Bush administration maps changes for response to the next Katrina

WASHINGTON: Before the next big hurricane’s winds howl ashore, Homeland Security officials want an emergency communications network operating, emergency medical facilities treating patients, and teams dispatched to search for victims at the likely ground zero. In the wake of congressional hearings that exposed the breathtaking failures of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration is retooling its disaster plan to react quicker to the next catastrophe. Michael Brown, now the ex-chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, became the public face of Katrina’s failure. But the administration is reviewing how other leaders also failed last August to execute a playbook approved just eight months earlier to handle such a disaster. For example, Brown’s boss — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff — did not invoke special powers in the National Response Plan that would have rushed federal aid to New Orleans when state and local officials said they were swamped.

The department rejected the authority, concluding that it should be invoked only for sudden catastrophic events that offer no time for preparation and not for slow-approaching hurricanes. That will not happen next time, according to officials who described to The Associated Press some of the changes in the administration’s evolving disaster response plan. “There has to be a way to apply federal resources when state and local resources are overwhelmed,” said Joel Bagnal, a special assistant to the president for Homeland Security who is involved in the administration’s lessons-learned review. Chief among the changes to the original 426-page plan are several ideas for rushing federal resources to a stricken area. They include:

— Dropping small military or civilian vehicles, packed with communications gear, into a disaster zone by helicopter or driving them from nearby staging areas.
— Setting up portable hospitals with federal emergency medical teams to augment local facilities.
— Helping local and state police catch looters and snipers by providing federal law enforcement officers if requested.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Friday that the revamped National Response Plan is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks after meetings with hundreds of federal, state and government officials and individuals outside the government. The union representative for FEMA headquarters workers worries about how well the agency will respond next time. FEMA reacted quickly to big disasters when it operated independently, he said, but fell short in its first big test as a member of the massive Homeland Security Department. “You broke your toy and now it doesn’t work,” said Leo Bosner, himself a veteran FEMA disaster specialist. Those on the front lines hope to have a unified philosophy that values flexibility and quick thinking to adapt solutions to a rapidly unfolding human disaster. “When you have a disaster, nothing goes by any kind of plan,” said Dr Arthur Wallace, leader of the Oklahoma 1 FEMA medical team that was dispatched from its staging area too late to beat Katrina to New Orleans.

The administration officials and responders interviewed by the AP offered a few of their own horror stories that they do not want repeated. They also help illustrate changes in the evolving plan. Dr Wallace’s 34-member medical team from Oklahoma left its Houston staging area on August 28 after receiving a request from Louisiana officials to head for the Superdome. Katrina made landfall in Louisiana just after 6 am on August 29, but the team did not arrive until that night. It did not receive its first patients until dawn on August 30. That was 36 hours after FEMA began reporting grave medical problems in the stadium, such as 400 people with special needs, 45 to 50 patients in need of hospitalisation, and a dwindling supply of oxygen. Wallace’s team made it only as far as Baton Rouge the night before the storm came ashore because wind gusts had already made it impossible to reach the Superdome. The sick evacuees had to wait. “The winds were buffeting the trucks pretty bad” when the team halted in the state capital, Wallace recalled.

In the future, the administration wants medical teams in position before the storm strikes. Before Katrina struck, FEMA had dispatched a sizable public affairs contingent to Louisiana. Their mission, according to the National Response Plan, was “to coordinate a message,” said Jeff Karonis, a Homeland Security public affairs specialist. “Several were experienced communicators in hurricanes of the past. They know what the issues are,” he said. But the messages to the public often were confusing, leaving vital questions unanswered. When would buses rescue people from the Superdome? When would rescuers arrive at the convention centre? Was crime rampant?

Russ Knocke, the chief spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the specialists were hampered by “a significant amount of inaccurate reporting” that “added confusion and added fuel to the fire.” Louisiana officials said the federal experts didn’t coordinate with them. “I don’t think there was ever a meeting about message. It wasn’t a partnership,” said Denise Bottcher, Louisiana Gov Kathleen Blanco’s spokeswoman. In the future, Knocke said, Homeland Security is “deeply committed to working and communicating with state and local officials.”