Re: Newsweek Story on Katrina


"ScottMac" <scottmo1560@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:wd3Ve.10439$9i4.5408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Bush is more worried on what happens on Irak that our own country....
>
>
> Which would explain why he & Mayfield had to make personal phone calls to
> the guv & mayor urging them to evacuate, especially since it appeared they
> made no plans to do so.
>
Blueprint for Disaster
By Andrew Martin, Cam Simpson and Frank James
The Chicago Tribune
Sunday 11 September 2005

Flawed storm plans, timing errors doomed New Orleans.
Washington - Hours before Hurricane Katrina ripped into the Gulf Coast,
flattening southern Mississippi and turning New Orleans into a deadly swamp,
a team of emergency officials held a midnight telephone conference.

During the call, local officials were so certain of catastrophe that
they asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to include extra medical
staff in its first wave of responders to help with casualties.

At that point, in the final hours of Sunday night, preparations for
Hurricane Katrina were following a plan that had been drafted only months
before as part of a simulated exercise called Hurricane Pam, a joint effort
by local, state and federal officials.

"We worked through together what each [agency] was responsible for,"
said Walter Maestri, emergency management director for Jefferson Parish,
which is adjacent to New Orleans. "That became the paradigm that we expected
every agency to follow."

As the storm developed into Hurricane Katrina, there were numerous
government plans for its arrival in Louisiana, all with great detail about
evacuation, relief and responsibilities.

But a Tribune review found all the plans suffered from fatal problems:
Some state and local plans didn't deal with issues such as rescuing people
from flooded homes. Others deflected problems such as evacuations from the
local government into the laps of the poorest citizens. And still others,
including the federal government's much-touted plan for dealing with
disasters in the post-Sept. 11 era, were not implemented quickly enough.

The review was based on interviews and scores of state, local and
federal records, including hurricane plans. It found:

a.. New Orleans' plan for dealing with its poorest residents during a
major hurricane essentially was to cross its fingers. After struggling to
come up with an evacuation strategy, New Orleans officials announced in July
that they couldn't provide transportation out of town before a hurricane so
residents effectively were on their own.


b.. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco submitted letters to President Bush on
Aug. 27 and Aug. 28, well before Katrina's landfall, asking for federal
help. But the head of the Homeland Security Department didn't designate the
storm an "incident of national significance," a post-Sept. 11 reform that
would trigger the full weight of the federal government, until at least 32
hours after the storm roared ashore on Aug. 29.
Based on the Hurricane Pam exercise, local authorities were prepared to
deal with the aftermath of the storm for 48 to 60 hours, at which time FEMA
was supposed to arrive, Maestri said. But instead of arriving on Aug. 31, as
expected, the federal agency didn't arrive in force until Sept. 2. By that
time, New Orleans had collapsed into chaos.

"My anger, my frustration, is I don't feel that the federal government,
FEMA in particular, lived up to their end of the bargain," Maestri said. "We
were prepared. The problem was the cavalry didn't arrive."

Neither Blanco's office nor New Orleans' officials could be reached for
comment.

However, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said, "We're going to
be our harshest critics... . No one was pleased with the response time, but
I remind you there was in response to Hurricane Katrina the largest mass
mobilization to a natural disaster ever."

Plans Long in Works

Emergency officials in Louisiana long have been planning for a
catastrophic hurricane, holding simulations and developing a succession of
plans. Louisiana, for instance, uses the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane
Evacuation and Sheltering Plan, last revised in January 2000, and New
Orleans has its own plan.

Under those plans, local officials are responsible for dealing with
Category 1 and 2 hurricanes and fast-moving Category 3 hurricanes. But if
the storms are stronger, the governor is responsible for proclaiming a state
of emergency and seeking federal assistance.

The Hurricane Pam exercise dealt specifically with a powerful storm's
aftermath, making it different from previous exercises that had focused
primarily on preparedness. The first series of meetings, which ran for a
week in July 2004, included more than 270 participants, including 21
representatives from FEMA.

The plan was meant to bridge efforts of state, local and federal
officials, said Madhu Beriwal, president of Innovative Emergency Management,
the consulting firm that ran the exercise.

Theme: Get People Out

If there is a theme in the various hurricane preparation plans, it is
that evacuation is the most important component. And Hurricane Katrina gave
local officials time to prepare.

It began as Tropical Depression 12 near the Bahamas on Aug. 23 and was
renamed Tropical Storm Katrina a day later.

Though the storm weakened as it passed over Florida, where it left 11
people dead, forecasters predicted it would strengthen once it reached the
warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It did, and by 5 a.m. on Saturday, Aug.
27, Katrina was declared a Category 3 hurricane and was 435 miles southeast
of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

The same day, a hurricane watch was declared for southeast Louisiana,
and Blanco asked Bush to declare a federal emergency for her state.

Blanco apparently used the language required to trigger a large-scale
federal response: "This incident will be of such severity and magnitude that
effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the state," she wrote.

While Bush declared an emergency, he stopped short of deploying the
full-scale response that Blanco sought. In an Aug. 27 release, FEMA said it
would mobilize everything necessary "to protect public health and safety."

At 1 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 28, the National Weather Service declared
Katrina, which was 310 miles southeast of the Mississippi River, a Category
4 hurricane and said "preparations to protect life and property should be
rushed to completion." The weather service's announcements for the remainder
of the day became increasingly dire.

"Katrina ... now a potentially catastrophic Category five hurricane ...
headed for the northern Gulf Coast," the weather service announced at 7 a.m.
The bulletin at 10 a.m. said, "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for
weeks."

By then, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin had issued a mandatory
evacuation for New Orleans, its first. The city is difficult to evacuate
because of its large population and unique layout: The roads out of town are
limited and many of them cross bodies of water and are prone to flooding.

What's more, an estimated 134,000 residents had no means of getting out
of town. In July, city officials produced DVDs to distribute in low-income
neighborhoods warning that they didn't have the resources to evacuate people
who lacked transportation, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

By all accounts, getting everyone else out of the area went well, with
an estimated 75 percent of residents evacuating before the storm. The
inability of planners to deal with people who couldn't or wouldn't leave
became quickly apparent.

Nagin originally had intended for the Superdome to be used for people
with special medical needs, and it was stocked with enough water and food to
accommodate them. But when the doors were opened at noon Sunday, it had
become the city's "last-resort refuge," designed in the state's hurricane
plan as a place for residents who didn't evacuate the city.

Last-resort refuges are intended as a safe place for people to go during
a storm, and then the people are supposed to go home or be transported to
more permanent shelters. However, the Hurricane Pam plan warns that in the
event of a major storm, "some shelters of last resort may be turned into
long-term shelters." No further details are provided.

That same day, Sunday, Aug. 28, Blanco urged the president to declare "a
major expedited disaster" for Louisiana, and she again used the language to
trigger a forceful federal response. It didn't come.

Because New Orleans' levees were built to handle only a Category 3
hurricane, it long has been predicted that the city would flood if a larger
storm hit. The National Hurricane Center reiterated that point in briefings
with FEMA and the Homeland Security Department, saying that the levees could
be topped by a stronger hurricane's storm surge.

That night, Maestri talked with local, state and federal officials for
one last time before the storm hit.

"Everybody was fairly calm," Maestri said. "We felt as comfortable as we
could be."

In addition to requesting additional medical personnel, Maestri said he
also asked FEMA for two generator packs to provide power for sewage pumping.

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast about 6 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 29, 40
miles from New Orleans.

That morning, Nagin told the "Today" show that pumping stations had
stopped "so we will have significant flooding. It's just a matter of how
much."

At approximately 11:30 a.m. on Monday, FEMA Director Michael Brown
finally sounded the alarm at FEMA, proposing that 1,000 Homeland Security
officials be sent to the region to support rescuers, The Associated Press
reported. He estimated it would take them two days to arrive.

At that time, the main stock of emergency supplies was at Camp
Beauregard in Pineville, La., about four hours from New Orleans. Various
press reports indicate that there were 3,000 National Guard troops at the
ready, and food, water and cots available for 10,000 people.

The next morning, on Tuesday, Aug. 30, the floodwall at the 17th Street
Canal broke and sent water gushing into the city. By midday, widespread
looting was reported. While there was little federal presence in the city, a
Pentagon spokesman said there were enough National Guard troops on hand to
handle the emergency.

Crucial Designation

That night, roughly 32 hours after landfall, Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff declared the hurricane an "incident of national
significance," the first time the designation was exercised. Though it came
long after Blanco's request, it triggered the full weight of the federal
government into the disaster.

The delay - Chertoff is empowered by law to act before a disaster
strikes - will likely become a focus of congressional investigators.

The next day, Wednesday, Aug. 31, the federal government was supposed to
arrive in force to relieve local officials, according to Maestri. And
indeed, that day, the military set up Joint Task Force Katrina at Camp
Shelby, Miss., and mobilized 10,000 additional Guardsmen, but they remained
up to 48 hours away from the disaster zone.

By this time, the Superdome, holding an estimated 23,000 people, was
stifling because power failures had shut down air conditioning, and it
reeked of overflowing garbage and excrement. Thousands also were stranded at
the city's convention center.

The Louisiana National Guard on Wednesday began supervising the
evacuation of the Superdome on buses that took evacuees to the Astrodome in
Houston, a process that took several days.

While some people were leaving the city by Thursday, Sept. 1, Terry
Ebbert, head of the city's emergency operations, warned that the slow
evacuation of the Superdome had become "an incredibly explosive situation."
Nagin, meanwhile, issued an "SOS" over conditions in the city.

Despite multiple reports about the horrific conditions at the convention
center, which hadn't been designated as a last-resort refuge but where
thousands of evacuees congregated anyway, Brown said he wasn't aware that
people were stranded there.

On Friday, Sept. 2, Bush praised FEMA's efforts.

"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job," he said. While Bush toured the
area, a caravan of federal rescue workers finally rolled into New Orleans.

While appalled by the federal response, Maestri said he was particularly
incensed when Brown told a television reporter that his agency hadn't
responded sooner because no one asked.

"I was flabbergasted," he said. "The reason we did Pam was so that we
wouldn't have to ask. What do I have to do, send him an engraved
invitation?"

While talking to a reporter Friday, Sept. 9, Maestri received a call
saying that the generators he had requested from FEMA the night before the
storm had finally arrived.





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