WASHINGTON, 14 February 2006 — Unheeded warnings, poor planning and apathy in recognising the scope of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction led to the slow emergency response from the White House down to local officials, a damning US government investigation says.
“Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure,” said a summary.
Entitled “Failure of Initiative,” and scheduled to be released Wednesday, the 600-page report by a Republican-dominated House of Representatives inquiry into one of the worst natural disasters in America’s criticized every layer of government from President George Bush down. It also said President Bush received poor and incomplete counsel about the Aug. 29 disaster in the Gulf Coast. The report says the Bush Administration was informed on the day Hurricane Katrina hit that the levees had been breached, even though the president and other top administration officers have said earlier than they learned of the breach 24 hours later.
“If the levees breached and flooded a large portion of the city, then the flooded city would have to be completely evacuated,” the draft report says. “Any delay in confirming the breaches would result in a delay in the post-landfall evacuation of the city.” It adds that the White House discounted damage reports that later proved true.
Overall, the House report said, the government’s response to Katrina was marked by “fecklessness, flailing and organizational paralysis.”
House investigators “are left scratching our heads at the range of clumsiness and ineptitude that characterized government behavior before and after this storm,” the documents show. About 1,400 people died along the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina, and the response to the disaster raises troubling questions about the nation’s ability to react to other threats to domestic security, the draft report says.
“If this is what happens when we have advance warning, we shudder to imagine the consequences when we do not,” the draft says, referring to the potential for a terror attack. “Four and a half years after the 9/11 attack, America is still not ready for prime time.” The House findings mark the first of two congressional inquiries. A White House review of the storm response is expected over the next six weeks.
The House report comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report that singled out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for a series of actions that slowed federal aid to the region.
In response, Chertoff has announced wide-ranging changes to the nation’s embattled disaster-response agency following the report’s blame of government-wide ineptitude for mishandling Hurricane Katrina relief.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency reforms that Chertoff unveiled Monday range from a full-time response force of 1,500 new employees to establishing a more reliable system to report on disasters as they unfold. They are the first steps to overhauling FEMA, which was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina.
In preparation to the release of the report on Wednesday, the White House launched an offensive to the criticism.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend spoke Monday at the National Emergency Management Association’s mid-year conference where they are expected to announced conclusions of the White House’s own report on its Katrina response. On Tuesday, Chertoff makes his case before the Senate panel that just heard last week from ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown.
