Learning the Hard Lessons of Katrina
Why things were even worse than you ever knew
To avoid a repeat of history this season, FEMA and DHS have to make major changes, and in some ways, they already have. "A lot of the focus ... this year," says Jack Harrald, an outside adviser to FEMA with George Washington University, "is on making sure the correct info is getting to the president and pushing around all the food and water people could ever desire." A new operations center that will replace the HSOC will get streaming-video updates from first-in FEMA teams at the disaster site. Factory outposts with FEMA supplies will be stocked with enough food and water to sustain 1 million people for a week. And DHS officials have met with all 50 states and the 75 largest urban areas to evaluate evacuation plans for before and after a storm. "We're not waiting," says David Paulison, acting chief of FEMA, "for states to ask for help."
The real thing. They're also ramping up their dress rehearsals--but with mixed results. By June 1, DHS will have conducted four massive regional hurricane drills. And the White House has held at least two cabinet-level exercises involving Category 4 or 5 hurricanes slamming into the Crescent City. (At one such administration drill it was necessary to have what a senior official dubbed "a quick little class" on the National Response Plan.) And as part of a two-day exercise using live actors in Louisiana last week, officials in East Baton Rouge Parish called off the evacuation of the state's largest FEMA trailer park--population 1,500--because of confusion over who's responsible for federal trailers.
If all that sounds daunting, imagine the real thing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted last week that four to six major hurricanes--Category 3 or higher--could strike the United States this year. The more than 100,000 trailers and temporary homes across the Gulf Coast have to be evacuated for even a tropical storm; by NOAA estimates, that means residents will move 13 to 16 times. And, "we're dangerously behind in first-responder communications," says Rep. Dave Reichert, a sponsor of FEMA reform. Pentagon officials say they've put together giant packages of cellphones, satellite-phone terminals, and laptops that can be shuttled to first responders left without any line to the outside world.
FEMA and the Army Corps, though, won't meet some of their pre-hurricane season goals. FEMA leaders vowed to fill 95 percent of their 2,500 permanent positions by June 1 but will hit only the 85-percent mark. The Army Corps won't have three floodgates installed that can be used to take pressure off New Orleans levees. DHS has also yet to define the "extraordinary circumstances" in which it would allow the Pentagon to assume command of a major response effort; sorting that out, some experts say, was the most crucial recommendation in Townsend's report.
Add to that a Congress ready to rip into FEMA. Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, the Republican and Democrat behind the massive Senate report, want to create a beefed-up, renamed FEMA with authority over homeland security grants and guarantees that its discretionary budget cannot be raided by DHS. Rep. Tom Davis, head of the House's Katrina committee, would rather pull FEMA out of DHS altogether, something that wouldn't happen until next hurricane season. "You can trust me," says Davis, who normally doesn't head a DHS oversight committee, "because I don't have a dog in this fight." Too bad almost 10 million residents in the Gulf Coast still very much do.
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