Katrina and emergency management

[DrSmellThis]

This Katrina thread was started so as not to divert the other one from immediate relief issues, since it was starting to get bogged down with general politics.

My hope is that people can feel free to bring up other issues here, and post other information relevant to Katrina. I'd like to see good informaton posted and referenced.

***
In order to be prepared for the next disaster, there needs to be experienced leadership, instead of just political cronies. But judging by the recent appointment of Karl Rove to head reconstruction efforts, it appears the current administration hasn't learned the appropriate lesson; and won't do this unless pressured by an informed public. This article shows some of the problems with appointing FEMA leadership that lacks experience and content knowledge/expertise:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.response/index.html

[DrSmellThis]

Looks like a half million earmarked for NO evacuation planning -- money that came out of taxpayer pockets -- was diverted:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.evacuation.ap/index.html

[DrSmellThis]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_katrina_response_exclusive;_ylt=ArQ2kBEa8m2e5 kYhPRZCRVsDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPU CUl

[belgareth]

Looks like a half million earmarked for NO evacuation planning -- money that came out of taxpayer pockets -- was diverted:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.evacuation.ap/index.html

Pretty much what I expected. Congress ordered the study and provided the funds. FEMA sent the money, which got to LA and vanished. They need to figure out where it went and fry somebody.

[belgareth]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_katrina_response_exclusive;_ylt=ArQ2kBEa8m2e5 kYhPRZCRVsDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPU CUl

A lot of that is fluff other than noting they failed to act even after orders were given. The most important comment was this "He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame."

[DrSmellThis]

A lot of that is fluff other than noting they failed to act even after orders were given. From the article, it seems the opposite was more true:

"orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days. Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters."

I read that as saying the orders were not given, since no one received them; but the armed forces acted quickly once they were given.

Some good content there, IMHO. The most important comment was this "He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame."That was a law school official, not the most important commentator in the article, in my opinion. But his comment is good, especially if you read the rest of his comment. No one should be sentenced without a trial and legal presumption of innocence. But a lot of people need to be investigated, tried, removed from office, and/or otherwise held personally and professionally responsible. I'd love to see everyone get their day in court, but I won't hold my breath.

Readers will of course make up their own minds about what the article says, what should seem important, and what if anything should be dismissed as "fluff".

[DrSmellThis]

Pretty much what I expected. Congress ordered the study and provided the funds. FEMA sent the money, which got to LA and vanished. They need to figure out where it went and fry somebody.A lot of things in that scenario seem spooky and sloppy. Who exactly did FEMA send the money to in the State, for example? Apparently no one in State emergency management ever saw the money. I agree someone -- or multiple parties -- need(s) to be held responsible.

[belgareth]

From the article, it seems the opposite was more true:

"orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days. Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters."

I read that as saying the orders were not given, since no one received them; but the armed forces acted quickly once they were given.
You interpreted it one way, I did in another. As a former executive I can't imagine making a public commitment then failing to act on it immediately. So I assume Bush gave the orders as soon as possible after getting out from in front of the cameras and somebody else dropped the ball. This "The plan and a 2003 presidential directive put Chertoff, as Homeland Security secretary, in charge of coordinating the federal response." seems to indicate that the person who dropped the ball was Chertoff. Although that may not be true either.

Some good content there, IMHO. That was a law school official, not the most important commentator in the article, in my opinion. But his comment is good, especially if you read the rest of his comment. No one should be sentenced without a trial and legal presumption of innocence. But a lot of people need to be investigated, tried, removed from office, and/or otherwise held personally and professionally responsible. I'd love to see everyone get their day in court, but I won't hold my breath.

Readers will of course make up their own minds about what the article says, what should seem important, and what if anything should be dismissed as "fluff".

Personally, I want to see the whole thing brought up in a qualified investigation rather than the media. We've been this route a number of times and I am not inclined to trust the media no matter who they attack or defend. I'm sure if I tried I could find a whole list of experts who will say exactly the opposite of what is said here. That wouldn't make them more or less believable. We need to stop trying cases in the media and get on with a non or bi-partisan investigation. Thus, the statement by Scott Silliman, a former judge advocate general who's now the executive director of Duke University Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security (not really what I'd call just a law school official) is still the most important statement in the article "He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame." As for any comment made by members of an opposing party, I will take them in the context of party politics and rate them accordingly. Nobody who watches politics can honestly deny that both parties will use any and all excuses to undermine the opposition.

[belgareth]

A lot of things in that scenario seem spooky and sloppy. Who exactly did FEMA send the money to in the State, for example? Apparently no one in State emergency management ever saw the money. I agree someone -- or multiple parties -- need(s) to be held responsible.
That is curious, although spooky wouldn't seem quite the right word. Suspicious is more to my liking. We have one party claiming to have sent the money and another claiming to have not recieved it. Surely there is a paper trail to follow. What was the last point the money can be accounted for and where did it go from there?

[DrSmellThis]

You interpreted it one way, I did in another. As a former executive I can't imagine making a public commitment then failing to act on it immediately. So I assume Bush gave the orders as soon as possible after getting out from in front of the cameras and somebody else dropped the ball. This "The plan and a 2003 presidential directive put Chertoff, as Homeland Security secretary, in charge of coordinating the federal response." seems to indicate that the person who dropped the ball was Chertoff. Although that may not be true either.


Personally, I want to see the whole thing brought up in a qualified investigation rather than the media. We've been this route a number of times and I am not inclined to trust the media no matter who they attack or defend. I'm sure if I tried I could find a whole list of experts who will say exactly the opposite of what is said here. That wouldn't make them more or less believable. We need to stop trying cases in the media and get on with a non or bi-partisan investigation. Thus, the statement by Scott Silliman, a former judge advocate general who's now the executive director of Duke University Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security (not really what I'd call just a law school official) is still the most important statement in the article "He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame." As for any comment made by members of an opposing party, I will take them in the context of party politics and rate them accordingly. Nobody who watches politics can honestly deny that both parties will use any and all excuses to undermine the opposition.I understand why your interpretation might have been different. I would normally also have a hard time believing a president could just give a speech that help is on the way without having given all the necessary orders, or determining whether Chernoff had. But Rove and gang have taken the art of naked political rhetoric to new heights these days, and the lies have gotten pretty outrageous.

Maybe either Bush or Chernoff could have given orders. So far all we have is claims that no one did. We'll see whether the administration responds to that effect; or stays silent as they have, claiming it was the States' responsibility (despite plans and stated policies that say otherwise; as well as State emergency declarations).

We do well to be circumspect about any information, even those of "independent" commissions (look at all that was apparently ommitted in the 9/11 commission's report, for example)

On the other hand, there are also risks with dismissing too much of what we read. It is up to each person to decide their own threshhold for taking information seriously. I avoid TV (the second worst source of news in reliability, behind government propaganda) and get my information from as many varied sources as possible to help "triangulate" on some truth.

We do well to consider the sources of quotes. In this case, many of those comments were made by Republicans about Republicans, and even by former FEMA officials in the same party. There has been a ton of this kind of party-crossing information about Katrina, and I use that with other things to help form a rough estimate of the effect of politics on information. I also try to separate facts from the evaluation of those facts whenever I can, but this is not always possible.

I encourage everyone to post a variety of information they think might be solid, regardless of political ramifications. That way we can help each other triangulate a little bit.

[belgareth]

I continue to watch developments and look for bits and pieces. But I do not take anything at face value until I see corroberating evidence form multiple reputable sources. When it comes to politicians, they are considered suspect in all cases unless something very strong supports them. As for the mass media, they have their agendas as well and are well known for only presenting the parts that will sell their product.

Ok, I'm suspicious and cynical.

[Jersey Girl]

New Orleans Mayor Halts Reopening of City
Nagin Cites New Storm Threat
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, AP

NEW ORLEANS (Sept. 19) - Under pressure from President Bush and other top federal officials, the mayor Monday suspended the reopening of large portions of the city over the next few days because of the risk of a new round of flooding from a tropical storm.

"I am concerned about this hurricane getting in the gulf. ... If we are off, I'd rather err on the side of conservatism to make sure we have everyone out," Mayor Ray Nagin said.

The announcement came after repeated warnings from top federal officials - and the president himself - that the city was unsafe. The mayor reversed course even as residents began trickling back to the first neighborhood opened as part of Nagin's plan, the scarcely damaged Algiers section.

The mayor said he had wanted to reopen some of the city's signature neighborhoods over the coming week in order to reassure the people of New Orleans that "there was a city to come back to." He said he had strategically selected ZIP codes that had suffered little or no flooding.

But "now we have conditions that have changed. We have another hurricane that is approaching us," he said. He warned that the city's pumping system was not yet running at full capacity and that its levee system was still in a "very weak position."

He urged everyone already settled back into Algiers to be ready to evacuate as early as Wednesday.

Tropical Storm Rita was headed toward the Florida Keys and was expected to become a hurricane, cross the Gulf of Mexico and reach Texas or Mexico by the weekend. But forecasters said it could also veer in Louisiana's direction.

"We're watching Tropical Storm Rita's projected path and, depending on its strength and how much rain falls, everything could change. Residents moving into the area may have to evacuate again," Col. Duane Gapinski, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers task force that is draining New Orleans and repairing the levees.

Under the mayor's plan, Algiers opened Monday, and the Uptown neighborhood, the Garden District and the historic French Quarter were supposed to reopen one ZIP code at a time between Wednesday and next Monday, bringing a total about 180,000 of New Orleans' half-million inhabitants back.

The dispute over the reopening was just the latest example of the lack of federal-local coordination that has marked the disaster practically from the start.

Nagin saw a quick reopening as a way to get the storm-battered city back in the business of luring tourists. But federal officials warned that such a move could be a few weeks premature, pointing out much of the area does not yet have full electricity and still has no drinkable water, 911 service or working hospitals.

With the approach of Rita, Bush added his voice, saying he had "deep concern" about the possibility that New Orleans' patched-together levees could be breached again.

In addition, Bush said there are significant environmental concerns. New Orleans still lacks safe drinking water, and there are fears about the contamination in the remaining floodwaters and the muck left behind in drained areas of the city.

"The mayor - you know, he's got this dream about having a city up and running, and we share that dream," the president said. "But we also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."

Bush said White House chief of staff Andrew Card had been pressing the matter with Nagin. The concerns were echoed by the top federal official in charge in New Orleans, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who went on one news show after another to warn that city services may not be able to handle the influx of people.

Before reversing course Monday, a clearly agitated Nagin snapped that Allen had apparently made himself "the new crowned federal mayor of New Orleans."

About 20 percent of the city is still flooded, down from a high of about 80 percent after Katrina, and the water was expected to be pumped out by Sept. 30.

But officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said the repairs to levees breached by Katrina are not yet strong enough to prevent flooding in a moderate storm, much less another hurricane.

The state Department of Health and Hospitals said the death toll in Louisiana climbed to 646. The toll across the Gulf Coast was 883.

At an Interstate 10 checkpoint of traffic heading into the city from the north, cars were backed up for two hours. Tractor-trailers, emergency vehicles and National Guard trucks shared the highway with cars towing trailers full of hurricane gear and pickup trucks with their beds loaded with water, cleaning materials and coolers.

It was clear that at least some of the traffic was headed to sections of the city that have not yet officially opened.

Algiers, a neighborhood of 57,000 just across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, is home to many of the companies that make floats for Mardi Gras parades. Unlike much of the rest of the city, it saw little damage from Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago and has electricity and drinkable water.

"Obviously we need to get businesses up and running any way we can," said Barry Kern, whose float businesses is stocked to the rafters with oversized imaginary creatures. "If we don't start somewhere, where do we start?"

He said he recognized that the city might be unfit for children, but that there are key businesses that need to be reopened, like his, so that people can start making money and the city can get back on its feet.

Elsewhere across the city, where the damage was much more severe, much of the sentiment seemed to be with the mayor.

"Send Bush here and we'll make him a po' boy and tell him to leave us alone," Kathleen Horn said as she cleaned up the debris piled in front of Slim Goodies Diner on Magazine Street in Uptown.

Asked if the prospect of living in a dark, largely deserted city scared her, Uptown resident Ann Harrington said: "Not if you're a New Orleanian. If you live here, it takes a lot more than a dark night to scare you."

Neal Morris, a developer, was cleaning up at his Garden District house but said he and wife and two toddlers would not return yet.

"I could, but I think it puts too much burden on the emergency people and National Guard who are working here," he said. "It's just too hard right now."

On Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Del Juneau opened his lingerie and adult-novelty shop, Bourbon Strip Tease, for the first time since the storm. He was frustrated with city officials' indecision about when to formally reopen the quarter.

"Just let the people come and do their own cleanup," he said. "We'd all be better off."



AP-ES-09-19-05 1720EDT

[belgareth]

I do not know David Milican, who wrote the following, but I would like to thank him for bringing these facts to our attention. Read, enjoy, and remember!



__________________________________________________ ________


Subject: McComb aftermath of Katrina


To my friends and family:

What I have seen since Katrina:

The poor and the wealthy hurt by the storm.

Black, white, Hispanic, Oriental and Indian all hurt by the storm.

Christian people giving, giving, giving.

Churches going all out to minister in Jesus' name.

Neighbors going door to door helping one another.

Thugs and hoodlums going door to door looking for someone vunerable.

Ice and water being fought over as police tried to keep the peace.

People coming up from New Orleans taking over empty houses because shelters are full.

Out of town volunteers coming with food and staying for now a week still serving it.

The Churches all over this part of the country doing what Christians do in a crisis.

Fema doing a wonderful job in getting help to us.

The Red Cross doing a great job in the shelters.

The Salvation Army doing a great job in the community.

Four Hundred crewman from everywhere bring back the power to our homes, churches and businesses.

Lines at service stations a block to a mile long.

National Guardsman patroling the streets of Mccomb along with Kentucky policemen protecting us from the hoodlums and thugs of McComb, Pike County and New Orleans (the most dangerous city in the world before Katrina.)

Drug dealers working outside shelters.

Doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel working tirelessly, even sleeping in the hospital to do the job God called them to do.



WHAT I HAVE NOT SEEN;

The ACLU setting up a feeding line.

People for the American Way helping in the shelters.

The NAACP doing any work whatsover.

The American Atheist organization serving meals in the shelters.

Jesse Jackson directing traffic at the gas stations.



I could go on but you get my message. Its the Christian people with love and compassion who do the work.

The gripers in Congress should come on down and get in line to pass the water and the ice. Are you listening Hillary, Chuck, Teddy and all the sorry loafers we call senators and congressmen. They don't have a clue as to what this life is all about here on the Gulf Coast.

Boy I feel better now.

David A. Millican

[Mtnjim]

...Ok, I'm suspicious and cynical.

So am I!!

Do you think there is any connection between a delayed response from Washington and THIS? (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0919/p01s01-usmi.html)

Keep in mind, I was never one for conspiracy theories before "W"!!
Hummm! The military and law enforcement! Something "W" would love.

[belgareth]

I'm not sure what to say about this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/katrina_pilfered_donations_hk2;_ylt=AlIhmtDyTaDd_Y mCPI7laQ9vzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUC Ul

[belgareth]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/offerofbusesfellbetweenthecracks;_ylt=A86.I0PPGjRD EQkAZRxvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Offer of buses fell between the cracks

By Andrew Martin and Andrew Zajac Washington Bureau



Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, as images of devastation along the Gulf Coast and despair in New Orleans flickered across television screens, the head of one of the nation's largest bus associations repeatedly called federal disaster officials to offer help.

Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association said he spent much of the day on Wednesday, Aug. 31, trying to find someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who could tell him how many buses were needed for an evacuation, where they should be sent and who was overseeing the effort.

"We never talked directly to FEMA or got a call back from them," Pantuso said.

Pantuso, whose members include some of the nation's largest motor coach companies, including Greyhound and Coach USA, eventually learned that the job of extracting tens of thousands of residents from flooded New Orleans wasn't being handled by FEMA at all.

Instead the agency had farmed the work out to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America, which in turn hired a limousine company, which in turn engaged a travel management company.

Over the next four days, those companies and a collection of Louisiana officials cobbled together a fleet of at least 1,100 buses that belatedly descended on New Orleans to evacuate residents waiting amid the squalor and mayhem of the Superdome and the city's convention center.

The story of the bus evacuation of New Orleans is partly one of heroism by a handful of people who, when called upon, acted quickly and improvised in the face of desperate need.

But the story also underscores a critical failure in the disaster plan: the inability of government to provide even the most rudimentary transportation to take people out of harm's way.

The day before the storm hit Aug. 29, the city of New Orleans had ordered its residents to flee but had not made provisions for upwards of 100,000 residents too old, too poor or otherwise unable or unwilling to leave.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin has acknowledged in television interviews that the city had hundreds of transit and school buses available to at least begin an evacuation ahead of Katrina's arrival but couldn't find enough drivers willing to chance getting caught in the huge storm.

When Katrina's storm surges breached the city's levees, putting much of the city under water, it was up to state officials and FEMA to oversee a gigantic evacuation.

But they, too, were caught unprepared.

Though it was well-known that New Orleans, much of it below sea level, would flood in a major hurricane, Landstar, the Jacksonville company that held a federal contract that at the time was worth up to $100 million annually for disaster transportation, did not ask its subcontractor, Carey Limousine, to order buses until the early hours of Aug. 30, roughly 18 hours after the storm hit, according to Sally Snead, a Carey senior vice president who headed the bus roundup.

Landstar inquired about the availability of buses on Sunday, Aug. 28, and earlier Monday, but placed no orders, Snead said.

She said Landstar turned to her company for buses Sunday after learning from Carey's Internet site that it had a meetings and events division that touted its ability to move large groups of people. "They really found us on the Web site," Snead said.

A Landstar spokeswoman declined comment on how the company responded to the hurricane.

Messages left for a FEMA spokeswoman were not returned.

Snead said she tapped Transportation Management Services of Vienna, Va., which specializes in arranging buses for conventions and other large events, to help fill an initial order for 300 coaches.

"It's like taking your phone book and dividing it in half and saying, `You take half and I'll take half,'" Snead said.

Looking for way to help

Unbeknownst to them, two key players who could reach the owners of an estimated 70 percent of the nation's 35,000 charter and tour buses had contacted FEMA seeking to supply coaches to the evacuation effort.

The day the hurricane made landfall, Victor Parra, president of the United Motorcoach Association, called FEMA's Washington office "to let them know our members could help out."

Parra said FEMA responded the next day, referring him to an agency Web page labeled "Doing Business with FEMA" but containing no information on the hurricane relief effort.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, Pantuso of the American Bus Association cut short a vacation thinking his members surely would be needed in evacuation efforts.

Unable to contact FEMA directly, Pantuso, through contacts on Capitol Hill, learned of Carey International's role and called Snead.

Pantuso said Snead told him she meant to call earlier but didn't have a phone number.

Finally, sometime after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Pantuso and Parra had enough information to send an SOS to their members to help in the evacuation.

By the weekend, more than 1,000 buses were committed to ferrying stranded New Orleans residents to shelters in Houston and other cities.

Executive linked to lobby

In a regulatory filing last week, Landstar Express said it has received government orders worth at least $125 million for Katrina-related work. It's not known how much of that total pertains to the bus evacuation.

Landstar Express is a subsidiary of Landstar System, a $2 billion company whose board chairman, Jeff Crowe, also was chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the nation's premier business lobbies, from June 2003 until May 2004.

Pantuso said changes for the better may be afoot, perhaps even in time to aid the response to Hurricane Rita, now bearing down on Texas' Gulf Coast near the Louisiana border.

"I have been getting a tremendous amount of follow-up from Landstar over the last two days . . . looking for ways to work together in the future," Pantuso said Thursday, adding that he feels "much better about . . . our opportunities to work in a more coordinated fashion."

Whatever happens likely will be good for Landstar's bottom line.

Landstar's regulatory filing also said that because of Hurricane Katrina, the maximum annual value of its government contract for disaster relief services has been increased to $400 million.

[DrSmellThis]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092800260.html

[DrSmellThis]

White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

By ERIC LIPTON (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ERIC%20LIPTON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ERIC%20LIPTON&inline=nyt-per)
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.

White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.

The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.

This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses. Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.

On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.

"There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr. Brown said in the interview.

The problem, he said, was the handicapping of FEMA when it was turned into a division of the Homeland Security Department in 2003.

"The real story is with this new structure," he said. "Why weren't more things done, or what prevented or delayed Mike Brown from being able to do what he would have done and did do in any other disaster?"

Although Mr. Bahamonde said in October that he had notified Mr. Brown that Monday, it was not known until recently what Mr. Brown or the Homeland Security Department did with that information, or when the White House was told.

Missteps at All Levels

It has been known since the earliest days of the storm that all levels of government — from the White House to the Department of Homeland Security to the Louisiana Capitol to New Orleans City Hall — were unprepared, uncommunicative and phlegmatic in protecting Gulf Coast residents from the floodwaters and their aftermath. But an examination of the latest evidence by The New York Times shines a new light on the key players involved in the important turning points: what they said, what they did and what they did not do, all of which will soon be written up in the committees' investigative reports.

Among the findings that emerge in the mass of documents and testimony were these:

¶Federal officials knew long before the storm showed up on the radar that 100,000 people in New Orleans had no way to escape a major hurricane on their own and that the city had finished only 10 percent of a plan for how to evacuate its largely poor, African-American population.

¶Mr. Chertoff failed to name a principal federal official to oversee the response before the hurricane arrived, an omission a top Pentagon official acknowledged to investigators complicated the coordination of the response. His department also did not plan enough to prevent a conflict over which agency should be in charge of law enforcement support. And Mr. Chertoff was either poorly informed about the levee break or did not recognize the significance of the initial report about it, investigators said.

¶The Louisiana transportation secretary, Johnny B. Bradberry, who had legal responsibility for the evacuation of thousands of people in nursing homes and hospitals, admitted bluntly to investigators, "We put no plans in place to do any of this."

¶Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans at first directed his staff to prepare a mandatory evacuation of his city on Saturday, two days before the storm hit, but he testified that he had not done so that day while he and other city officials struggled to decide if they should exempt hospitals and hotels from the order. The mandatory evacuation occurred on Sunday, and the delay exacerbated the difficulty in moving people away from the storm.

¶The New Orleans Police Department unit assigned to the rescue effort, despite many years' worth of flood warnings and requests for money, had just three small boats and no food, water or fuel to supply its emergency workers.

¶Investigators could find no evidence that food and water supplies were formally ordered for the Convention Center, where more than 10,000 evacuees had assembled, until days after the city had decided to open it as a backup emergency shelter. FEMA had planned to have 360,000 ready-to-eat meals delivered to the city and 15 trucks of water in advance of the storm. But only 40,000 meals and five trucks of water had arrived.

Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only government agency that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. But no one heeded the message, he said.

"The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine," Mr. Davis said. "In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."

One of the greatest mysteries for both the House and Senate committees has been why it took so long, even after Mr. Bahamonde filed his urgent report on the Monday the storm hit, for federal officials to appreciate that the levee had broken and that New Orleans was flooding.

Eyewitness to Devastation

As his helicopter approached the site, Mr. Bahamonde testified in October, there was no mistaking what had happened: large sections of the levee had fallen over, leaving the section of the city on the collapsed side entirely submerged, but the neighborhood on the other side relatively dry. He snapped a picture of the scene with a small camera.

"The situation is only going to get worse," he said he warned Mr. Brown, then the FEMA director, whom he called about 8 p.m. Monday Eastern time to report on his helicopter tour.

"Thank you," he said Mr. Brown replied. "I am now going to call the White House."

Citing restrictions placed on him by his lawyers, Mr. Brown declined to tell House investigators during testimony if he had actually made that call. White House aides have urged administration officials not to discuss any conversations with the president or his top advisors and declined to release e-mail messages sent among Mr. Bush's senior advisors.

But investigators have found the e-mail message referring to Mr. Bahamonde's helicopter survey that was sent to John F. Wood, chief of staff to Secretary Chertoff at 9:27 p.m. They have also found a summary of Mr. Bahamonde's observations that was issued at 10:30 p.m. and an 11:05 p.m. e-mail message to Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security. Each message describes in detail the extensive flooding that was taking place in New Orleans after the levee collapse.

Given this chain of events, investigators have repeatedly questioned why Mr. Bush and Mr. Chertoff stated in the days after the storm that the levee break did not happen until Tuesday, as they made an effort to explain why they initially thought the storm had passed without the catastrophe that some had feared.

"The hurricane started to depart the area on Monday, and then Tuesday morning the levee broke and the water started to flood into New Orleans," Mr. Chertoff said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Sept. 4, the weekend after the hurricane hit.

Mr. Chertoff and White House officials have said that they were referring to official confirmation that the levee had broken, which they say they received Tuesday morning from the Army Corps of Engineers. They also say there were conflicting reports all day Monday about whether a breach had occurred and noted that they were not alone in failing to recognize the growing catastrophe.

Mr. Duffy, the White House spokesman, said it would not have made much difference even if the White House had realized the significance of the midnight report. "Like it or not, you cannot fix a levee overnight, or in an hour, or even six hours," he said.

But Senator Susan Collins (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/susan_collins/index.html?inline=nyt-per), Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said it was obvious to her in retrospect that Mr. Chertoff, perhaps in deference to Mr. Brown's authority, was not paying close enough attention to the events in New Orleans and that the federal response to the disaster may have been slowed as a result.

"Secretary Chertoff was too disengaged from the process," Ms. Collins said in an interview.

Compounding the problem, once Mr. Chertoff learned of the levee break on Tuesday, he could not reach Mr. Brown, his top emergency response official, for an entire day because Mr. Brown was on helicopter tours of the damage.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/joseph_i_lieberman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the homeland security committee, said the government confusion reminded him of the period surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Information was in different places, in that case prior to the attack," Mr. Lieberman said, "and it wasn't reaching the key decision makers in a coordinated way for them to take action."

Russ Knocke, a homeland security spokesman, said that although Mr. Chertoff had been "intensely involved in monitoring the storm" he had not actually been told about the report of the levee breach until Tuesday, after he arrived in Atlanta.

"No one is satisfied with the response in the early days," Mr. Knocke said.

But he rejected criticism by Senator Collins and others that Mr. Chertoff was disengaged.

"He was not informed of it," Mr. Knocke said. "It is certainly a breakdown. And through an after-action process, that is something we will address."

The day before the hurricane made landfall, the Homeland Security Department issued a report predicting that it could lead to a levee breach that could submerge New Orleans for months and leave 100,000 people stranded. Yet despite these warnings, state, federal and local officials acknowledged to investigators that there was no coordinated effort before the storm arrived to evacuate nursing homes and hospitals or others in the urban population without cars.

Focus on Highway Plan

Mr. Bradberry, the state transportation secretary, told an investigator that he had focused on improving the highway evacuation plan for the general public with cars and had not attended to his responsibility to remove people from hospitals and nursing homes. The state even turned down an offer for patient evacuation assistance from the federal government.

In fact, the city was desperately in need of help. And this failure would have deadly consequences. Only 21 of the 60 or so nursing homes were cleared of residents before the storm struck. Dozens of lives were lost in hospitals and nursing homes.

One reason the city was unable to help itself, investigators said, is that it never bought the basic equipment needed to respond to the long-predicted catastrophe. The Fire Department had asked for inflatable boats and generators, as well as an emergency food supply, but none were provided, a department official told investigators.

Timothy P. Bayard, a police narcotics commander assigned to lead a water rescue effort, said that with just three boats, not counting the two it commandeered and almost no working radios, his small team spent much of its time initially just trying to rescue detectives who themselves were trapped by rising water.

The investigators also determined that the federal Department of Transportation was not asked until Wednesday to provide buses to evacuate the Superdome and the convention center, meaning that evacuees sat there for perhaps two more days longer than necessary.

Mr. Brown acknowledged to investigators that he wished, in retrospect, that he had moved much earlier to turn over major aspects of the response effort to the Department of Defense. It was not until the middle of the week, he said, that he asked the military to take over the delivery and distribution of water, food and ice.

"In hindsight I should have done it right then," Mr. Brown told the House, referring to the Sunday before the storm hit.

***
Also, check this one out. Brown is also starting to sing about DHS:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/10/katrina.brown/index.html

[tim929]

Im just gonna throw this out here...Its alittle late but better late than never.The mayor of the city was wringing his hands regarding evacuation plans,if I am not mistaken.And whatever plan was supposed to be in place or conjured up never happened and as a result huge numbers of people ended up stranded.Its interesting to note that the city government itself never took any time to figure out a proper evacuation for anybody but the city counsel and the mayor.He wasnt even there when the storm hit,and where I come from leaders lead from the pointy end of the stick,not the camp in the rear.

While the mayor evacuated his family and thier possesions,an estimated six hundred school busses became the largest fleet of U-boats in the world in a matter of a few hours...sitting idle in thier parking spots/berths.Preperations at the various evacuation shelters amounted to opening the doors so people could get in and then pulling all the city employees out befor anything could happen.Even the police pulled up stakes and bailed out of town.The handfull that did stay behind were so overwhelmed that all they could do was watch and hide.

While all this is going on,its important to remember that NewOrleans wasnt the ONLY place in the whole world being slammed by the same storm.Katrina did severe damage in several states and took lives all over the gulf coast.It inundated many towns and cities,swamped the emergency services of many cities and drew tons of people and equipment to places OTHER THAN NewOrleans.NewOrleans and its residents need to understand something...they arent the only people in the whole world that matter!
Its very easy to be upset and bothered in a time of crissis and wonder why nobody is saving me...RIGHT NOW!

Earthquake victems do it all the time.The quake hits,emergency services are strained to respond to anything because of crumbling infrastructure,and some poor bastard on the edge of town cant understand why they arent here yet.The firestation has partialy colapsed,the roads are blocked with traffic and debris,phones are out,power is out,water is out,the bodies are piling up like chordwood but those jerks are sure taking thier sweet time getting to me to help me with my problem.They ran into that in Kobe Japan some years ago.They ran into that in Turkey,Pakistan and in a couple quakes in South America.

Katrina was no different.As a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest,we have regular wind storms that knock power out to huge numbers of people.Sometimes for many days.I learned as a child that you need to have certain things on hand in the event of an emergency.Flashlights,batteries,candles,cook stove,canned foods,water,blankets,tarps,rolls of visquene,TOILET PAPER,clothes,work clothes,rain clothes,a good pair or two of boots,chain saw,axe,hatchet,shovel,pick...yeah...no joke...all that crap comes in real handy when trees are down and power is out.And the trees around here are the kind they use to mill into lumber for houses,not little pulp wood trees (we call those brush.) All of these various tools and supplies come in handy when theres a storm or in the event of a huge,earth shattering quake of biblical proportions.Many folks keep generators on hand too just so the stuff in the freezer wont spoil.

On the flip side of the coin,this area has become a very popular place for city folk to move to for its relative seclusion yet close proximity to a major city.They get to have "the country life" while never realy being inconvenienced.The problem that I have seen and had to help many neighbors with is the fact that NONE of these folks seem to think about making any sort of personal preperations until its way too late.As a result,nice folks like me and the other learned residents get to go to bail them out of thier crissis instead of staying home and sitting by the fire and listening to the rain patter and the wind howl.And its these same helpless people who scream the loudest when the local,county,state or federal authorities dont imediately swarm to thier aid.

There was once a man named Darwin,who proposed the idea that natural selction was...well...you get the idea.

[belgareth]

We saw the same mentality a number of years ago when the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit the bay area. Buildings were collapsing in San Francisco, the bay bridge was trying to fall down and a whole section of freeway in Oakland pancaked trapping people between the layers. The outskirts where I lived lost gas and electricity for several days and people were pissed.

A few years later we lost power for about a week after a windstorm. I gave away close to a cord of firewood to my neighbors. The majority couldn't even prepare a hot meal because they hadn't planned a little ahead.

(Federal) Government services are all well and good but we need to plan to take some of the load ourselves, especially in the event of a major disaster. We can't just sit there and wait for somebody to come bail us out. No matter what resources you have, when you have a wide spread disaster you are going to have delays getting help to an awful lot of people.

The bit about the school busses in New Orleans is a good example. Anybody who can drive a U-Haul truck can drive a school bus. It isn't difficult. How many lives would have been saved if that mayor had got his thumb out and evacuated people using the resources he had? Yes, everybody screwed up big time before, during and after Katrina. But big government and its resources are not an excuse for sitting and waiting for somebody else to do all the work.

[tim929]

There was a time in America when there was no "big government" to count on and you were pretty much stuck with whatever you and your neighbors could cobble together for survival.Lets not all forget that the "emergency services" folks have families and friends too,and that inspite of thier so called "job" of protecting you,they will drop you like a dirty shirt to help thier own people out first.In a disaster,you are your best bet for survival.Realisticly,If I am a young firefighter with a young beautiful wife and new child,all the nice people in my community can go straight to hell for all I care if my family is in distress.It is pure foolishness to expect these folks to drop thier needs in favor of yours because,lets face it...its a job,not a calling from the Creator.The worst the might face is getting fired.So what? My family is safe and that all that matters when the earth decides to try and swallow a city.

Alot of people dont realize that when you dial 911 and ask for the police to come to your home,they are NOT required to respond! PERIOD! They literaly volunteer.That way,if you call and they are late and you die,its not thier fault and your family cant sue the government for your death.That puts the leagal responsability for your safety firmly in YOUR hands.Not someone elses hands.These folks that are whining about how the governement didnt rescue them realy need to get a life.Its not the national guards job realy,but the governor has the power to use them and they do it to retain funding.Otherwise people might get the idea that the national guard isnt worth all the money we spend on them.In point of fact,the national guard is a reserve COMBAT force.Not a wet nurse or a nanny.They arent there specificly to bail our sorry butts out every time it rains and we arent smart enough to open an umberella.

The more I hear people whining about the government not responding properly,the more I start thinking that its time for natural selection to help us to thin the herd out.Brutal? Yes. Needed? More than ever in the history of man! Watch a nature documentary about lions chasing down and killing the weak and feeble for food.Notice how cute baby gazelles are? But they get ripped appart anyway.Thats nature,and its beautiful in its perfection!

[Netghost56]

Have any of you read about the FEMA trailers?

It's been all over the local news for weeks. My mother said the trailers that are at her workplace have been steadlily shipped out, but no word on where they're going. But the trailers in Hope (over 11,000 in one place) are supposedly sinking in the mud. Sen. Landrieu told Chertoff to either give the trailers to the Katrina/Rita victims, sell them, auction them off, or give them to other needy people. But Chertoff wants to destroy them, since they're "cheaply made" and "not the right size for large families". All the while my aunt in Houston went to Lake Charles, LA, and she said people are still living in tents in places like Beaumont and Orange.

This government is so screwed up it boggles the mind.

[a.k.a.]

The Hurricane Hit That Hit the Poor
Katrina's New Underclass

By Rep. CYNTHIA McKINNEY

There is an ongoing national emergency that demands our immediate attention.

In the absence of decisive Executive action, an under-funded FEMA made its own executive decision to shelter hundreds of thousands of survivors in hotels, paying in some cases rates in excess of $400 per night, resulting in a windfall for hotel chains during their slow season, but depleting FEMA's budget. Now, with summer business coming, the hotels want the survivors out and FEMA is evicting tens of thousands of families from temporary housing.

As a result of the President's failure to act, Secretary Chertoff's failure to act, and the failure of Congress to act, it appears we are about to see a new underclass of "Katrina Homeless" in America, even as Halliburton and other contractors take fifty per cent off the top of their sweetheart, no-bid Katrina contracts before subcontracting the work out at rock bottom rates.

Given the vast amounts of money that has gone "missing"-billions of dollars-from this Administration's Iraq misadventure, it is scandalous that we won't provide housing to the survivors.

What Katrina survivors facing homelessness need is enough assistance to rebuild their lives. Why did we offer a Victims Compensation Fund to 9/11 families but not to Katrina survivors? And why hasn't the Congress moved swiftly to pass or at least held hearings on HR 4197, the Hurricane Katrina Recovery, Reclamation, Restoration, Reconstruction and Reunion Act of 2005?

What left so many at the mercy of Katrina was poverty. In the greater New Orleans area, 65,000 minority residents lived in poverty before Katrina, compared with 85,000 whites. Thus, contrary to the stereotyping, poverty is not specific to race, even though Orleans Parish, which was 67% black, was hardest hit by the flooding.

The poor, the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, these were the people who could not obey the mandatory evacuation order. If we wish to see that there is never another disaster like Katrina, we need to take urgent action to deal with poverty in this country. And here, I would suggest that the Congress hold hearings on House Concurrent Resolution 234, Congresswoman Barbara Lee's Poverty Bill.

Evacuation plans failed these people, as did the National Response Plan. We need a new National Response Plan.

Rather than attempting to defend the indefensible, Secretary Chertoff needs to resign and allow this Administration the opportunity to get this straight-for the sake of the innocent people of the Gulf States and New Orleans.

We need a National Response Plan that is sensitive to poverty and ethnicity. It is unconscionable that DHS would have a partnership with Operation Blessing, but not with a single black organization.

Poverty cuts across ethnic divisions, but there is another side to this story. In the testimony at our hearings and in my report, there is a very clear pattern. In numerous instances, whites were evacuated before blacks while blacks were detained or turned back, as happened on the bridge to Gretna. The media stereotyped blacks as "looters" and whites as "takers" and fueled fears of blacks that led to the "invasion" of New Orleans, shockingly by hired mercenaries.

Shoot-to-kill orders were issued in a city whose police have a history of abuse, and who will spare no excuse to jail young black men for petty offenses.

Another area completely untouched by the Congress is the toxic aftermath of Katrina. Decades of pollution has made the sediment layer at the bottom of the Gulf and other water bodies highly toxic.

Hurricane Katrina lifted this sediment sludge out of the water and spread it across all the affected regions of the Gulf. Not since Hurricane Betsy in 1965 has this happened on such a scale. As a result, arsenic and other highly dangerous chemicals are present at levels sufficient that much of the Gulf Coast could be declared a Superfund site. But the EPA is sitting on its hands, and will not act unless Congress instructs it to initiate a clean-up process necessary to protect the health and safety of the people of the Gulf Coast. I have introduced legislation to accomplish this, and I wish the Congress would consider it for the health and safety of our fellow Americans.

There is much more to discuss. We have between 60,000 to 70,000 survivors in metro Atlanta right now, and the needs are tremendous.
But let me conclude by saying that what we are left with is the fact that while the hurricane washed its "toxic gumbo" ashore, it also stripped away the veil that often hides issues of poverty and persistent racism in America. We can choose to ignore these issues and hope they go away, but we know they won't.

Alternately, we can rise to the challenge and work together to tackle these very difficult problems head on. The choice is ours.

[DrSmellThis]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060301/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katrina_video

[belgareth]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060303/ap_on_go_ot/katrina_video;_ylt=AmGeLxL3rF8ar1TQEn6v_fWyFz4D;_y lu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

[tim929]

I thought I would throw this in here and see who gets angry....The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want these "politicians" spending
your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one
advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

a.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

b.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

c.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone
Age.

d.. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20
minutes,
at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a
look at New Orleans - It's amazing what you can learn with some simple
division ............

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.

Interesting number, what does it mean?

Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every
man,woman, child), you each get $516, 528.

Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your
home gets $1, 329,787

Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.So tell me again where the problem is?:think:

[Netghost56]

250b for NO is kinda high, but not insane. Consider the environmental damage, the rebuilding (and replanning against future problems), new job opportunities, new tourist opportunities, not to mention the levees, emergency crew management, and definitely a new emergency plan.

I think all the homes lower district should be built on poles, like they do in Galveston or other coastal areas. If not, then take all that debris and elevate that area so it won't flood so much. They also need a government-run fleet of emergency rescue boats and choppers manned by people with rescue training. There's lots they could do to prevent this and all it takes is some money.