Why did help take so long to arrive? Communication breakdown and lack of National Guard blamed for slow response
Julian Borger and Duncan Campbell
Saturday September 3, 2005
Guardian
'It is incredible, the government had no evacuation plan ... the first power in the world and it left its own population adrift." It will be particularly galling that the man voicing those thoughts, echoed yesterday by many across the United States and around the world, was Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, and one of the Bush administration's main hate figures.
That bewilderment, tinged with anger towards officials at local and national level, was shared at the scene of the disaster and by political commentators and disaster relief experts. In Louisiana, local and state officials voiced anger yesterday at the Bush administration's response.
So what went wrong with the relief effort? Why, so many days after Katrina struck, is there still such chaos, despite the fact that there was ample warning of what might befall the Gulf coast?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been accused of being so concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack that it failed to prepare properly for a much more inevitable natural disaster.
After the authorities in Baton Rouge had prepared a field hospital for victims of the storm, Fema sent its first batch of supplies, all of which were designed for use against chemical attack, including drugs such as Cipro, which is designed for use against anthrax. "We called them up and asked them: 'Why did you send that, and they said that's what it says in the book'," said a Baton Rouge official.
Another possible cause for the chaos was that traditionally there have been so many warnings in the hurricane period that many residents in affected areas often shrug them off. For this reason, many may have not left the area.
Local officials also seem to have grossly underestimated the needs of those who did not own cars. Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco yesterday defended the state's actions saying they had requisitioned many school buses to evacuate those without cars. Residents, however, complained that many of them were left stranded, unaware of any such service.
"Yeah, they told us we needed to evacuate, but really that was for the rich people," Curtis Vaughn, 48, told the Chicago Tribune. "A lot of these people live paycheck to paycheck and couldn't afford even one night away from home."
Officials seem to have been taken by surprise by the breakdown in communications, in every sense of the word, with mobile phones and landlines not operating. Ms Blanco acknowledged that officials were struggling with faulty communication. She said she could reach White House officials on a satellite phone but not the army and other officials in nearby Baton Rouge. "Part of our problem is we're not getting information delivered quickly enough," she said.
Most controversially, the National Guard, which can normally be relied on in times of crisis, are depleted and dispersed.
Nancy Lessin, of Military Families Speak Out, whose daughter is in New Orleans, said: "The numbers we have are that there are 11,000 National Guard personnel from Louisiana of whom about 3,000 are in Iraq with most of the heavy equipment. This included generators and high-water and other vehicles which could assist with the rescue effort."
Philip Crowley, director of homeland security at the Centre for American Progress, said the fact there were so many National Guardsmen from the area in Iraq inevitably affected the response.
There seems also to have been a failure in forward planning. Walter Baumy, a chief engineer with the US army corps of engineers, said the corps was confronted with riverbeds clogged with loose barges and debris and that it could not find contractors able to manoeuvre heavy equipment into the flood zone.
Finally, the city's infrastructure was woefully inadequate for what had been an oft-predicted flood. The city's 22 pumping stations are not operating.
What has puzzled experts is that there had been both predictions and potential scenarios enacted more than a year ago. "The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well-anticipated, predicted and drilled around," Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University told Reuters.
Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed over the levees protecting the city.
In July 2004, more than 40 federal, state, local and volunteer organisations carried out a five-day simulation, code-named Hurricane Pam, during which they had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents.
At the time, Ron Castleman, regional director for the Fema said: "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts."
At the heart of the failure seems to be a breakdown in the relationship between national and local agencies. The authorities in the Louisiana state capital are increasingly at loggerheads with federal disaster relief officials over what to do with the thousands of people still trapped in New Orleans.
The authorities in Baton Rouge say they have tried to raise such problems with Fema representatives deployed to the city but were told all decisions had to be relayed to Washington. "They sent down Mike Brown [the head of Fema] for television interviews, but everyone else is really low-level," an official said.
Federal officials have defended their response. Michael Chertoff, head of the homeland security department, which has responsibility for Fema, said: "We are extremely pleased with the response of every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, to this terrible tragedy.
"For those who wonder why it is that it is difficult to get these supplies and these medical teams into place, the answer is they are battling an ongoing dynamic problem with the water."
Most disconcerting for those responsible for the relief effort is that it is not just Hugo Chávez who is expressing his amazement. Jack Cafferty, the CNN anchor known for his straight-talking, declared: "I remember the riots in Watts. I remember the earthquake in San Francisco. I remember a lot of things. I have never seen anything as badly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people in that Superdome down there? It's a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching."