[Katrina] Blueprint for disaster
- From: indigoace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Indigo Ace)
- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 17:18:27 GMT
>From the Chicago Tribune--
Blueprint for disaster
Flawed storm plans, timing errors doomed New Orleans
By Andrew Martin, Cam Simpson and Frank James, Washington Bureau.
Andrew Zajac of the Tribune's Washington Bureau and staff reporter
Angela Rozas in Jefferson Parish, La., contributed to this report
Published September 11, 2005
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:
- 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.
- 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.
----------
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
--
Anne
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
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