Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: September 4, 2005 8:37:39 PM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Subject: Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top



Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

By Susan B. Glasser and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; A01

The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last
week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system
retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle
just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing
for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at
daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen
current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously
before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response.
Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An
unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow
bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe
"an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to
set off the broadest possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive
new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the
next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists.
The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly
scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with
plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that
his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing
the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's
floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if
an atomic bomb had been dropped."

If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the
response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a
terrorist attack of similar dimensions. "This is what the department
was supposed to be all about," said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS's former
inspector general. "Instead, it obviously raises very serious,
troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if
this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this
department's performance four years after 9/11."

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/ 
AR2005090301653.html






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