How the Bush II administration manufactured the disaster in New Orleans, Part II: the federal response

[What follows is an excerpt from a study I wrote on the Katrina debacle; I'll make the references more useful once I can figure out how to do it without driving myself nuts - B]

Perhaps the most obvious problem with the federal response was that it took too long to start in earnest, and thus too long to become effective. Michael Chertoff, the Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and the person who, by virtue of his title, is responsible for organizing the federal response to nationally-significant disasters, apparently failed to appreciate the magnitude of the disaster, in spite of FEMA (as well as other Washington officials, the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Mayor of New Orleans) having been provided with strikingly accurate predictions of Katrina’s path and strength by the National Weather Service at least two days in advance. Similarly, New Orleans’s vulnerability to flooding has long been known - reports of flooding in that city due to Hurricane Betsy (1965) read like a first draft of the flooding reports generated after Katrina. More recently, federal, state, and local officials and emergency managers convened in 2004 to participate in a disaster drill in which a fictional Hurricane Pam was said to have caused massive flooding in New Orleans, trapping many residents and overwhelming local response capabilities. Reports generated by the Hurricane Pam exercise were yet to be released when Katrina hit, but the general conclusion that an event of this sort would require government at all levels to respond in a coordinated, well planned fashion was startlingly clear.

The potential for disaster was therefor obvious to anyone who was looking, and emergency managers should be looking: hazard and vulnerability analyses form the basis of successful emergency management. What is more, once Katrina crossed Florida, it was likely to hit somewhere on the country’s Gulf Coast, with devastating effects when it did. Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff might be able to claim that he didn’t know that New Orleans, Louisiana, or Mississippi would be hit, but he can’t claim that he didn’t know that his agency would need to respond to somewhere on the Gulf Coast in order to clean up after Katrina. {{16 Berger, Eric 2001;21 McQuaid, John 2002; 14 McQuaid, John 2002; 18 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 20 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 15 Schleifstein, Mark 2002; 17 Haddow, George D. 2006; 7 Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina 2006; 36 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 2006; }}

Secretary Chertoff’s initial lack of action is all the more puzzling in that President Bush declared states of emergency, at the requests of their respective governors, for Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Since this declaration activates the federal response to a disaster (anticipated or actual), it is peculiar that Secretary Chertoff, whose department was responsible for coordinating that federal response, failed to take decisive action subsequent to its being issued. In the words of the Report of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Secretary Chertoff “made only top-level inquiries into the state of preparations, and accepted uncritically the reassurances he received. He did not appear to reach out to the other Cabinet Secretaries to make sure that they were readying their departments to provide whatever assistance DHS – and the people of the Gulf – might need.” (report page 7){{36 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 2006; }} At first glance, one might suppose that this was because he believed that his subordinate, FEMA Director Michael Brown, was handling preparations. But a memo signed by Secretary Chertoff, and dated 30 August – a day after Katrina collided with the Gulf Coast, undermines this argument. In the memo, Chertoff appoints Director Brown the Principal Federal Official for the federal response to Katrina. In the same memo, Chertoff refers to the President Bush’s White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response, and indicates that not only will DHS be a part of this task force, but it will “assist the [President’s] administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina.”{{12 Chertoff, Michael 2005; }} This raises several questions, among them why did Secretary Chertoff wait until after Katrina hit to assign Director Brown to lead the federal response, and why was DHS assisting the President's response? It should have been leading the response.

[End of excerpt]

Here is an interesting clip from 2006 in which President Bush takes "full responsibility" for the failure of the federal response to Katrina.

prologue: the Clinton Administration
Chapter I: Dismantling FEMA