 07, 2005More Thoughts On KatrinaThese are emotional times, and John Cole is right that we all need to calm down and take a deep breath, but people who are trying to mostly pin the Katrina disaster on the local and state authorities just don't get it. Let's posit a few things right out of the gates. Mayor Nagin was the very picture of an under-qualified local mayor totally overwhelmed by a developing catastrophe (Nagin: "Get people to higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift supplies to them--that was the plan, man"). It was 'man' this; 'man' that--this was a man, pun intended, unhinged. We weren't going to get a Rudy-esque performance out of him, unfortunately, and so John Tierney's "magic marker strategy" musings, while interesting, are not really all that apropos finally. Ditto Governor Kathleen Blanco--who was simply too slow to declare a national emergency and dithered underwhelmingly in terms of attempting to secure more help for her state. Yes, she too, was in way over her head given the scale of this calamity. So uber-partisans like Grover Norquist are indeed right, a Democrat Mayor and Governor performed in a piss-poor manner, like incompetents really, and it's a bloody shame. Happy now, Grover? Rah-rah! Let's have Ken Mehlman get an E-mail out on it, shall we? Again, most assuredly yes, the local authorities should have done more preemptively on things like attempting to secure the integrity of the telecommunications infrastructure of the city, or at least stockpiling a minimum of food and hygiene supplies and basic medicines at the Superdome or Convention Center (though Nagin did warn residents to bring food to the Superdome, and it is true that many of those who fled to this so-called refuge of last resort, despite the gross deprivations, the unsanitary conditions, the mayhem--might have instead died if they had remained in poor largely minority neighborhoods like the ninth ward instead). And, again, Tierney's 'magic market' quasi-forced evacuation would have saved perhaps thousands of lives--but Nagin was simply not up to this task. Given this background of so predictable local and state incompetence (this is Louisiana, people!), and given further that everyone knew that New Orlean's precarious position beneath sea level could invite massive disaster in the event of a Category 3, 4 or 5 Hurricane (don't you dare tell me no one thought the levees might be breached)--it was incumbent on the federal government, with its huge resources and reach and authority, to better position itself to respond to the horrific calamity we just witnessed over the past days. We conservatives are supposed to believe that a government's most basic and solemn duty is to safeguard the security of its citizenry, to act as bulwark against anarchy and effective steward of public order and safety. And this solemn compact was most assuredly torn asunder by the government, at least during the first week of this horrific disaster. Indeed the federal reaction was dismal. Before we dig into that, however, let's posit a few little things up front. Let's all be sure to recall that this was one helluva storm, and that Bush was unlucky in the extreme that it hit on his watch, and that Democrat Underground musings that his energy policies or global warming or such had something to do with it are pure bunk. It was a horrific act of God. Period. Let's also put aside the argument about the budget cuts of levee support & refurb issue. Even if the budget hadn't been cut, the levees might still have broken in the face of this mighty storm (and we'd have to dig back into the 90's too on prior funding decisions to get a full picture on various degrees of culpability on this score). And let's also put aside, for now at least, the whole Iraq meme, that our deployment there meant there were fewer men available to patrol the streets of New Orleans. There were, all told, likely enough national guard available to ensure public safety in the streets of New Orleans--even with our troop/reserve/guard deployments in Iraq--and even with the disaster hitting neighboring states too so that Alabama or Mississippi units weren't available in as large number as if the storm had just hit Louisiana. So what went wrong? Many things. The President and Homeland Security Secretary (incredibly) claimed that it took people by surprise that the levees were breached (remember, the night before the hurricane hit, we all went to bed thinking a Category 5 was going to slame directly into the city--the type of perfect storm one might fairly fear and anticipate would pierce the levees). And a smart man like Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff appears not to have been seized by the likely gross incapacity of the local authorities to have effectuated a serious evacuation plan or, if the town were gutted or flooded, the need to ensure basic security. Again, contingency planning and pre-positioning of resources appears to have been, alternately, overly sanguine and de mimimis. Meantime, the buffoonish head of FEMA displayed an appalling lack of situational awareness (go read Michelle Malkin who has a succinct round-up of why 'heck of a job Brownie' must go). In a fast-moving crisis situation, speed of response is key. To be effective, one must be apprised, awake, on point, in command. Brown wasn't. His performance was dismal. If the President doesn't fire him, the President disgraces himself by his bovine display of loyalty to a profound mediocrity. It's just that simple. Brownie must go, 'heck of a job' or not! Meantime, and interestingly given how quickly DoD lawyers were given short shrift on reservations about junking the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to enemy combatants, there were reportedly, according to Newsweek, quite time consuming debates in Washington about legal issues surrounding federalizing the Guard. It appears there was concern that kids might not know how to enforce local laws (as compared to, say, the New Orleans police force!). So inertia and time was wasted on such legal debates--as the most damaging hurricane in the history of the nation led to conditions of anarchy in an important American city. But there's more. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, there were crossed-signals, bureaucratic confusion galore, and Keystone Kops style ineptitude aplenty. And not only by hapless Mayor Nagin, but also quite often by the Feds. FEMA, particularly. No "firm procedures for directing people and materials," so that trucking companies that were under contract with FEMA to move supplies got orders to move cargo with substantial delays. And when the trucks arrived, as the WSJ reports, no FEMA, or National Guard, or any other personnel there to unload the supplies (Says the owner of the transportation company: "I almost told they guys to leave, but people are wanting the water. The drivers distributed it"). Meantime, a head of a New Orleans hospital relayed to the WSJ that for a "couple of days" he was told to direct patients to "what he understood was a FEMA mass casualty tent at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Causeway Boulevard." But, alas, "A number of them came back and said, 'there's no on there'. No one there. Put differently, the government, at all levels, abandoned its citizens in their moment of most dire need. And when shit hits the fan, even allowing for the intuitive fact that typically first responders at the local level must come to people's aid first, no one serious can say that the response orchestrated by FEMA and Homeland Security was not underwhelming in the extreme (And I am leaving aside, for now, questions about whether it might have been possible to get more helicopters to assist displaced persons so that they could be evacuated, or why problems with radio systems were not better foreseen, or whether all military forces in the area, especially soldiers based at Fort Polk, might not have been more speedily, and in greater number, deployed). Look, I've already said Brown must go. Homeland Security chief Chertoff, well, he's very bright, I'm sure, but as Glenn has quipped: "lawyers have many virtues, but management skills aren't high on the list". We sure saw that last week. Yes, of course, this was an unprecedented calamity and there is inevitably chaos and disorganization in such situations that result. But the crossed signals, the abject lack of coordination among the local, state and federal authorities--or even just at the federal level itself--they were simply too numberous and worrisome to discount. Remember, we are all living in a brave post 9/11 world. The goverment is supposed to have prepped for such disasters (albeit more terrorist inflicted than by the force of God), for four long years. So, for example, they're surprised that the New Orleans police force simply largely disintegrated? Well, from an administration that didn't even game-plan the prospects of an Iraqi insurgency, I guess that's not surprising. But when a perfect Category 5 (remember, meteorologists though a 5 was going to score a direct hit, the situation might have been even worse!) storm is heading like a bulls-eye to the chronically corrupt and poorly governed Big Easy, is it too much to ask from our supposed best and brightest that they ask: what if the levees break? what if floodwaters render streets uninhabitable? what if looting breaks out? what if mayhem results? disease spreads? cops abandon their beats? I don't feel these questions were seriously analyzed, not by a long shot, by men of Chertoff's caliber who should have. There are other issues too, of course. The Homeland Security office is clearly not ready for prime time, and subsuming FEMA and myriad other governmental agencies under it may have created a monstrous bureaucracy--monstrous perhaps foremost in that it has proven inefficacious in its first big test. These are very complex issues, and investigations will have to bore into the detail, but Homeland Security and its structure must be high on the list of matters needing follow up post-Katrina. As for FEMA, its response too often evoked disarray. 'Heck of a job' my ass. And so the President seemed removed, especially during the first days, from the reality of the full scale of the disaster (put down that guitar POTUS, and show some dignity in the face of such abject human tragedy!). Tone deaf, and it will take much Roveian and Bartlettian boulot indeed to get back ahead of message on this one (this problem of tone was compounded with his cheap frat-like jocularisms about Trent Lott's porch as well as Barb's Marie Antionette moment, as Sully put it well). As David Brooks has said, people are mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore. They want professionalism and rigor. They want accountability and seriousness. Above all else, they want competence, especially in ensuring basic security in their very own nation (or Iraq, for that matter). It doesn't get more basic than that, folks. I don't know what this moment heralds. Whether people realize that government matters, mightily sometimes, so that some neo-liberalism a la FDR might be in the offing. I doubt it, as the Democrat party is hobbled by mediocrities up and down its sad ranks too. More likely, if I had to guess, I believe we will see a yearning for professional law and order a la Guiliani, as David Brooks also recently suggested--perhaps married to real national greatness Teddy Roosevelt style independent politics. People that walk the walk, rather than, say, just piffle along with just enough troops to lose in Iraq a la Don Rumsfeld (what I wouldn't do for a McCain-Guiliani ticket!). Regardless, and returning squarely to Katrina, I really believe Bush must do the following, and quickly: 1) Fire Michael Brown (like, yesterday!); 2) Have an independent blue ribbon commission (no, you don't investigate yourself a la Rummy under such circumstances, at least not if you want to be taken seriously) to analyze what went wrong at each of the local, state and federal level (with particular attention to the role of the Department of Homeland Security as, you know, they are supposed to ensure we don't get hit by some 9/11 on steroids any day now, and confidence is waning big time that they will prove an effective presence at the helm should such an attack occur); and 3) ask Rudy Guiliani to leave the private sector and take up a "Gulf Coast Recovery Tsar" post to spearhead the reconstruction of this region to a new vibrancy, with tens of billions made available (employing as many of the displaced persons as possible in the reconstruction effort, where they can live near their original communities in conditions of dignity and comfort), in a massively ambitious revitilization project that takes place in an expedited time frame over the next 24-36 months. For starters. Oh, and don't use Katrina as an excuse to pull out of Iraq, or ignore other foreign policy briefs like North Korea or Iran. Yep, it's a big job, and you might even have to work after 9 PM here and there to stay on top of it all. It's a big, messy world out there Mr. President. It's really show time now, and the time for empty talk is long since past. Real accountability. An independent investigation. No more empty bromides. We're fed up. Posted by Gregory at September 7, 2005 01:53 AM | TrackBack (12)Comments
Greg; The govenor on the26th, before the storm hit, sent a letter to Bush requesting assistance and declaring an emergency. The administration floated the lie that she waitedtill days after and the Wash Post and Newsweek took the bait. The Post printed a retraction I'm not sure whether Newsweek has or not, but the damage is done and people like you are taken in by the lie. See Talkingpointsmemo.com of 9/4. The letter in on the state web site also. I agree that Nagin could have done more perhaps, but has anyone talked about their ability to do more? When in history has a mayor declared an evacuation of a city? Posted by: Thom H. at September 7, 2005 05:29 AM | Permalink to this comment
Absolutely pathetic, Gregory. I come here for sheer sadism nowadays. Heads roll, we need new heads! Oh, oh, and we need more commissions! Let me clue you into the majesty of bureaucracies...they manufacture mediocrity and they make mistakes. You're asking (demanding?!) the inesteemable comfort of a dictatorship held by a strong Leader (Gulliani!). The first responders F-A-I-L-E-D and then wouldn't step aside. That's what happened. Unless we Americans want the Federal government to take over the function of the states, unless we want to abolish the Federal system, unless we want the Federal government to be first responders, you're points are not serious. Its not FEMA that secures law and order, its not FEMA that sends in rescue choppers, its not FEMA that evacuates cities, those are other agencies. FEMA, 'heck of a job' Bush, and Brown are scape-goats. Follow your suggestions and we will be no safer in the future. Period. Posted by: Brad at September 7, 2005 05:54 AM | Permalink to this comment
In a word, Brad, that is bunk. FEMA can and has done a much better job in the past of responding to disasters. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, where FEMA did an abysmal job responding, Clinton appointed James Lee Witt, a professional emergency manager, to lead FEMA. Under Witt's direction the agency was restructured, FEMA became a Cabinet-level agency, and its effectiveness at disaster mitigation and relief skyrocketed. In 1993 the Mississippi River flooded and the FEMA response was widely praised all around. They got in quickly, they handled the situation without bureaucratic red tape and, as Norman Mineta said at the time, "FEMA has delivered finally on its promise to stand with the American people when floods or hurricanes or earthquakes devastate their communities." But after Bush was elected, he replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh, someone with no emergency management experience, who called many of FEMA's disaster mitigation programs "an oversized entitlement program." After Allbaugh's departure, Michael Brown succeeds him, a man known previously for having been fired from his previous job direction some horse association. FEMA's decline accelerated after it was subsumed under the DHS, with many high-ranking managers with decades of experience leaving. Of course, any disaster of this magnitude would have had horrific consequences. But there is no doubt whatsoever that the federal response was pathetic, and this was something that was foreseen by many people who have been watching the deterioration of FEMA in recent years. Posted by: Mitsu at September 7, 2005 06:12 AM | Permalink to this comment
Brad, that is not rational. FEMA can and has done a much better job in the past of responding to disasters. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, where FEMA did an abysmal job responding, Clinton appointed James Lee Witt, a professional emergency manager, to lead FEMA. Under Witt's direction the agency was restructured, FEMA became a Cabinet-level agency, and its effectiveness at disaster mitigation and relief skyrocketed. In 1993 the Mississippi River flooded and the FEMA response was widely praised all around. They got in quickly, they handled the situation without bureaucratic red tape and, as Norman Mineta said at the time, "FEMA has delivered finally on its promise to stand with the American people when floods or hurricanes or earthquakes devastate their communities." But after Bush was elected, he replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh, someone with no emergency management experience, who called many of FEMA's disaster mitigation programs "an oversized entitlement program." After Allbaugh's departure, Michael Brown succeeds him, a man known previously for having been fired from his previous job direction some horse association. FEMA's decline accelerated after it was subsumed under the DHS, with many high-ranking managers with decades of experience leaving. Of course, any disaster of this magnitude would have had horrific consequences. But there is no doubt whatsoever that the federal response was pathetic, and this was something that was foreseen by many people who have been watching the deterioration of FEMA in recent years. Posted by: Mitsu at September 7, 2005 06:14 AM | Permalink to this comment
For starters, get a grip! If you set aside huge, highly relevant, chunks of this story, ignore massive failures at the state & local levels to fulfill the command and control functions required of them (& denied the feds) by law, and insist that federal agencies should have been prepared, in advance, not only to usurp the legal authority of state governments by immediately declaring martial law, but also to virtually halve the max speed of its deployment -- by fiat, apparently -- I suppose you have a point. Any time so many suffer so cruelly, the fact that the response was too slow is painfully clear. Your analysis, however, like so many others currently in circulation at the moment, only really manages to address the political calculus here and falls woefully short where real world logistics are concerned. Indeed, I believe that this may, in fact, have been one of the all time fastest of such deployments to date. Posted by: JM Hanes at September 7, 2005 06:19 AM | Permalink to this comment
Really, one of the all time fastest of such deployments to date? In India they were dropping food and water to survivors of the tsunami on the second day after the disaster. I read a letter to the editor from someone who lives in Africa who said that the government there, however inept in many other ways, handles flood far better than what they saw of our response to Katrina. Furthermore, FEMA did far better under Clinton (as I noted above) and James Lee Witt. You've got to really dig deep in denial to watch what happened in New Orleans and come away with an assessment like that. In the face of such evidence, it is quite clear that no rational argument can suffice, no amount of evidence can't be rationalized away. If this is the state of the American conservative movement today, I think it's in pretty sad shape. I'm grateful there are still a few clear thinking voices on the right, like Greg, who have the capacity to see what is plainly clear right in front of their faces. At least when it is written in letters ten stories tall, as it finally is in this case. Posted by: Mitsu at September 7, 2005 06:30 AM | Permalink to this comment
Lots of people made mistakes. On the leeves, there is a big difference in "breach" and broken/destroyed. No one expected the leeve to break but they did expect to have water breach the top and spill over in above cat. 3 storms. Big difference in the amount of water that would flood NO. The part that broke was a recently repaired/upgraded section. Posted by: LYNN at September 7, 2005 07:05 AM | Permalink to this comment
If it's not FEMA and HS and the feds that are responsible for handling disasters, and it's all in the lap of the local and state authorities, then can we please cut our federal taxes by three-quarters and move our payments over to our states instead? I want to pay the bulk of my taxes to any authority that is a competent first responder, not a handful of hand-wringing, finger-pointing, buck-passing screw-ups. Posted by: tzs at September 7, 2005 08:00 AM | Permalink to this comment
It's really show time now, and the time for empty talk is long since past. Real accountability. An independent investigation. No more empty bromides. Sorry, but the accountability moment has come and gone. We all knew exactly what we were going to get, and the people who wanted that will soon enough be satisfied by some bromides, photo ops, and token changes. We'll be 'turning the corner' on each bit of this business soon enough. Posted by: CharleyCarp at September 7, 2005 12:51 PM | Permalink to this comment
Disclaimer: A lot of my understanding here is from working in a Local Emergency Operations Center with our County Emergency manager doing direct liaison contact with FEMA and the State of Florida Emergency Response Team last year, so I may be absolutely wrong in respect to how things work in LA but: I think people are operating under a total misunderstanding of what FEMA actually does. We are under the impression that FEMA will provide every aspect of disaster recovery in a situation like this, but this, as far as my understanding, does not turn out to be factual, nor practical. FEMA depends HEAVILY on the local gov to do a lot of the on-the-ground work of setting up distribution centers, and providing a central communications channel. In FL, the 'boots on the ground' that we got from FEMA last year were basically field officials who setup centers to help people fill out paperwork and the like. Think of the average FEMA field worker as a mobile H&R block person for FEMA assistance. They are there to distribute fliers, phone numbers and help people fill out the paperwork, and answer questions about what qualifies for FEMA assistance. They also have liaisons in your state emergency response center (this is where most of the real FEMA work is done), because that is the logical point of contact, as all of the counties in the state of FL (and I’d presume LA) have emergency warning points, redundant communications channels, and contact people to help direct the flow of information. They work HEAVILY with the state emergency response teams (which it seems were either non-existent, or just completely off-line) to find out where need is and where to send it. Maybe this is different from state to state, but I doubt it. The States typically have the emergency communications infrastructure in place to assist FEMA to do this job, and it is just TOTALLY impractical to have to setup an entire command and control infrastructure in 2 days. If they don't have this communications channel in place, they just can't do their job until it IS setup. It is incumbent on, and in the best interest of, the state to have said infrastructure in place for the best response to a disaster situation, otherwise I'd guess there WILL be a delay in response. The initial 'boots on the ground' that do most of the real work are your State guardsmen and local EOC/County Gov/Law Enforcement. Now those guardsmen which were under the purview of the Governor of LA, and who refused to release control to the feds, are your primary ‘first responders’, along side of your local Emergency response teams and Police Departments/Sheriff's offices. The guard didn’t get moved quick enough, and this is TOTALLY on the hands of the Governor, initially. The Feds just don’t step in and commandeer your state guardsmen, they ask you for it and if you don’t release control, well then the ball is in the state GOV/EOC’s court to make things happen. I don't have a clue where the state LEO were in this, but they seemed non-existent, and we know what happened to the Local LEO, they were just overwhelmed because state LEO and Guard didn't show on time to help support. The local governments are typically working HEAVILY on prepping for FEMA to send in supplies, etc., and telling FEMA where those supplies need to be. It seems like this just didn’t happen, and FEMA had to come into the situation cold and find out for themselves, which took time. The local governments also setup and maintain/run the distribution centers, typically, although the guard can do this too. We ran them in our county, just because it was something we could easily do ourselves, although we had guardsmen there to help. In short, it seems people think FEMA is this all encompassing army of people who swoop in and magically setup a massive, redundant communications infrastructure in 3 hours, and then who are expected to do everything from command and control, to mortuary services. That, in my experience, just isn’t the case. They are the MANAGEMENT agency through which a lot of this stuff happens, but they rely on the state and local governments to work with them to do the job. If that doesn’t happen, you end up with what you got in LA, a massive breakdown in operations.
You blame everyone but the people who should be blamed the most. Perhaps I have a different view because I live in the hurricane zone. They come every year, at least once or twice we are "in the cone". Everyone here knows the score in advance. You have two choices - leave or accept the risk. After a hurricane there is no power, there is no communications, and transportation is by foot or helicopter. The raods will be washed out, flooded, or blocked by trees. Until the roads are cleared there will be no significant help from anyone other than your neighbors. Food and water will be scarce and you will be forced to live off of the supplies you prepared in advance. If you are lucky, there will be water pressure and your toilets will flush. If not, then hopefully you had the foresight to collect rain (or flood) water. You will live out of a cooler, cook with propane, and boil your drinking water for at least a week - if you're lucky. If not, you will cobble together scraps of plywood to keep off the sun and rain. Such is life after a hurricane. If you choose to hunker down then you accept your fate. There will be no help for one or two weeks. You will not be able to leave and others will not be able to arrive. To make the wrong decision and then blame others is the trademark of people who do not accept the challenges of life. It is predominantly the reason they are poor in the first place. And it is no surprise that they are almost always the ones least prepared when hurricanes come to visit. So you want blame? The Lee county director of disaster planning put it best. Blame the people who were warned - who were ordered to leave the city - who chose to stay without preparing for the worst. Posted by: moron99 at September 7, 2005 02:18 PM | Permalink to this comment
"Chose to stay" again, a week later? Moron99, your moniker is earned. Posted by: Anderson at September 7, 2005 03:19 PM | Permalink to this comment
Great article here, putting some things straight and adding perspective. I just want to add some corrections. Firstly, yes, Blanco did declare national emergency on friday before the storm. She did act very fast, since the warnings of Katrina heading to NO were fresh in the media: Secondly, I believe Nagin made some mistakes, the most dire one that he believed that the cavalry would arrive in time. But contrary to a popular rumor, he did use the cities busses, if only to transport his citizens to the shelters - 'Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort for people who have no cars, with city bus pickup points around New Orleans.' Imho, and it seems I'm not alone on this, the responsible thing would have been to evacuate the people away from the city or at least to keep all available busses and the drivers in a place safe from drowning. On the other hand, I don't really see how you can blame Nagin for his lack of foresight, since Bush, Brown and Chertoff said that noone had anticipated the breach of the levees. Is the mayor of NO supposed to be smarter than the POTUS and the heads of FEMA and DHS? Thirdly, I think it's quite unfair to blame Nagin and Blanco on the violence that did hamper the rescue efforts. He had 1500 officers at the start, several of which went awol because they had to care for their families. Working in shifts, not more than maybe 500 could have been present on the streets at any time. Blanco managed to raise more than half of La's National Guard in short time. Those 3800 troops had to maintain law and order in a state half as big as Britain. It's obvious that this couldn't result in a strong presence everywhere. Blanco did recognize this and successfully contacted NewMexs Richardson on Sunday for reinforcements. Sadly, those troops were not allocated until tuesday (some sources say thursday), because Washington did fumble the paperwork. And as we know now, it took more than 40000 troops to provide security for the NO area. The question for responsibility will have to be answered, and I guess the answer will be the same that Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard gave in an impressive interview:
We need to recognize that Katrina is TWO separate and distinct disasters, and that questions of blame and responsibility must be viewed within that context..... The first disaster was Hurricane Katrina itself, and what occurred up until the time Katrina passed New Orleans. On the whole, the response of state and local officials was adequate, under the circumstances---an evacuation was ordered, and those who had the means to get out of New Orleans did so, leaving well over 100,000 people stuck in the city. (A few thousand more could probably have been evacuated using school buses, etc.... but that's about it. And the question of where these people ---- the ones without the means to get out of N.O. by themselves ----would have been taken remains unanswered. ) The city also had adequate planning for those who could not get out----shelters were established throughout the city, with the Superdome and Convention Center designated not as "shelters" per se, but places where people who were stuck in the city could safely ride out the storm until it was safe to return to their homes. Certainly, people died in the "first disaster"....one level was breached/overtopped during the storm, and about 20% of the city was "underwater" by the time the hurricane had passed. That was a tragedy, but it was a tragedy created by mother nature. The second disaster began unfolding after Katrina had left N.O., and additional levees were breached, making it impossible the tens of thousands of people who had taken emergency shelter in the Superdome and Convention Center to return to their homes. This disaster --- and the failure to respond to it competently, is wholly and completely a failure of Bush administration officials. Over one hundred thousand people were trapped in New Orleans with no way out, tens of thousands of them in homes that were being rapidly flooded by the waters of Lake Ponchatrain --- and the Federal Government did not immediately dispatch the necessary personnel to avert the disaster that was happening before our eyes as the city filled with water. The federal government made almost no effort to provide food, potable water, and evacuation services to the tens of thousands stranded in the Convention Center and Superdome----instead, the federal government REFUSED TO LET THESE DESPERATE, STARVING, DEHYDRATING PEOPLE WALK OUT OF THE CITY ITSELF. There would not be this demand for accountability going on right now if New Orleans had only experienced the "first" disaster----indeed, given the devastation of areas east of the city like Gulfport, the death and destruction in New Orleans would not have been the focus of the news coverage. The questions being raised now are related to the SECOND disaster ---- what happened AFTER Katrina was long gone, local government was in disarray and the Louisiana state government was overwhelmed-----and the FEDERAL government was needed to save these people. The SECOND disaster was an emergency that demanded an immediate response----air lift of food and water and immediate federal evacuation of the remaining residents of the city----and that did not happen. As a result, it appears that thousands upon thousands of additional american citizens have died. And the blame for these deaths lies squarely in the hands of George W. Bush and the political hacks he appointed to deal with precisely this kind of emergency situation.
The day the storm hit I commented on these pages that it was a test of how well we have advanced in Emergency Preparedness (something we have put lots of funding toward since 9/11). I don't think anyone can say we have done well. Given that we had some degree of advance warning about the power and course of the storm and the basic well understood topography of New Orleans and the vulnerabilities of the Gulf Coast, it was obvious that there was the potential for an extraordinary disaster. Extraordinary precautionary measures were needed and clearly not taken. The city followed its preexisting disaster plans of ordering a mandatory evacuation and establishing the Superdome as a shelter. From my reading, most experts correctly predicted that some 20% of the city would remain after evacuation for a variety of reasons. In addition, any city wide evacuation in a disaster setting is ripe for a looting crisis so the need for military involvement for security should have been obvious. Again, fault local officials for not screaming for military help more loudly and Federal officials for demonstrating zero sense of anticipation. It is clear that the precautionary government performance at all levels was poor. New Orleans authorities should have been screaming for Federal help as the storm was bearing down on them, not after. But having a poor performing state and local government is hardly an excuse for the failure of DHS and FEMA who bears primary responsibility for a disaster of this magnatude. (people think of Guiliani's leadership on 9/11... but they forget how poorly his city police and fire departments did in coordinating their responses... his city was not prepared for disaster either). The reason we spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars every year on Federal emergency preparedness is because local authorities lack the ability or the authority to cope with disasters of this scale. The Brown memo (and observed response) demonstrate that FEMA and DHS leadership (nor the White House) had no sense of the potential disaster in play and took no extraordinary precautions. That is a huge failure of natural disaster planning in and of itself. Ironically, it also put in plain view the bigger failure here -- the ability to respond to a massive disaster with no warning (like a terror attack). The primary failure of New Orleans, IMO, was in the response after the levees broke in the wee hours late Monday night (or very early Tues am). As soon as the Federal government found out the levees broke, it was then obvious to all that New Orleans would fill up like a soup bowl trapping around 80K Americans. At that moment, it was the equivilent of four World Trade Centers being on the verge of collapse or a WMD event. So by Tuesday mid day we should have seen the President in full command mode, with major mobilizations of US military and Federal assets racing to New Orleans and full evacuation efforts underway by mid-day. Just as on 9/12/2001 we in Washington and New York saw Humvees on every street corner and massive rescue operations underway ground zero and at the Pentagon, so should we have seen in New Orleans last Tuesday. We did not see the Bush Administration get mobilized to that degree until Thursday or Friday and that delay of 48-72 hours is the problem. In a WMD disaster, reaction in the first 48-72 hours can be the difference between 100 deaths and 100 thousand deaths. Not to mention the possible economic impacts. So we have some work to do. My guess is that Brown is "fired" and Chertoff takes consequences management a lot more seriously than he did before. This is, by the way, one of the reasons why some folks were unsure about Chertoff's background to be DHS chief. As a lawyer, he lacked the perspective of a Mayor, Governor, or even senior DoD official who all well understand the management challenges of coordinating government response in a crisis. Even on TV this week, he has sounded like a lawyer arguing the Administration's case rather than LEADING the recovery effort. But my guess is he now gets the message. The harder question to answer is whether the very different politics of New Orleans and the Bush Administration contributed to the slow response. My instinct is that it did -- which is a shame. But that aspect of the blame game is more easily denied so I'll let others make that case. To Bush administration apologists: your attempts to lay this national disaster at the feet of one mediocre Mayor is pathetic and laughable. Similarly, your ability to differentiate between what happened in Mississippi and New Orleans is pathetic. Its times like these when conservatives that are responsible and serious stand out from those who are blind loyalists (or just idiots). Stand up and take responsibility. Posted by: POTUS B at September 7, 2005 03:25 PM | Permalink to this comment
'If you choose to hunker down then you accept your fate.' 'There will be no help for one or two weeks. You will not be able to leave and others will not be able to arrive.' Saying this, you show that you have been infected by the soft bigotry of low expectations. But the majority of people had confidence in their nation's ability to support them and to supply food, water and transport, if it was needed. That's why they were horrified after they learned that they were completely on their own. 'To make the wrong decision and then blame others is the trademark of people who do not accept the challenges of life.'
"Ditto Governor Kathleen Blanco--who was simply too slow to declare a national emergency and dithered underwhelmingly in terms of attempting to secure more help for her state." She declared the emergency well before it hit, early enough to notify Bush and have him declare an emergency. (Also, declaring a 'national emergency' is not part of Blanco's portfolio, seeing as how she's just a governor.) Posted by: Jon H at September 7, 2005 03:44 PM | Permalink to this comment
Taking a step back, a lot of what we are talking about here applies not to disasters in general, but to this one disaster in particular. A storm as strong as Katrina would have done great damage had it struck land anywhere, but could not have done nearly as much damage anywhere as it did in this particular area of the Gulf Coast. There are a couple of implications flowing from this. One is that FEMA is probably not due for a thorough restructuring, or a transfer out of DHS, or a wholesale personnel purge -- except at the very top of the agency. This agency, working with competent state and local authorities, is capable of responding adequately to most emergencies. It did not respond adequately to this emergency, however, and the implication of this is very clear. A Cat 4+ hurricane striking New Orleans was a statistical improbability in this or any one year. But it was likely to happen at some point, and the consequences had been predicted in some detail. It was the worst case, and it is for the worst case that relevant government agencies most need to prepare. FEMA did not; it acted throughout the period between the time Katrina turned north toward the Gulf Coast and the day after New orleans' levees breached as if this were another hurricane striking the Florida Coast. The undoubted failings of local Louisiana authorities do not excuse the federal agency's performance. There are other potential worst cases, after all -- a massive earthquake in California or Alaska, a terrorist attack on a major city -- and FEMA's record here leaves much room for doubt that it could respond adequately to a worst case disaster in the future. Katrina and its aftermath could change some things about American politics and government at the federal and other levels; it has implications for policy in other areas -- one of these, certainly, being Iraq -- as well. I wanted to focus here on the performance of one government agency only: the one charged with planning for the unexpected, for being the force within the federal government that treats potential emergencies as real ones even before they happen, and for being ready for the worst case. FEMA's failings this past week haven't been failings of the federal government's organization chart, but rather of policy and personnel. Posted by: JEB at September 7, 2005 03:52 PM | Permalink to this comment
Buddy - you obviously have far more first hand knowledge of this than I do, but isn't one of FEMA's main functions coordination? And doesn't the National Response Plan developed last year specifically state that the federal government has the authority to take control when it deems a situation to be a National Emergency (I don't remember the exact term)? It seems to me that's where they dropped the ball on this. Look, your points (and Greg's) about the mayor's and governor's failures are absolutely taken to heart. But blame in this situation is not zero-sum. There is plenty enough to go around, but some of it does land squarely in the lap of the federal government, and FEMA in particular. I can't stomach the idea that Michael Brown, like George "slam dunk" Tenet and Paul "disband the Army" Bremer might be our next Medal of Freedom awardee. I want some accountability of this administration and its executive agencies, in addition to accountability for local and state officials, military planners and Congress and whoever else was responsible for being slower in delivering aid to citizens of this country than we were in delivering aid to the other side of the world after the tsunami. The other issue for me is one that Greg and others around the blogosphere have highlighted. For four years, we've been told that DHS would protect us, that their function was to be ready for any kind of major attack or disaster. Bush won an election by proclaiming that he could protect us when no one else could. Yet here we have the first real test of DHS and Bush's promises, and I'm sorry, but I don't feel protected. Living now in the DC area and having just moved from NYC, I'm scared to death frankly of what will happen if a sudden disaster were to happen, given that DHS could not seem to get its collective act together for something that they had several days warning for. If the purpose of DHS is not to protect us both before and after a major disaster (whether man-made or not), then what is its function? Posted by: NYCmoderate at September 7, 2005 03:53 PM | Permalink to this comment
Gray, there is no soft bigotry in a hurricane. It does not care if you are rich or poor, if you have a car or relatives. If there is any soft bigotry it is that of the media. That which does little to save the living before the hurricane arrives but does everything to broadcast the sufferring after it has left. It is the bigotry that leads people to believe that government should be omniscent and omnipotent. The government is neither and should not ever become so. A hurricane is beyond the scope of government. When a hurricane strikes, the government will be overwhelmed. To form a government with the capability and control required to direct its citizens on such a massive scale would be a higher price to pay than NOLA. Please spare me your BS about poor downtrodden people with no choices. The Superdome was almost empty when Katrina hit. Anyone who had not left the city or had not relocated to a designated shelter made a bad decision. The cummulative effect of their bad decisions far outweighs any mistakes of the government. Get a grip. The people of a America have more control over their own lives than the government of America. If they didn't then I am sure you would be amoung the first to criticise and labe them as a fascist big-brother. Posted by: moron99 at September 7, 2005 04:05 PM | Permalink to this comment
Moron99, it seems our different analysis derives from the fact that you seem to embrace libertarian ideals while I demand a more caring government. But if, in consequence, everybody in todays America is on their own, how do you explain the huge sums spend on DHS (the superior of FEMA)? What was accomplished by this money? And didn't Bush promise the people that he would safeguard the US? Has this been a huge misunderstanding? "FEMA's mission remains: to lead America to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disasters with a vision of "A Nation Prepared." " My opinion remains, too: It is absolutely improper to blame the NO people for believing the promises from Washington and for having no better assessment of the dangers than Bush, Brown, and Chertoff.
moron99 - I have a question asked in all seriousness. What if they had either no means to leave and/or nowhere to go? Posted by: NYCmoderate at September 7, 2005 04:26 PM | Permalink to this comment
"but isn't one of FEMA's main functions coordination? And doesn't the National Response Plan developed last year specifically state that the federal government has the authority to take control when it deems a situation to be a National Emergency" It is, or rather can be, but if the State refuses to let go of the reigns, without an act of congress FEMA can't just barrel in roughshod over the Governor with Federal Troops. They are there to provide SUPPORT and ASSISTANCE, but rely on the locals (and by this I mainly been the State EM agencies, etc) to do SOMETHING too. If the locals aren't doing their job, then you will have delays, and as such seems to have been what happened, we had delays. FEMA performed fairly well, on the upside, but the localgov interface in this case was a catastrophy. Lesson learned, but the total inability of StateGov to do ANYTHING right is pretty much an unprecidented thing to happen in US Emergency Management. This is not to say that Brown was perfect; I think he's been a PR nightmare, in general but he tends to know his stuff, time will tell. But most of the 'freaking out' about his statements are because they don't understand the NATURE of what he was talking about. The workers he was talking about deploying were not the first responder types, but rather the paper pushers in RV's who go out there to pass out fliers with 1-800-621-FEMA on it, and qualification rules. They also help people fill out the paper, and as such, the fact that they were 'delayed' 24-28 hours is meaningless, as there was no way to get them 'in' to setup their centers. We are talking about a totally seperate group of people here, the guard and whatnot were already mobilized, but GOVLA has to either hand the reigns to FED or listen to what FEMA is telling her to do with them. It's her indecisiveness that caused much of these issues because she did neither, she decided to whine and moan instead of acting. I blame this more on her and her EM than I do NOLA mayor, because he was absolutely overwhelmed by the lack of initial State (Gov Office) response. There appears to have been none, no Guard, no State Police, no pre-provisioning of supplies, no nothing, and he left in the cold because the Gov wouldn't provide, but also wouldn't turn over control to someone who would provide. Maybe we need a provision that allows FEMA to usurp that, but I don't know. Protocol right now defers to the Govorner. Thats just how it is. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 04:33 PM | Permalink to this comment
"but isn't one of FEMA's main functions coordination? And doesn't the National Response Plan developed last year specifically state that the federal government has the authority to take control when it deems a situation to be a National Emergency" It is, or rather can be, but if the State refuses to let go of the reigns, without an act of congress FEMA can't just barrel in roughshod over the Governor with Federal Troops. They are there to provide SUPPORT and ASSISTANCE, but rely on the locals (and by this I mainly been the State EM agencies, etc) to do SOMETHING too. If the locals aren't doing their job, then you will have delays, and as such seems to have been what happened, we had delays. FEMA performed fairly well, on the upside, but the localgov interface in this case was a catastrophy. Lesson learned, but the total inability of StateGov to do ANYTHING right is pretty much an unprecidented thing to happen in US Emergency Management. This is not to say that Brown was perfect; I think he's been a PR nightmare, in general but he tends to know his stuff, time will tell. But most of the 'freaking out' about his statements are because they don't understand the NATURE of what he was talking about. The workers he was talking about deploying were not the first responder types, but rather the paper pushers in RV's who go out there to pass out fliers with 1-800-621-FEMA on it, and qualification rules. They also help people fill out the paper, and as such, the fact that they were 'delayed' 24-28 hours is meaningless, as there was no way to get them 'in' to setup their centers. We are talking about a totally seperate group of people here, the guard and whatnot were already mobilized, but GOVLA has to either hand the reigns to FED or listen to what FEMA is telling her to do with them. It's her indecisiveness that caused much of these issues because she did neither, she decided to whine and moan instead of acting. I blame this more on her and her EM than I do NOLA mayor, because he was absolutely overwhelmed by the lack of initial State (Gov Office) response. There appears to have been none, no Guard, no State Police, no pre-provisioning of supplies, no nothing, and he left in the cold because the Gov wouldn't provide, but also wouldn't turn over control to someone who would provide. Maybe we need a provision that allows FEMA to usurp that, but I don't know. Protocol right now defers to the Govorner. Thats just how it is. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 04:34 PM | Permalink to this comment
whoops sorry for repost, but I got a 500 error the first time. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 04:35 PM | Permalink to this comment
'It is, or rather can be, but if the State refuses to let go of the reigns, without an act of congress FEMA can't just barrel in roughshod over the Governor with Federal Troops. They are there to provide SUPPORT and ASSISTANCE, but rely on the locals (and by this I mainly been the State EM agencies, etc) to do SOMETHING too.' Buddy, really, what kind of a fantasy story do you want to tell us? Yes, the governments are in charge and FEMA has to suport them. So, if a government demands certain action, FEMA is supposed to deliver to its best abilities. And we saw Blanco, Nagin and the locals on TV begging for food, water, and evacuation efforts. We saw them several days. What we didn't see then was FEMA actually fulfilling its duty. Posted by: Gray at September 7, 2005 04:51 PM | Permalink to this comment
Buddy, another point:
NYCmoderate, The superdome was virtually empty when katrina hit. Municipal buses were available to carry people to various destinations and I think fares may have even been waived. When it was too late and the lake had already overflowed then people found ways to the superdome and the civic center. The same people that had no means before the storm later found ways under even more adverse conditions.
Buddy - As I said, I agree that this was not a shining moment for Gov Blanco. However, on the 26th, she declared a state of emergency and notified the President, who issued a letter on the 27th which said in part: The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe ... Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. [emphasis added] I know you're going to point to the section that says they're to coordinate, but the section I highlighted seems to me to be saying it was also their job to provide assistance. In addition, there is this, from the NRP I mentioned before: The NRP bases the definition of Incidents of National Significance on situations related to the following four criteria set forth in HSPD-5: 2. The resources of State and local authorities are overwhelmed and Federal assistance has been requested by the appropriate State and local authorities. Examples include: 4. The Secretary of Homeland Security has been directed to assume responsibility for managing a domestic incident by the President. Now look, I haven't read the whole NRP, but those definitions seem to fit pretty squarely with what happened. Gov Blanco did declare a state of emergency and did request federal assistance. And as far as I can tell, his letter seems to be directing the DHS Sec to assume responsibility. As for Brown knowing his stuff. I don't really know what to say to that. All 3 cable networks had been reporting on the masses of people at the Convention Center for 24 hours (approx) when Brown went on TV and said the federal government had just learned of that. I'm not sure where the proof is that he knows much of anything. (Yeah, that's probably out of line, but so be it.) Posted by: NYCmoderate at September 7, 2005 05:01 PM | Permalink to this comment
moron99 - you said, The same people that had no means before the storm later found ways under even more adverse conditions. They walked there as far as I understand, many through flood waters up to waist or neck. There's a difference between that and getting completely out of the path of the hurricane, which would have required going a significantly further distance. I'm not entirely sure we're talking about the same thing. I thought you originally said that if they choose to stay, they're stuck with the consequences. I assumed you meant stay in the city as opposed to just staying in their homes. Did you actually mean something different? Could you point me to the reports that the Superdome was empty when the storm hit? I hadn't seen that, tho I admit to being somewhat buried under homework the first few days of all this. Posted by: NYCmoderate at September 7, 2005 05:07 PM | Permalink to this comment
Stunning post. There is so much to comment on, and a simple blurb will not do. Some quick hits. Rudy needs to be put in the game, but, my gut tells me Bush won't allow it because Dubya is basically an insecure child. It's interesting that Dick Cheney is supposedly the man to plow through the delays, and he may very well do it. But, this will remain in-house. The notion of Powell even remotely getting involved is a joke. Bush would never yield the floor... Though, he did show up with Clinton when the noise was rising. Huh. Powell should volunteer his services, as should Rudy. I don't think you can blame Mayor Nagin for much. He got the word out and activated the standard procedures for refuge from the storm. There was not enough time to evacuate the 70 percent that they estimated could get out in 72 hours -- they had half that at best. Further, this storm did more than decimate Nagin's infrastructure. Someone should have cried out for better communications, etc. etc. but getting that level of support would have required, well, the United States Army and Marines. Can a Bradley on high ground withstand a Cat 5? Could a number of them then serve as a communications hub, with sorties into affected areas? Just thinking off the top of my head here... Nagin's tirades may have actually accelerated the federal response -- which is a chilling/depressing thought. Ultimately, Bush is unlucky but this is his storm and this is his show. Why he was so callous in the first 72 hours is a matter for biographers to gleam from extant material. Why Mike Brown was so stupifying on CNN throughout Thursday is, well, beyond belief. Why he and Chertoff want to generate excuses is, well, clear: they are hacks who want to keep their jobs. There is one person that can immediately remove that issue and move the ball forward. After all, isn't that the spin. Sure, there were Fed. mistakes, but we can only look into that later. I guess you keep the same ineffective starters in the game after they foul up, because they are starters after all. Posted by: Chris at September 7, 2005 05:21 PM | Permalink to this comment
NYCmoderate, According to the BBC around 9000 people were in the Superdome before Katrina hit.
Buddy, nice try, none are so blind as those who will not see. NYC Moderate; I live near Norfolk, when Irene came through last year we left town when it was a CAT 2 and it hit as a CAT 1. The fire department responded to an emergency in our neighboorhood right after the storm passed, they needed a boat, a personal vehicle and five chainsaws to get a mile into the community and get the guy out, and we live miles from the ocean. Power was out for about a week. That was a CAT 1, a CAT 5 devastated a large area of the gulf coast, to expect large amounts of aid to move 110s of miles through worse terrain than I have ever seen is fanciful to say the least.
NYCmoderate: "Now look, I haven't read the whole NRP, but those definitions seem to fit pretty squarely with what happened. Gov Blanco did declare a state of emergency and did request federal assistance." She did request federal assistance. The "Federal Assistance" she was requesting was monitary assistance to cover StateOp Expenses, go read the attachment to that request, it specifies exactly. She did not mobilize the guard nor authorize federal troops, and indeed resisted doing so (Federal troops anyway) until I believe around wednesday the 31st. You can mobilize all the equipment in the world, but if you do not have NatGuard or Local LEO on site to accept the aid, you havn't done a thing but move a bunch of trucks around. I think thats exactly what you saw, equipment and resources getting backed up until the means to transport and recieve in NO was available, that is until the Guard was in place, or until GovLA authorized Federal troops. Some of this was surely caused by transportation issues, too. I'm sure the ability of the Guard to get in was hampered by these issues also. Point is, theres much more than meets the eye in these sorts of things. Second point is, FEMA is not some magic wand that can have 10,000 people in place with millions upon millions of tons of gear and supplies in 24 hours. Gary: I live in the 'fantasy world' of the US constitution and Code where the Federal Government cannot just snatch control of state entities willy nilly without VERY extreme circumstances (Read: insurrection or war) or authorization. You want to change that? I think thats generally a 'good thing' myself. Just because somethings didn't go perfect doesn't mean the operation as a whole was an absolute failure as many seem to want to invect. There are lessons to learn, surely, and one of those is that the interface between FEMA and LocalGov needs to be clarified and streamlined. Was FEMA perfect? Heck no, but then neither is any government agency. Thats just a fact. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 05:38 PM | Permalink to this comment
Buddy, despite all of your ramblings and excuses, the only thing that I know of that GOVLA didn't do when requested was declare martial law----and that's because its illegal for her to do so under LA state law---and has been for quite some time. Yet, the lack of a declaration of martial law by the governor has never stopped FEMA from helping in disasters in Louisiana in the past. In other words, please stop pulling crap out of your butt.... Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 7, 2005 05:49 PM | Permalink to this comment
monkeyboy, NRP baseplan: Proactive Federal Response (page 43): If a warning of a cat 5 hurricane potentially hitting New Orleans directly doesn´t qualify as a "catastrophic event" and thus "allowing" a proactive federal response, what event would qualify?
Baddy, the name is 'Gray'.
Buddy, I´m puzzled about the National Guard comment. http://www.ngb.army.mil/news/story.asp?id=1735 "The Louisiana National Guard had called almost 3,500 of its members to state active duty as of 7 a.m. today [Aug. 29] to assist in missions ranging from assisting law enforcement agencies with traffic control and security; transporting and distributing food, water and ice, conducting searches and rescues; providing generator support; and carrying out other missions to protect life and property." "On Aug. 28, Louisiana Guardsmen conducted security and screening at the emergency shelter set-up at the New Orleans Superdome, where a reported 9,000 to 10,000 local residents reported after heeding the city's mandatory evacuation order issued earlier in the day." Seems that at least some must have been on duty on August 28? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard "New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday." Posted by: Detlef at September 7, 2005 06:14 PM | Permalink to this comment
Lots of people made mistakes. On the leeves, there is a big difference in "breach" and broken/destroyed. No one expected the leeve to break but they did expect to have water breach the top and spill over in above cat. 3 storms. Big difference in the amount of water that would flood NO. The part that broke was a recently repaired/upgraded section.
DeLef: Ok so 'NO Guard' was an overstatement, sorry. 'Limited Guard' in Search and Rescue, and 'NO guard' in security missions is perhaps a better discription. From the same article, however: "We could have had people on the road Tuesday," Cutler said. "We have to wait and respond to their need."' "One factor that may have further complicated post-Katrina deployment arose when Louisiana discovered it needed Guardsmen to do more law enforcement duty because a large portion of the New Orleans police force was not functioning, according to Lt. Gen. Steven H. Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon Because the agreement that was already in existence for states to contribute Guard troops to Louisiana did not include a provision on their use in law enforcement, Blum said, Gov. Blanco had to get separate written agreements authorizing Guardsmen to do police-type duty."
And more precisely, exactly what I've been saying about Deferment Protocol: --- Presidents don't typically evoke the same response for a natural disaster as for an attack. It may be arguable in this case that it should have happened, but frankly I can see both sides here. You want to defer to states rights in these issues, but at some point when the state drops the ball as badly as this happened, Bush should have told her to go take a hike and had FEMA take over. Oh lord I can hear the screaming now, if that would have happened. Somebody call the ACLU. :-P p.lukasiak: shall I pull more crap out of my butt, or is this satisfactory 'crap' from AP good enough to make my point?? Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 06:41 PM | Permalink to this comment
DeLef: Ok so 'NO Guard' was an overstatement, sorry. 'Limited Guard' in Search and Rescue, and 'NO guard' in security missions is perhaps a better discription. From the same article, however: "We could have had people on the road Tuesday," Cutler said. "We have to wait and respond to their need."' "One factor that may have further complicated post-Katrina deployment arose when Louisiana discovered it needed Guardsmen to do more law enforcement duty because a large portion of the New Orleans police force was not functioning, according to Lt. Gen. Steven H. Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon Because the agreement that was already in existence for states to contribute Guard troops to Louisiana did not include a provision on their use in law enforcement, Blum said, Gov. Blanco had to get separate written agreements authorizing Guardsmen to do police-type duty."
And more precisely, exactly what I've been saying about Deferment Protocol: --- Presidents don't typically evoke the same response for a natural disaster as for an attack. It may be arguable in this case that it should have happened, but frankly I can see both sides here. You want to defer to states rights in these issues, but at some point when the state drops the ball as badly as this happened, Bush should have told her to go take a hike and had FEMA take over. Oh lord I can hear the screaming now, if that would have happened. Somebody call the ACLU. :-P p.lukasiak: shall I pull more crap out of my butt, or is this satisfactory 'crap' from AP good enough to make my point?? Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 06:42 PM | Permalink to this comment
Gray--
Blah. Is anyone else getting Internal Server Errors and then double posts? -b Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 06:44 PM | Permalink to this comment
Oh and p.lukasiak, this should shine a bit more light on the subject too: http://epaper.ardemgaz.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=ArDemocrat/2005/09/07&ID=Ar00101 "The military presence in the New Orleans region swelled Monday with the arrival of the 82 nd Airborne Division and a fleet of Navy ships, including the USS Iwo Jima — the aircraft carrier on which President Bush met with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Monday night. The president suggested federalizing all military units, which would place the National Guard units on federal orders instead of the state orders they currently work under. The problem with that change, however, is that National Guardsmen would have to report directly to active Army units working in the city and would be unable to directly answer calls for help from local agencies, including helping city and county law enforcement agencies. Under state orders, guardsmen can serve a law enforcement role and carry out any mission needed by the state. Unless martial law is declared, active military cannot perform domestic law enforcement functions. So National Guard units — about 40 of which are helping with disaster relief — report to the state of Louisiana, as do all state police officers sent from other states. City police and parish sheriff agencies remain under the control of their respective cities and parishes. And federal agencies operate on their own."
In other words, the primary reason Presidents are reluctant to send in active duty mil along side guard troops without a Martial Law declaration is that you end up with two command and control structures that end up being chaos. And then you have jewels like this: "Until Sunday, everyone traveling into Plaquemines Parish south of the city was searched — even military convoys. "You’ve got to get a load of this guy," said Col. Richard Swan, commander of joint operations for Task Force Arkansas in New Orleans. "I let him search my convoy because I had nothing to hide, but then I started getting mad that he’d do that." There are some MAJOR impracticalities to tossing Active Duty Mil in along side Guard troops, which is why it's not normal protocol. What is going to end up happening is Guard will get sidelined, and I think you see some of that in the article.
Greg, about Rudy - he had no warning about 9/11, which put him in a worse position than everybody else vs a hurricane, but: 1) The disaster was hyper-localized, directl affecting a few blocks. 2) The rest of the city remained largely functional. Traffic was snarled, the subways were turned off, which made life there horrible from a daily living perspective, but very survivable. If you were stuck someplace, the water wasn't going to come and kill you, the power and water systems were generally on, so sitting in place was a (miserable) option for the vast majority of people. 3) The police force was largely functional - many were killed, the communications systems were frequently inadequate, getting places was hard. Bad, but there was at least one description of the police officer from NO walking around with zero comm of any sort, all facilities abandoned and useless due to flooding, and no working vehicles. In the dark, of course, because the power was off. 4) The NY NG was sent in quickly to help, as was aid from neighboring cities, counties - and boroughs(!), because of the fact that the disaster was localized, most city assets were somewhat available. 5) The federal government didn't take that attitude that they did during New Orleans - Bush had had four fewer years to f*ck things up. Posted by: Barry at September 7, 2005 06:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
Buddy, Perhaps I should first clarify that I´m a German. :) So I don´t know the exact "command" structure. I´m watching TV, reading websites and trying to make sense of the information. I agree with you that there were obviously not enough "Guard" for police duty. Although IIRC the real violence started on Tuesday, Wednesday? Not sure about the "search and rescue". http://www.dod.gov/transcripts/2005/tr20050901-3843.html Q General, Jamie McIntyre from CNN. To what extent is this additional assistance you've outlined today a response to a request from the state governors in Louisiana, Mississippi? And if so, can you tell us when specifically you got that request? GEN. HONORÉ: Yes, sir. The process starts, sir, in this particular event, with a request Friday of last week, as the approximate date for defense coordinating offices to be established in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Those were established in those states over Friday and Saturday. GEN. HONORÉ: Sir, that started to happen on Saturday, as the hurricane was approaching, and was executed with the movement of my headquarters on Sunday to Mississippi, where we established a joint -- JTF headquarters here in Mississippi with a forward cell of the 5th United States Army in Louisiana. And on Sunday we established JTF-Katrina, with myself as the task force commander. And since that time, we've continued to flow naval air and Army helicopter support and other assets, as requested by the governor, through FEMA. And that is the process, and you know that works. The governor identified a requirement. It goes to FEMA. That requirement is sent to Northern Command, my boss, Admiral Keating, as parallel to General McNeill at Forces Command. And we have started to flow the forces to your region. Over. Posted by: Detlef at September 7, 2005 07:11 PM | Permalink to this comment
Greg: exactly. Here's a post I did for Quillnews on this - though with a bit more sass... TC http://www.quillnews.com/main/2005/09/blame_game_blam.html Posted by: Thomas Collins at September 7, 2005 07:20 PM | Permalink to this comment
There's an important issue overlooked in many of these discussions comparing local vs. FEMA response; local government deals with a vast range of, well, local issues concerning everyday living conditions, and the majority of the people involved have no special training in how to handle these sorts of disasters. The directors of FEMA direct (or should be directing) all or most of their resources and attention to figuring out how to handle crises such as this. Comparing the two levels of response to decide who to stick with the blame is comparing apples and oranges, and is not only unfair but ultimately meaningless. Although, ironically, there are a number of stories around about private citizens, with no training or special resources, jumping in and acting more effectively than either. What are we paying FEMA and DHS for, anyway? To criticize the limitations of local government? Posted by: Jess at September 7, 2005 07:21 PM | Permalink to this comment
Folks, I've been going around asking this question, which seems always to lead to a quick change of subject: What substantive thing (not poor PR, substantive thing) could FEMA have done (legally and phiscally possible) that wasn't done? I can't find one. Find me one. But be careful: -- FEMA couldn't evacuate NO, it doesn't have buses -- FEMA couldn't control looting, it doesn't have troops -- FEMA couldn't know quickly that the Superdome ws understocked, they were being told the opposite by the NO disaster plan and by Louisiana authorities -- FEMA couldn't deliver food anyway, because neither trucks (300+ miles without fuel and roads nearly impassible, see van Steenwyk) nor aircraft (helicopters don't have long ranges, a 600-700 mile round trip with a heavy load isn't feasible without refueling) could get in until bridges checked and roads cleared. -- Jason van Steenwyk has gone pretty clearly through why FEMA and the military couldn't move supplies up any faster than they did -- Bush declared a disaster before the hurricane, and FEMA had people and supplies pre-positioned outside the danger zone -- The USS Bataan was flying missions in support as soon as the winds were below 55 knots (not, as Krugman would have it, waiting unmobilized.) -- Blanco not only didn't allow federalization (which is a lot different than requesting FEMA resources) in her letter of the 28th (she may have declared an emergency on the 26th, but the request letter is dated the 28th), AP reported that she still hadn't as of the 5th. (Although, I'll grant, with LTG Honore on the ground, I doubt she has much change to exercise command authority, or say anythign but "yes sir".) -- Bush couldn't federalize the National Guard legally without invoking the Insurrection Act, and couldn't impose martial law anyway. (Constitution, remember that little detail?) -- In any case, FEMA was providing supplies and releaf in less time than previous hurricanes by a factor of three. If, in fact, FEMA failed in its preparations or execution, someone should be able to find and document something that FEMA could both do under legal authority and that was physically possible. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at September 7, 2005 07:24 PM | Permalink to this comment
Folks, I've been going around asking this question, which seems always to lead to a quick change of subject: What substantive thing (not poor PR, substantive thing) could FEMA have done (legally and phiscally possible) that wasn't done? I can't find one. Find me one. But be careful: -- FEMA couldn't evacuate NO, it doesn't have buses -- FEMA couldn't control looting, it doesn't have troops -- FEMA couldn't know quickly that the Superdome ws understocked, they were being told the opposite by the NO disaster plan and by Louisiana authorities -- FEMA couldn't deliver food anyway, because neither trucks (300+ miles without fuel and roads nearly impassible, see van Steenwyk) nor aircraft (helicopters don't have long ranges, a 600-700 mile round trip with a heavy load isn't feasible without refueling) could get in until bridges checked and roads cleared. -- Jason van Steenwyk has gone pretty clearly through why FEMA and the military couldn't move supplies up any faster than they did -- Bush declared a disaster before the hurricane, and FEMA had people and supplies pre-positioned outside the danger zone -- The USS Bataan was flying missions in support as soon as the winds were below 55 knots (not, as Krugman would have it, waiting unmobilized.) -- Blanco not only didn't allow federalization (which is a lot different than requesting FEMA resources) in her letter of the 28th (she may have declared an emergency on the 26th, but the request letter is dated the 28th), AP reported that she still hadn't as of the 5th. (Although, I'll grant, with LTG Honore on the ground, I doubt she has much change to exercise command authority, or say anythign but "yes sir".) -- Bush couldn't federalize the National Guard legally without invoking the Insurrection Act, and couldn't impose martial law anyway. (Constitution, remember that little detail?) -- In any case, FEMA was providing supplies and releaf in less time than previous hurricanes by a factor of three. If, in fact, FEMA failed in its preparations or execution, someone should be able to find and document something that FEMA could both do under legal authority and that was physically possible. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at September 7, 2005 07:24 PM | Permalink to this comment
Detlef: no prob. Biggest thing to understand is there is a big issue with putting active duty or 'federalized' troops on duty in a State. The State is more or less sovereign in regards to its Law Enforcement issues. Sending active duty military in to do LEO work is just typically 'not done' You have to get special approval to do so, its pretty much a legal formality, but it was just another one of those proceedural issues that mucked things up. The Guard are State controlled entities, not Federally controlled, unless a state turns control over, or 'Federalizes' the troops. You typically don't want to put Guard troops who are not Federalized along side Active duty troops, because you end up with two seperate command and control structures and a big mess. Which is why Bush kept trying to get the Gov to federalize the Guard, in order to centralize Command and Control. Something else to keep in mind: scale. Germany Louisiana It is estimated that an area of about 90,000 square miles is affected here. As you can see, thats almost 2/3 the size of Germany (not the flooding of NO, but the storm damage total). It's a HUGE undertaking, really. Orleans Parrish itself is about 350 Square Miles, and its pretty well mucked up. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 07:33 PM | Permalink to this comment
"There's an important issue overlooked in many of these discussions comparing local vs. FEMA response; local government deals with a vast range of, well, local issues concerning everyday living conditions, and the majority of the people involved have no special training in how to handle these sorts of disasters." That is incorrect. That is why states and local governments have Emergency Management offices and employees. They are the interface to the Fed/FEMA for these sorts of things. It's not apples and oranges, it's more like apple tree and apple. Point is, they should be on the same page, but somewhere it broke down. The StateFed interface was offline, and everything went to pot and it seems, at least to me and others who are familiar with EM issues, to be focused around a Governer who refused to make proper decisions. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 07:40 PM | Permalink to this comment
It's pretty obvious that Blanco deserves a lot of blame for poor response. However, the fact is, in an extreme situation such as this, the federal government, according to the National Response Plan, is tasked with making a proactive effort to speed aid to a major disaster area. As Retired Admiral James Loy, who helped draft the National Response Plan, put it, noted in this article in the Baltimore Sun today: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/custom/attack/bal-te.homeland07sep07,1,7626584.story?coll=bal-attack-headlines 'The plan allowed Brown to call the shots on how state and federal resources should be used, including the Defense Department. Instead, Loy said, the federal government used a slow "bureaucratic licensing process," in which it waited until local and state governments were overwhelmed before stepping in and waited again before asking the Pentagon, "the ultimate resource provider," to help. "For God's sake," Loy said, the Defense Department gets "$450 billion a year to do what the federal government needs to get done."' Art Botterell, former FEMA field agent, put it this way: '"I am having a degree of deja vu about this because we went through this with Hurricane Andrew," Botterell said. The intense criticism of crossed wires in the federal response to Andrew was among the inspirations for President Clinton's efforts to beef up FEMA and make it a Cabinet-level department.'
Point taken, Buddy, but I haven't seen much discussion about EM issues in all of this--how did FEMA manage their relationship with EM departments in the past? What kind of resources do these departments have, especially in the poorer states? Charlie in CO offers a good list of the challenges FEMA was faced with, but like many Americans I'm puzzled as to what they've been doing these past few years to meet these challenges. It seems to me that having a more pro-active relationship with local EM depts would be a good place to start. I'm not so interested in laying blame here as I am concerned about something like this happening again. The disaster in NOLA affects America as a whole--we can't afford to count on locals to have the resources and training to handle such things on their own. This is exactly the reason why we have a federal govt in the first place. I'm not interested in paying FEMA to explain why they can't do anything to protect the American people, especially since they did seem to do a lot better when they had competent people in charge. Posted by: Jess at September 7, 2005 07:57 PM | Permalink to this comment
tcobb pretty much summed it up. Before the hurricane things are messy but functional. After the hurricane there's no electricity or water and the only way to move is by foot or helicopter. If I was in charge I would have done the same thing. I would have focused on using my helicopters to plug the levies instead of evacuating the superdome. The blame falls squarely at the feet of of people who watched years and years of New orleans catastrophe scenarios explained on TV. Then ignored mandatory evacuation orders while a CAT5 headed straight for them. It was the people who decided to stay in NOLA that made the worst decisions, it was the people themselves who were the least prepared, and it was the people who made disaster recorvery more difficult than it should have been. Those amoung us who now furiously criticise the government are, in my eyes, the most narrow minded of the political spectrum. They wish to have their cake and eat it too. They wish for a government so large, so powerful, so pervasive that it can protect American citizens from their own stupidity. They push us towards an orwellian big-brother. Posted by: moron99 at September 7, 2005 08:04 PM | Permalink to this comment
Jess: Well realistically I can't tell exactly where the breakdown occurred, but we didn't have anywhere near these problems in FL last year (well we had EM folk screaming on the phone, but then thats par for the course in this crap) and I don't hear these issues coming out of Mobile, or Mississippi, so I'd guess its a LA problem. EM people train for this stuff with FEMA, and spend considerable resources leading up to hurricane season getting familiar with things. I think FEMA has had a fairly proactive approach to these issues, at least in my experience in FL. It just seems like LA missed the whole point of Emergency Management, or didn't have the people in place to realize the extent of the issue that was bearing down on them. I agree we can't count on the locals to have the resources, but you can rely on the state government itself to be somewhat ready to deal with an issue like this, especially when its been staring them down the throat for 50 years or better (and I suppose that goes for FEMA too) I just don't think FEMA realized the level of unpreparedness that LA was under either. The resources are available, but the Local and State governments have to be serious about this stuff, or they need to just abdicate all control and give it over to Fed. You can't have it both ways. Posted by: Buddy at September 7, 2005 08:08 PM | Permalink to this comment
Buddy, you must not be really paying attention to the news: the FEMA failures here far exceed anything that can be explained away by procedural state-federal considerations. FEMA and DHS not only didn't do their jobs (as required of them in the National Response Plan), they actively *prevented* aid from getting to New Orleans. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-caneboats0205sep02,0,5932477.story?coll=orl-home-headlines 'As a flooded New Orleans sinks further into despair, up to 500 Florida airboat pilots have volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies. But they aren't being allowed in. And they're growing frustrated. "We cannot get deployed to save our behinds," said Robert Dummett, state coordinator of the Florida Airboat Association. He said the pilots, who range from commercial airboat operators to weekend pleasure boaters, "are physically sick, watching the New Orleans coverage and knowing that the resources to help these poor people is sitting right in our driveways."' http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197 'As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television |