NBC: White House shifts blame for Katrina response



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9189916/


White House shifts blame for Katrina response

Administration, embattled FEMA chief point to state, local officials

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu

Updated: 9:48 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting
evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed
state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a
failure of the country's emergency management.

The White House dispatched 7,200 more troops to the area, bringing the total
in the stricken region to more than 40,000 National Guard and active-duty
soldiers. Authorities reported progress in restoring order and electricity
and repairing levees, as a hospital ship arrived and cruise ships were sent
to provide temporary housing for victims. As Louisiana officials expressed
confidence that they had begun to get a handle on the crisis, a dozen
National Guard troops broke into applause late Saturday as Isaac Kelly, 81,
the last person to be evacuated from the Superdome, boarded a school bus.

But there remained an overwhelming display of human misery on the streets of
New Orleans, where the last 1,500 people were being evacuated from the
Convention Center amid an overpowering odor of human waste and rotting
garbage. The evacuees, most of them black and poor, spoke of violence,
anarchy and family members who died for lack of food, water and medical
care.

About 42,000 people had been evacuated from the city by Saturday afternoon,
with roughly the same number remaining, city officials said.
Search-and-rescue efforts continued in flooded areas of the city, where an
unknown number of people wait in makeshift shelters. Hundreds of thousands
of people have been displaced by the flooding -- 250,000 have been absorbed
by Texas alone, and local radio reported that Baton Rouge will have doubled
in population by Monday. Federal officials said they have begun to collect
corpses but could not guess the total toll.

An emerging power struggle
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to
wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly
before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal
memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New
Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said
Saturday.

The administration had sought control over National Guard units, normally
under control of the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request,
noting that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of
martial law. State authorities suspected a political motive behind the
request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from
the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the
source, who is an adviser and does not have the authority to speak publicly.

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the
federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims
and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in
the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.

Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response
to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the
failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has
created tremendous problems that have strained state and local
capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are
not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is
unacceptable."

In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said
one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our
constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with
the governor."

And FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor
C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation
and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources
to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does
not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make
people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now
in New Orleans."

Bush canceled a visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao that had been
scheduled for Wednesday and made plans to return to the Gulf Coast on
Monday. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice scheduled visits to the region, as troops continue to pour
in.

In New Orleans Saturday, smoke from several fires that have burned for days
swirled over the French Quarter. Outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention
Center, the stench and heat worsened the long wait of the thousands of
evacuees lining up for buses. Many of them said they had no idea where they
would go.

Columbus Lawrence, 43, a landscaper, shambled down St. Joseph Avenue
searching for the end of the line. He pushed a cart piled with packets of
dry, chicken-flavored noodles. "It's like a chip," he said hopefully,
putting another handful into his mouth.

Others have been here since the day of the storm, the early part of week
made increasingly awful because there were no toilets, no water, no food.

Herbert J. Freeman arrived in a neighbor's boat with his mother, Ethel M.
Freeman, 91, frail and sick, but with an active mind. She kept asking him
for a doctor, for a nurse, for anyone who could help her. Police told
Freeman there was nothing they could do. She died in her wheelchair, next to
her son, on Thursday morning.

It was half a day before he could find someone to take away her body, he
said. "She wasn't senile or nothing," he said. "She knew what was going on.
.. . . I kept saying, 'Mom, I can't help you."

Next to Freeman, Kenny Lason, 45, a dishwasher at Pat O'Brien's, a French
Quarter restaurant famous for its signature "Hurricane" cocktail, took a
long slurp out of a bottle of Korbel extra dry champagne. He broke a store
window to get it, and he is not ashamed. "They wasn't giving us nothing," he
said. "You got to live off the land."

Outside New Orleans, frustration boiled over among the boatmen who
spontaneously left their homes in central Louisiana to rescue stranded
residents in the first hours after reports of flooding hit the airwaves. For
the past two days, many have been turned away because of security concerns
in a city that had turned violent and chaotic.

"It's a tragedy that's unfolding now," said Moose Billeaud, a former New
Orleans prosecutor who is now in private practice in Lafayette, La. "It is
not organized at all."

The boatmen who made it in came back with harrowing memories. Kenny, who did
not want to disclose his last name, said friends were shot at by stranded
people who wanted to steal their boats. "It's total chaos," he said.

Isaac Kelly, the last to depart from the Superdome, said "it feels good" as
he boarded the bus. A young guardsman put an arm around the stooped Kelly
and said, "Good luck and God bless."

The dome, which once housed more than 20,000 evacuees, became a symbol of
the chaos that gripped New Orleans, with television network cameras
capturing scenes of filth and misery.

'I never thought it would be this bad'
Just before Kelly stepped aboard, Isaiah Bennett, leaning heavily on a
wooden cane, was helped onto the bus. "It was hell," said Bennett. "I don't
like this kind of mess," he said. "I never thought it would be this bad."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said that it will take as long as 80
days to remove the water from New Orleans and surrounding areas.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)
sent a letter to Bush Saturday urging him to provide cash benefits and
transportation assistance to stranded people and to use federal facilities
for housing. They wrote that they "are concerned that rescue and recovery
efforts appear to remain chaotic and that many victims remain hungry and
without adequate shelter nearly a week after the hurricane struck. Clearly,
strong personal leadership from you is essential if we are to get this
effort on track."

The administration said that 100,000 have received some form of humanitarian
aid and that 9,500 have been rescued by the Coast Guard. The administration
said it is providing funds to employ displaced workers and has arranged for
Amtrak trains to help in the evacuation. The rail service expects to remove
1,500 people daily. In addition, the Energy Department reported that 1.3
million customers were without electricity, down from 1.5 million Friday.

The 7,200 additional troops announced by Bush Saturday are scheduled to
arrive within three days, joining 4,000 troops already there and about
30,000 National Guard soldiers. The Air Force is repatriating 300 airmen
from Iraq and Afghanistan so they can assist their families back in their
home base in Biloxi, Miss.

Law enforcement officials said order is beginning to be restored in the
city. A temporary detention center has been set up in the city to house
those arrested for looting and other crimes after the hurricane, and the
city's court personnel have been relocated to neighboring jurisdictions
unaffected by Katrina, said New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten. Trials are
expected to begin within two weeks, he said. "We're going to bring these
guys to justice," he said.

Members of federal law enforcement agencies are in the city, he said. More
than 200 Border Patrol agents have been sworn in to reinforce New Orleans
police, and state police officials said hundreds of law enforcement agents
from other states are expected in the coming days.

Hsu reported from Washington. Staff writers Justin Blum, Dana Milbank,
Jacqueline L. Salmon and Josh White contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company


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