ACROSS the devastated Gulf Coast, recovery from Hurricane Katrina continues. The rebuilding process is meeting with slow but encouraging success, although donations have slowed to a trickle and the issue has long disappeared from the national news. At the highest levels of the federal government, however, the after effects of Katrina are still hitting home and raising new questions of accountability.
On Sunday, a special committee of Republicansreleased to the public a report on the Katrina disaster which finds fault at all levels of the government in 90 different instances, alleging a "blinding lack of situational awareness." Although the report offers few specific changes for the future, its criticism in nonetheless all too valid and should indicate to us that the federal government needs seriously to improve the way it handles national crises.
"Disjointed decision making" is one of the many faults the committee report points out in the government's response. This criticism is not a new one. When the 9/11 Commission issued its widely-read report, the committee similarly concluded that the protocols set up by the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, involving an inefficient chain of command, were completely inadequate for a hijacking of that scale. The Katrina committee also found evidence of faulty chains of command. Military leaders, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and others all worked independently rather than trying to coordinate their efforts in order to help as many people as possible in a speedy manner.
According to the Washington Post, the report notes that other problems that manifested themselves first on Sept. 11 reappeared in the floods of New Orleans: too few resources present, both human and otherwise and poor coordination between first responders. This is perhaps the most discouraging news; one would think that the need for these measures would have been evident after Sept. 11. Now that our need for extra manpower and equipment in disaster situations is painfully obvious, every level of government needs to stretch its budget and provide these things. Saving lives in critical situations should, after all, be a top priority for the government, especially the lives of those who are dependent on public transportation, as thousands of New Orleans residents were.
What these two disasters have made clear is that our plans for responding to large-scale disasters need massive revision. The speed at which these calamities occur necessitates a swift response, and the current system seems ill-equipped to provide one. The reform that would be most helpful would be a specific, detailed plan that could indicate who would be in charge, who would coordinate the efforts, and would establish firm lines of communication so that, in the event of another disaster, each agency and response group knows its role.
The report notes that there was such a plan -- the National Response Plan -- in place at the time, designed specifically to set up a command structure but not implemented by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. There is no excuse for not acting quickly if there truly was a plan ready. In the future this plan should be kept current and perfected, and next time, it needs to be used right away.
The report also levels some criticism at the president. According to the report, a quicker reaction by the president would have greatly aided the rescue operations because he would have been able to bypass much of the bureaucracy involved in the crisis. The White House, the report states, did not do a good job of analyzing and acting on available information: 56 hours before Katrina hit the coast, the National Weather Service reported an "extremely high probability" that the levees in New Orleans would break and that the city would be flooded.
Given the president's remarks on Sept. 1, when he said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," it is clear that the White House was either not in the loop or was not on top of the situation. The executive branch needs to acknowledge its failure to acknowledge that report and increase its capacity to handle the flow of information from agencies like the National Weather Service; timely action on that warning would have been much more effective than the scrambling that took place afterwards.
With the prospect of terrorist attacks seemingly occupying the position of chief concern, it is easy to deemphasize the threat posed by disasters like Katrina. But with large hurricanes coming more frequently in recent years, and other natural calamities always a possibility, these are investments the federal government needs to make. There is no such thing as being too prepared for a hurricane.
Matt Waring's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached atmwaring@cavalierdaily.com.
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