February 15, 2006
Fox News
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was on the hot seat Wednesday as senators committee members prepared to tear into what many describe as a feeble federal to Hurricane Katrina.
But Chertoff, who is speaking to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the first anniversary of taking the agency's helm, isn't the only person faulted with not reacting swiftly and agilely enough to the Aug. 29 disaster.
A Republican-dominated committee is criticizing everyone from President Bush to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the American Red Cross for failures related to the response to Katrina.
But within the federal government, DHS bears the ultimate responsibility for a quick and effective response to disaster," panel Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Me., said in opening the hearing.
"The federal department that was supposed to lead, direct, and coordinate the federal response to Katrina was, time and again, late, uncertain, and ineffective. A central purpose of this hearing is to learn why, in a crisis that called for decisive and speedy action, DHS was plagued by indecision and delay. If our government failed so utterly in preparing for and responding to a disaster that was long predicted and imminent for days, we must wonder how much more profound the failure would be if a disaster were to take us completely by surprise, such as a terrorist attack."
She added: "The chasm Katrina exposed between DHS and FEMA, one of its most important components, clearly presented one of the most significant impediments to a coordinated, swift federal response. Concerns about this disconnect were expressed long before Katrina, and our investigation has revealed disturbing conflicts over resources, roles, and responsibilities."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is part of DHS.
In a report to be released Wednesday by the House Select Committee on Katrina, chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., government is faulted for failing to take the reins and responding to the disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi, and to a lesser extent in Florida and Alabama.
"Passivity did the most damage," concluded the 520-page report, titled "A Failure of Initiative." It said authorities failed to move even when they knew days in advance storm that the storm was reaching catastrophic strength.
"The failure of initiative cost lives, prolonged suffering, and left all Americans justifiably concerned our government is no better prepared to protect its people than it was before 9/11, even if we are," reads the report.
The committee points out the levees that broke were designed to resist a Category 3 hurricane, but not the most severe hurricanes. In the end, the levees didn't even live up to that standard as Katrina was initially believed to be a Category 4 storm when it hit, but weather experts have since said it was likely a Category 3.
"The single biggest failure of the federal response was that it failed to recognize the likely consequences of the approaching storm and mobilize federal assets for a post-storm evacuation of the flooded city," the report said. "If it had, then federal assistance would have arrived several days earlier."
The report also states the government's poor response caused loss of life, and "prolonged suffering and left all Americans justifiably concerned our government is no better to protect its people than it was before 9/11."
In response to the report, some lawmakers are now calling on Chertoff to resign over his failure to oversee the federal response and take pre-emptive action to limit the damage. In Senate testimony last week, former FEMA Director Michael Brown singled out DHS and Chertoff as a muddled bureaucracy that slowed relief to the Gulf Coast.
The White House and DHS say Brown is the last person to be consulted on the response since he failed to follow a chain of command. E-mails released during the five-month investigation also suggest Brown was preoccupied with his appearance and publicity rather than an effective response.
"Secretary Chertoff is doing a great job at the Homeland Security Department. The president appreciates his strong leadership. He is someone who is committed to doing everything he can to protect the American people," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday.
Meantime, more fallout can be seen on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are reviewing what happened to 11,000 trailer homes provided by FEMA that are meant to provide housing to 12,000 storm victims. Problem is the trailers are in Arkansas.
By one DHS official's accounts, they are in bad shape, sinking in the mud in a cow pasture. FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said the homes are habitable and ready for residency, but the problem is that no community in Louisiana has been located to accommodate the new neighborhoods that will be formed.
"FEMA mobile homes staged in Arkansas are habitable, available and properly maintained. They have not been damaged, and certainly none are being destroyed. Mobile homes are an important part of a comprehensive housing strategy, and are commonly used for temporary housing outside of floodplains," Andrews said in a written statement.
"We had hoped for a better reception in the state of Louisiana, in particular, for mobile home parks to be located in those parishes outside floodplains, but we continue to await the needed authorities to move them in. We expect to use these mobile homes in other open or future disasters," she added.
FEMA Acting Director David Paulison told FOX News that some Louisiana parishes are resisting the idea of trailer park communities. He added that FEMA would rather use travel trailers that cost less and can be placed in flood zones, which currently is prohibited for mobile homes.
House Democrats, who are meeting Wednesday to discuss post-Katrina conditions, are also accusing the Bush administration of being incompetent.
"Hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless or without jobs or without economic security because of Katrina. I was in Texas last week and saw signs in hotels that said Katrina residents must be out by a certain date. They have no place to go. The federal government has failed them in this regard and we need to know why," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The storm left more than 1,300 people dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and tens of billions of dollars worth of damage in its wake. Despite Bush's accepting full responsibility for the federal government's shortfalls, the storm response continues to generate finger-pointing.
The report also blames state and local officials, including Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin, for waiting too long to order a mandatory evacuation of the city. Despite warnings of Katrina's potential destruction 56 hours ahead of landfall, the evacuation order came only 19 hours before Katrina hit.
"None of this had to happen," investigators concluded in reviewing the evacuation effort. "Despite years of recognition of the threat that was to materialize in Hurricane Katrina, no one — not the federal government, not the state government, and not the local government — seems to have planned for an evacuation of the city from flooding through breached levees."
Charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross do not escape criticism in the report, which found that they were overwhelmed by the sheer size of demands, leading to water, food and other supply shortages and disorganized sheltering processes.
The inquiry into one of the nation's worst natural disasters looked at everything from the evacuation to the military's role to planning for emergency supplies and in each category found much to criticize.
Some of the response failures dated back to months and even years before Katrina hit, the report found. A lack of warning systems for levee failures delayed their fast repair and poor communications equipment prevented federal, state and local emergency responders from coordinating their counterattack.
Moreover, lessons learned from Hurricane Pam — a fictional storm designed to test Gulf Coast preparedness — went unheeded even though officials knew of the dangers that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would pose to New Orleans.
In its probe, the House panel interviewed scores of federal, state and local authorities, sorted through more than 500,000 pages of e-mails, memos and other documents and held nine public hearings spotlighting sometimes feeble explanations by officials.
House Democrats initially refused to participate in the committee, arguing that they believed it would try to spare the Bush administration from criticism. House Democratic leaders wanted an independent commission similar to the Sept. 11 commission that studied communications failures before the 2001 terror attacks.
But two Louisiana lawmakers, Reps. Charlie Melancon and William Jefferson of Louisiana, did participate in the probe. They wrote in a 59-page minority report that they agreed with many of the conclusions, but despite the panel's investigation, the committee "adopted an approach that largely eschews direct accountability.
"The majority report rarely assesses how these problems occurred, why they were not corrected sooner, and who in particular was responsible," they wrote.
FOX News' Kelly Wright and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184954,00.html