On Thursday the White House released a report on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they’ve learned very much. The report’s recommendations are unlikely to address the primary problem revealed by the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina: the fact that government is not the best vehicle for responding to a natural disaster.
I can’t summarize the situation any better than the report itself (PDF) did. So I’ll quote from the foreword, which inadvertently admits the problem.
Read the first two paragraphs of the foreword to the report, and pay close attention.
On August 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina formed as a tropical storm off the coast of the Bahamas. Over the next seven days, the tropical storm grew into a catastrophic hurricane that made landfall first in Florida and then along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, leaving a trail of heartbreaking devastation and human suffering. Katrina wreaked staggering physical destruction along its path, flooded the historic city of New Orleans, ultimately killed over 1,300 people, and became the most destructive natural disaster in American history.
Awakening to reports of Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast the morning of Monday, August 29, American citizens watched events unfold with an initial curiosity that soon turned to concern and sorrow. The awe that viewers held for the sheer ferocity of nature was soon matched with disappointment and frustration at the seeming inability of the “government” — local, State, and Federal — to respond effectively to the crisis. Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent sustained flooding of New Orleans exposed significant flaws in Federal, State, and local preparedness for catastrophic events and our capacity to respond to them. Emergency plans at all levels of government, from small town plans to the 600-page National Response Plan — the Federal government’s plan to coordinate all its departments and agencies and integrate them with State, local, and private sector partners — were put to the ultimate test, and came up short. Millions of Americans were reminded of the need to protect themselves and their families.
Did you miss it? Here’s the important admission again: “Millions of Americans were reminded of the need to protect themselves and their families.” As many people of Louisiana discovered to their horror, the government not only will not save you, it will actively prevent rescuers from reaching you, and it will actively prevent desperately needed supplies from reaching you.
In fact, thousands of people’s lives were saved in the first critical days through the efforts of Wal-Mart, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross, an organization chartered by the government, were hamstrung by their own bureaucracy.
Even the Coast Guard managed to save lives before they received orders to the contrary.
So the government’s proposed solution, reduced from 200 pages to one sentence, is to make the bureaucracy more efficient and to coordinate better with state and local agencies and private organizations. This means you’d better have an evacuation plan, because they aren’t going to help you after the next hurricane either. Consider: Do you know of any government program that actually works well and achieves its mission easily and effectively? You can’t think of any because there aren’t any. There never have been and never will be.
Under current law, federal disaster response is intended as a last resort, to be employed only when local and state resources are overwhelmed (E.O. 10427 and the Stafford Act). So it’s true we should also be looking at the failures of local and state government here, and will do so in the future. For now I will mention that at least the city of New Orleans seems to be beginning to wake up: They have asked that people who intend to return to city public housing to actually have jobs and be contributing to the economy.
If you want to pick apart the new proposed National Preparedness System, be my guest. I will just say, since this article is too long already, that it’s yet another recipe for bureaucracy and, if you think the government is going to save you next time, I invite you to remember the lesson of the Superdome.
The real solution to this disaster is to abolish FEMA altogether and put disaster response where the Constitution says it’s supposed to be placed, and I quote: “to the States respectively, or to the people.”
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Anonymous
Feb 26, 2006
Most states do not have the resources, or grossly incompetent, to handle disasters on their own. Louisiana is a prime example of what goes wrong when you allow a state the latitude of assuming disaster preparedness on their own before federal intervention. Strongly agree federal intervention was poor, and there was no excuse for it, but the state’s response on the other hand was virtually non-existent. Sometimes you can’t help but wonder if state governments are an arcane idea left over from colonial days, that are now totally irrelevant and an un-neccesary layer of government.
Michael Hampton
Feb 26, 2006
The state wouldn’t need to respond! Hell, the CITY wouldn’t need to respond if it weren’t for one thing: The federal government created the problem which led to Katrina’s horrendous damage in the first place.
Anonymous
Feb 27, 2006
Not so! Federal government was apart of the problem, but not the primary one. Both the state of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans were responsible for controling development in the floodplains and wetlands under the National Flood Insurance Act. Also, they were to be the first responders in the event of a disaster, the federal government was to essentially back them up when the state called for federal assistance. It has been on the books for years and they should have known better. I will agree, federal response was poor, but the blame really lies with the state and city governments. I also agree about states. They are rather useless. The National Guard is about the only asset they have, and those guys are in Iraq. The state had no backup plans to cover for them when they were gone. Last of all, even though the feds failed miserably in coming to the rescue, the damage was caused by Katrina storm, not the feds. It is about time the state and the city took some responsibility instead of having the feds wipe their asses for them all the time. The feds infuse tons of money every year to help them maintain their infrastructure, schools, port facilities, and the like. The state rarely puts in a dime and often must be cohersed into contributing funds. If the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans can’t take responsibility for their own people and property, then they should file for bankruptcy and be disbanded.
Lenny Zimmermann
Mar 01, 2006
I would add one note here, though, that the Feds are very directly responsible for the vast majority of damage in the major metropolitan are of New Orleans, because the Federal Government was directly responsible, via the United States Army Corps of Engineers, for the flawed design of the hurricane protection levees that did not provide the level of protection they claimed they would. And yes, I am intimately aware that the claimed level of protection was only for a Category 3 storm, but by the time Katrina hit New Orleans current estimates claim that it had, indeed, weakened into a Category 3 storm.
My personal belief that that we citizens of Louisiana and, by extension, the United States, have often come to rely on the state as some form of pretective barrier for all of our needs. We cannot, and must not, fall to that mindset and must remember as individual citizens that it ultimately falls to us to watch out for ourselves and our community, not a governmental agency.
I would disagree that state governments do not have a place. Perhaps there is some legitimacy to such a statement if you believe the Federal Government really should have as much absolute power as it already holds (and continues to grab for). However state governments as originally concieved, while still an evil to be reconciled, would at least be more localized and responsive to the citizens of their region. As it stands now the individual States seem to be little more than entities competing for Federal funding and “matching dollars” and such kow-towing to the Feds makes them far less responsive and capable.
Michael Hampton
Mar 01, 2006
If not for the government-provided flawed levee and canal system, would anyone ever have built in the vulnerable below sea level areas?
Good to see you made it back okay.
Lenny Zimmermann
Mar 02, 2006
Thanks.
I can’t say that I know for sure what may or may not have been built in thoe low-lying areas. The city is already fairly geographically constrained and I would not at all be surprised to have seen folks building in those areas anyway. In fact if I remember my local history correctly quite a few of those areas (such as what we call the 9th Ward today) were often areas already holding huts and shanties for those who could not afford to build in the higher grounds in the city itself in thsoe times. Of course most such construction was also built on pilings to raise the house several feet.
I will say, though, that levee protection has its pluses and minuses. Levees don’t just keep water out, they can also server to keep water in, or let it get higher, for longer, inside their area of protection. My home, for example, is in a suburb called Metairie, to the West of the city on lands that were primarily used for farming, by plantation but mostly by sharecropping (Metairie is French for sharecropping, I believe.) My house is above sea level, but even so I got up to 6 inches in my home all because nobody was manning the pumps that are required to keep water that gets through our levee system from being held in and rising.
Honestly, though, even that 6 inches wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if the Parish government would have only let us back in to our homes right away. 6 inches of water (especially when it was only in the house for less than a few hours) is quickly, easily and relatively cheaply repaired. You mainly need to just toss any carpeting, wash down the legs of furniture and spray down the lower walls with a mild bleach solution and you’re done.
6 inches that is allowed to soak for weeks, however, is another story. The mold invasion that occurs is massive. Drywall must be cut out 4′ up the wall (it could probably be cut a bit lower, but drywall sheets are 4′ on the short side and therefore it’s cheaper to just cut out at 4′.) Wood begins to rot, mold treatment and de-humidification has to occur throughout the house and anything unlucky enough to have been on the floor in that kind of damp for that long is pretty much a loss. Books, furniture, clothing. All of it goes to the curb and none of it had to if we would ahve just been let back in. And that exceptional added expense is something you will probably never find on any of the reports of government screw-ups for Katrina.
Jun 28, 2006
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