The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.Emphasis mine in all cases.
Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.
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"We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably," said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress." With Katrina, he noted that "we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack," there will be no warning.
Indeed, the warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.
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"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."
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"The federal system that was perfected in the '90s has been deconstructed," said Bullock. Citing a study that found that the United States now spends $180 million a year to fend off natural hazards vs. $20 billion annually against terrorism, Bullock said, "FEMA has been marginalized. . . . There is one focus and the focus is on terrorism."
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Others who went out of their way to offer help were turned down, such as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who told reporters his city had offered emergency, medical and technical help as early as last Sunday to FEMA but was turned down. Only a single tank truck was requested, Daley said. Red tape kept the American Ambulance Association from sending 300 emergency vehicles from Florida to the flood zone, according to former senator John Breaux (D-La.) They were told to get permission from the General Services Administration. "GSA said they had to have FEMA ask for it," Breaux told CNN. "As a result they weren't sent."
The Washington Post has been absolutely amazing about this story. I highly recommend the entire article.
Kevin Drum, who (after a brief hiccup) has been the voice of moderates' outrage over this fiasco, has this to say about the article:
Here's the part I don't get — and I mean I genuinely don't get it, regardless of who's at fault here. Everyone suggests that part of the problem is that FEMA's focus was redirected toward terrorism after 9/11. In and of itself, this is neither surprising nor wrong. But the requirements to respond to a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city are largely identical to the requirements for responding to a hurricane like Katrina: food, medicine, maintenance of order, evacuation, and temporary shelter. So what are FEMA's plans for responding to, say, a large scale chemical weapon attack on Chicago? They'd have less warning than they did with Katrina and the requirements for aid would be largely similar. What would they do?Exactly what they have done, Kevin -- spin for all they're worth, abandon the "poor, huddled masses" to whatever fate befell them, and send Halliburton in to profit off of the misery. (Oh, and Brown's predecessor as head of FEMA is now a lobbyist for Kellogg, Brown and Root. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.) With the obvious difference of being able to start wars over it instead of having to beg off on the whole "act of God" thing.
I understand the impulse to avoid "partisanship" during this terrible time, I really do. But with the Cheney administration desperately trying to pawn off responsibility for this fiasco on the Governor and Mayor (with outright lies in some cases), and with the clear and present dereliction of duty on the parts of the responsible parties (the DHS director and the head of FEMA in particular), we need to keep shouting this from the rooftops until the American people finally hear us -- because something has to be done about them before the next disaster.
--
(/) Roland X
Hope is a phoenix...
but before the phoenix can rise, first it must burn.
