[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 109 (Tuesday, September 6, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H7661-H7664]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCERNS REGARDING RESPONSE TO HURRICANE KATRINA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, we here in the Congress have just returned
to conduct the Nation's business, and our hearts are with the families
and individuals who have lost loved ones and are scattered across this
country as a result of the terrible, terrible devastation of Hurricane
Katrina.
The House of Representatives this evening met with the President's
Cabinet for nearly 3 hours, and this evening I would like to address
concerns regarding how the institutions of this Nation failed the
American people and what can be done about it as we try to heal as a
Nation and thank those who are extending their compassion and
assistance and to try to give strength to those who have suffered so
much. There is not a single American who does not feel just horrible
about what has happened, and we in the Congress bear responsibility, as
does this administration, for the response and its shortcomings.
There is a story today in the Wall Street Journal entitled: ``Behind
Poor Katrina Response, a Long Chain of Weak Links.'' I would like to
enter that into the Record and read from a key section of that article
that talks about what went wrong.
{time} 2245
Number one, the absorption of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
into the gargantuan and terrorism-focused Department of Homeland
Security, which I voted against as a Member of this Congress over 2
years ago; I served on the Committee on Appropriations where FEMA came
before us. We had an agency that finally worked after 10 years of
reform in the Clinton administration, and James Lee Witt, the director
of that agency, did such a terrific job. All of that changed as FEMA
was subsumed under this gargantuan Department of Homeland Security,
which in essence had a very different kind of mission.
Just 2 weeks ago, as the Wall Street Journal article recounts, five
State emergency managers brought a tough message here to Washington,
this was before Katrina, and met with Michael Chertoff, the Homeland
Security Secretary. And these emergency directors told them straight
out that the administration was weakening emergency management with
potentially dangerous consequences. In fact, Dave Liebersback, the
Director of Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management, said that the Department's focus on terrorism was
undermining its readiness here at home.
The article goes on to say that there were not firm procedures in
place, for example, for directing people and materials when a national
emergency such as Katrina would strike. And this article, along with
other information that I choose to enter into the record this evening,
shows that the appropriations for the funding of FEMA, as part of this
major new department, were actually cut by over $600 million in the
area of regional operations. These are bad decisions that need to be
reversed. The American people and we here in this Congress must do
this.
A few years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security was being
debated here in the Congress, I stated, and reread for the record
tonight, ``I do not want FEMA put in the Department of Homeland
Security. Why? Because FEMA worked. It took us 10 years to fix FEMA
back during the decades of the 1990s, so why do we want to stick FEMA
into this big new department that will have 170,000 people in it, and
we cannot even get direct communications up to the top? The United
States fought World War II, and we did not need a Department of
Homeland Security. We defeated the Communists during the Cold War, and
we didn't need a 170,000-person Department of Homeland Security. We
fought the Persian Gulf War, and we did not need it.''
But our words were not successful here in the Congress. And we ended
up with a majority of Members of Congress passing a Department of
Homeland Security that buried FEMA far underneath this mammoth
administrative structure. I hate to call it a management structure
because it became a mismanagement structure. And then funding for local
responses was cut by over $600 million.
Interestingly, the Web site of the current Committee on Homeland
Security here in the U.S. House of Representatives indicates a vacancy
in the chairmanship, with the movement of Mr. Cox of California to the
Securities and Exchange Commission. So even one of the key committees
here in the House lacks the key chair as we move into this difficult
period.
But the point is that there has been very bad decision making here in
the Congress that relegated FEMA in terms of domestic affairs, and
also, those put in charge over the last 5 years have had absolutely no
hands-on experience with emergency management.
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned previously, the articles I referred to
earlier are submitted hereafter for inclusion in the Record.
What Went Wrong?
Some reasons why the U.S. didn't adequately protect and
rescue its citizens from a natural disaster.
The absorption of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
into the gargantuan--and terrorism-focused--Department of
Homeland Security.
A military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which
made commanders reluctant to commit some active-duty units
nearby.
A total breakdown of communications systems.
Missteps at the local level, including a rudimentary plan
to deal with hurricanes.
A failure to plan for the possibility that New Orleans's
levee system would fail.
[[Page H7662]]
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[From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 6, 2005]
Power Failure: Behind Poor Katrina Response, a Long Chain of Weak
Links--Changing Structure of FEMA, Emphasis on Terrorism Contributed to
Problems--a Shortage of Helicopters
(By Robert Block, Amy Schatz, Gary Fields and Christopher Cooper)
Just two weeks ago, five state emergency managers brought a
tough message to a meeting in Washington with Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his top deputies.
``We told them straight out that they were weakening
emergency management with potentially disastrous
consequences,'' says Dave Liebersbach, the director of
Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management. The department's focus on terrorism was
undermining its readiness for other catastrophes, said the
visiting officials, who included emergency managers from
Mississippi and Alabama.
Now that Hurricane Katrina has left the Gulf Coast flooded
and New Orleans in ruins, the question ricocheting around the
nation and the world is this: How could the world's biggest
superpower fail so badly in protecting and rescuing its
residents from a natural disaster so frequently foretold?
The answer is sure to receive intense scrutiny this fall in
Congress and around the nation, especially given revived
fears that the U.S. is ill-prepared for a terrorist attack.
``We are going to take a hard, hard look at our disaster-
response procedures,'' said Republican Majority Leader Bill
Frist of Tennessee this weekend as he assisted patients at
the New Orleans airport.
Yesterday, the government moved aggressively to show it has
the situation in hand. President Bush paid his second visit
to the region in four days, visiting Baton Rouge, La., and
Poplarville, Miss. He asserted that federal, state and local
governments are ``doing the best we can.'' The major levee
breach in New Orleans, at the 17th Street Canal, was closed,
allowing the city to begin pumping out floodwaters, a process
expected to take about 30 days.
Meanwhile, thousands of federal troops appeared to be
firmly in control of the city, with most residents evacuated
and searches for survivors well underway. A Customs and
Border Protection aircraft operating as a flying
communication link gave first responders in New Orleans the
ability to communicate for the first time since Katrina
struck more than a week ago. In suburban Jefferson Parish,
thousands of residents were allowed to check their homes
under tight restrictions to evaluate what was left.
But the weekend's progress hasn't erased the troubling
questions left by the government's delayed understanding of
the scope of the damage last week and its initial slowness in
mounting rescues and bringing food and water to stricken
citizens. The problems include:
The decision to transform the Federal Emergency Management
Agency from a cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the
president to just one piece of a new, gargantuan Department
of Homeland Security, which altered FEMA's mission and
watered down its powers.
Too few helicopters stationed in the Gulf Coast area ahead
of the storm.
A military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which
left commanders near New Orleans reluctant to commit some
active-duty units at nearby Fort Polk, La., because they were
in the midst of preparing for an Afghan deployment this
winter.
A total breakdown of communications systems, an echo of the
problems that faced New York officials dealing with the 2001
terrorist attacks and a system the government has been trying
to fix for four years.
Poor coordination among federal, state and local officials
in the days immediately before and after the hurricane.
Failure at all levels of government to take seriously many
studies and reports over many years warning of the potential
disaster.
Indeed, despite many warnings of the dangers, Mr. Chertoff
and other administration officials have explained their poor
initial response by saying government planners didn't expect
both a serious hurricane and a breach in levees. ``This is
really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise,''
Mr. Chertoff told reporters on Saturday.
Planners, he said, ``were confronted with a second wave
that they did not have built into the plan, but using the
tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt.''
Plenty of missteps at the local level contributed to last
week's disaster too, from a failure to take basic steps to
protect the telecom infrastructure to inadequate food and
water at the Superdome. New Orleans may be able to stage
events such as Mardi Gras and Jazzfest and provide parking,
crowd control and adequate toilets for millions of visitors,
but its hurricane plan was more rudimentary. ``Get people to
higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift
supplies to them--that was the plan, man,'' Mayor Ray Nagin
said in an interview yesterday.
But so far, the federal government is bearing the brunt of
criticism, given its vast resources and unique role in
responding to major disasters. Critics say the response shows
that the nation's disaster-response system, rebuilt in the
wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, is woefully inadequate.
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken on Friday, the
public said by a 67% to 31 % margin that the federal
government wasn't adequately prepared for Katrina.
``What the events of the last week have shown is that over
the last few years since 9/11 we have slowly disassembled our
national emergency response system and put in its place
something far inferior,'' says Bill Waugh, an academic expert
on emergency management at Georgia State University. ``We
reinvented the wheel when we didn't need to and now have
something that doesn't roll very well at all.''
Many of last week's problems are rooted in January 2003,
when the Bush administration, urged on by some members of
Congress, created the Homeland Security Department. It
amalgamated 22 agencies, from the Coast Guard to the Secret
Service, creating the largest government bureaucracy since
the Pentagon was formed in 1947.
From the start, emergency experts and even the Government
Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress,
warned that a special effort was needed to be sure FEMA's
traditional mission of providing disaster relief wasn't lost
in the shuffle.
But it was. FEMA's clout had long depended on its ability
to help states plan for natural disasters by providing
emergency preparedness grants and other resources. Under
Homeland Security, grant-making decisions were transferred to
a new, department-wide office in an attempt to consolidate
funding. As a result, FEMA lost control of more than $800
million in preparedeness grants since 2003, congressional
figures show. State emergency managers and congressional
investigators say the overwhelming focus for grants is now
on fighting terrorism. More money goes to local police and
fire departments for that mission than responding to and
recover from disasters.
Officials from Shelby County, Ala., for instance, last year
said they could get federal money for chemical suits. But
they were unable to get money for an emergency operations
center that could link computers, phones and televisions to
respond to tornadoes. Between 1957 and 2003, the county had
20 tornadoes that it said killed 11 people and caused more
than $32 million in damages.
Meanwhile, morale at FEMA has dropped since it was subsumed
by Homeland Security. Several key jobs are unfilled and its
executives are overtaxed. Its acting chief operating officer
in Washington, for instance, is also the director of FEMA's
Atlanta region; his seat there is being held by another
acting director. That area includes much of the hurricane-
prone Southeast.
In July, Mr. Chertoff unveiled a departmental restructuring
that would cement FEMA's reduced role. Among other moves, the
plan restricted FEMA's purview to disaster response,
stripping away longstanding functions such as helping
communities build houses outside flood zones.
The plan, he told Congress, was ``to take out of FEMA a
couple of elements that were really not related to its core
missions, that were generally focused on the issue of
preparedness in a way that I think was frankly more of a
distraction to FEMA than an enhancement to FEMA.''
On July 27, Alaska's Mr. Liebersbach, in his role as the
head of the National Emergency Management Association, an
association of state emergency management directors, warned
in a letter to Congress that Mr. Chertoff's plan was nothing
short of disastrous. It would have ``an extremely negative
impact on the people of this nation,'' he wrote.
``The proposed reorganization increases the separation
between preparedness, response and recovery functions,'' the
letter said. ``Any unnecessary separation of these functions
will result in disjointed response and adversely impact the
effectiveness of departmental operations.'' It was the letter
that prompted the meetings with Homeland Security officials
in late August.
Last week's response certainly revealed cracks in the
current system. Though President Bush declared a state of
emergency before Katrina made landfall on Monday, officials
appear to have underestimated the severity of the damage
caused by the storm. By Tuesday it became clear that the
response was not meeting needs and that FEMA and Louisiana
emergency teams were overwhelmed. Then the flood waters hit
in New Orleans. It still took several more hours for Mr.
Chertoff to declare the disaster an ``incident of national
significance.''
Even then, some requirements hampered speed. Because of
worries that terrorists could take advantage of such chaos,
FEMA now must abide by post-9/11 security procedures, such as
putting air marshals on flights. That meant stranded
residents couldn't be evacuated from the New Orleans airport
until FEMA had rounded up dozens of Transportation Security
Administration screeners and more than 50 federal air
marshals. Inadequate power prevented officials from firing
up X-ray machines and metal detectors until the government
decided evacuees could be searched manually.
In the hours before and after Katrina struck, there weren't
firm procedures in place for directing people and materials.
Dan Wessel, owner of Cool Express Inc., a Blue River, Wis.,
transportation company that contracts with FEMA to move
supplies, said he didn't get a green light to send trucks to
a staging area in Dallas until about 4 p.m. Monday, hours
after Katrina made landfall. That was too late to meet a
deadline of getting trucks to Dallas by noon Tuesday, he
said.
Once the trucks arrived, drivers often found no National
Guard troops, FEMA
[[Page H7663]]
workers or other personnel on hand to help unload the water
and ice, Mr. Wessel said. ``I almost told the guys to leave,
but people are wanting the water,'' he said. ``The drivers
distributed it.''
Inside New Orleans, said Dr. Joseph Guarisco, chief of the
emergency department of Ochsner Clinic Foundation, a 580-bed
hospital in New Orleans above the water line, said there was
confusion about where to direct evacuees seeking shelter.
For a couple of days, Dr. Guarisco said, he directed a
stream of patients to what he understood was a FEMA mass-
casualty tent at the intersection of Interstate 10 and
Causeway Boulevard. ``A number came back and said, `there's
no one there.' '' Dr. Guarisco said.
Some critics have blamed the war in Iraq, and the
deployment of thousands of troops, including National Guard
members, to that effort. President Bush has vehemently denied
that charge. The administration has said problems on the
ground were due to an unexpectedly severe storm and
unanticipated flooding.
Four weeks before the hurricane, Lt. Colonel Pete
Schneider, of the Louisiana National Guard, told WGNO, a
local ABC affiliate, that when guard members left for Iraq
last October, they took a lot of needed equipment with them,
including dozens of high-water vehicles, Humvees, refueling
tankers and generators that would be needed in the event a
major natural disaster hit the state.
``You've got combatant commanders over there who need it,
they say they need it, they don't want to lose what they have
and we certainly understand that,'' he said. ``It's a matter
of us educating that combatant commander [that] we need it
back here as well.''
Col. Schneider also said the state had enough equipment to
get by, and that if Louisiana were to get hit by a major
hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and
Florida had all agreed to help. In the end, those states were
hit by Katrina as well.
The U.S. Army has a large facility, Fort Polk, in
Leesville, La., about 270 miles northwest of New Orleans.
Officials at Fort Polk, which has nearly 8,000 active duty
soldiers, said their contribution so far has consisted of a
few dozen soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division manning
purification equipment and driving half-ton trucks filled
with supplies and equipment. The first contingent of
soldiers didn't receive orders until Saturday afternoon.
A spokeswoman at Fort Polk said she did not know why the
base received its deployment orders so late in the game.
``You'd have to ask the Pentagon,'' she said. A senior Army
official said the service was reluctant to commit the 4th
brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, because
the unit, which numbers several thousand soldiers, is in the
midst of preparing for an Afghanistan deployment in January.
Instead, the Pentagon chose to send upwards of 7,500
soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas
and the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., along
with Marines from California and North Carolina. Soldiers
from the 82nd Airborne Division are able to deploy anywhere
in the world in 18 hours. It took several days for them to
arrive on the ground in Louisiana.
There, no piece of equipment was more necessary than
helicopters. But in the first 48 hours after the levees were
breached, the shortage of helicopters became acute. FEMA
wanted choppers to save stranded residents, while the Army
Corps of Engineers needed the aircraft, known as ``rotary
wing'' in military jargon, to repair the breaches. The Coast
Guard, the primary agency responding to the disaster in New
Orleans, had a total of 20 aircraft in the area, mostly
helicopters, which focused solely on rescue operations.
``We have very limited aviation assets and rotary wing is
what we need to put materials into those breaches, and that's
the very asset we need to do search and rescue and save
victims, so our efforts became something of a second priority
and our initial plan was delayed a bit because of that,''
says Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of
Engineers.
A FEMA spokesman said the Coast Guard and National Guard
had adequate numbers of helicopters on hand, but that rescue
and supply operations were hampered by other factors,
including limited airspace around New Orleans, which is
geographically small. ``You put in 30 helicopters in that
area and you create a dangerous situation,'' said the
spokesman, Marty Bahamonde.
On the supply front, helicopters flew food to the
Superdome, he said, but the helipad there could only
accommodate small aircraft, wnich couldn't hold many
supplies.
Communications systems also broke down, as they did at the
World Trade Center in 2001, preventing emergency officials
from communicating with each other and the military. That led
to the odd juxtaposition of top federal officials praising
the rescue effort and denying problems at New Orleans'
overcrowded convention center while TV cameras showed people
there crying for help.
Flooding and power shortages appear to be behind most of
the serious communications problems, but incompatible radio
systems didn't help. Emergency responders in New Orleans and
three nearby parishes all use different radio systems. New
Orleans and nearby Jefferson Parish both use radios that
operate on the 800 Mhz band, according to a Louisiana
State Police interoperability report, but they were
manufactured by different vendors. That means officials
there had up to five channels on which to talk to one
another.
``Communication is always difficult in emergency situations
because of increased traffic,'' says William Vincent of the
Lafayette Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness, about 135 miles from New Orleans. Emergency 911
dispatchers in Lafayette fielded calls from New Orleans
residents who still had working cellphones but couldn't reach
local police.
New Orleans officials had equipment at the fire
department's communication center that could link otherwise
incompatible local and federal systems. It was reportedly
knocked out by flooding.
Another problem: Even after 9/11, local officials and
federal emergency responders don't typically use the same
radio frequencies, which can make communication difficult
until agreements are reached on sharing channels.
As handheld radios began losing power in New Orleans,
police officers and other emergency responders had no way of
recharging them. Unlike radios used by firefighters combating
wild fires, which can be powered by disposable batteries
found in any grocery store, a typical handheld police
emergency radio uses rechargeable batteries similar to those
powering cell phones, according to Ron Haraseth, director of
automated frequency coordination at the Association of
Public-Safety Communications Officers.
FEMA itself seemed to frequently have bad information. At a
Tuesday press conference Bill Lokey, federal coordinating
officer for FEMA and the agency representative on site,
downplayed the severity of the flooding caused by the
breaches in New Orleans, saying the water wasn't rising in
most areas. ``I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know,
New Orleans is filling up like a bowl,'' he said. ``That's
just not happening.''
Within hours, much of the city was under water, and Mr.
Lokey was calling Katrina the most significant natural
disaster to hit the United States.''
The possible problems had long been trumpeted. In June
2004, FEMA spent more than half a million dollars to
commission a ``catastrophic hurricane disaster plan'' from
IEM Inc., a Baton Rouge-based emergency-management and
homeland security consulting firm. A report analyzing results
of a mock hurricane hitting New Orleans, dubbed ``Hurricane
Pam,'' was envisioned and a response and recovery plan was to
be drawn up.
During a five-day mock exercise in July 2004, emergency-
management responders huddled in Baton Rouge to plan a
response to ``Hurricane Pam,'' a Category 3 storm which
featured 120 miles per hour winds and a storm surge that
topped New Orleans's levees. For reasons that aren't clear,
the mock exercise never anticipated the levees giving way,
despite such warnings. Even-so, the mock hurricane--destroyed
500,000 buildings in New Orleans and displaced one million
residents.
The group developed a plan to get stranded residents out of
the way and construction of a ``command structure'' with
enough space for upwards of 800 rescue workers. A report,
dated Jan. 5 of this year, detailed recommendations from the
exercise and was provided to FEMA, an IEM spokeswoman said.
FEMA has not released the report.
____
Title III: Preparedness and Recovery
The DHS Emergency Preparedness and Recovery functions are
intended to improve the nation's capability to reduce losses
from all disasters, including terrorist attacks. Table 6
includes funds expended during FY2OO3 for these functions,
and compares them to amounts requested for FY2OO4,
recommended by each House, and approved by conferees in the
final version ultimately enacted.
TABLE 6. PREPAREDNESS AND RECOVERY
($ in millions)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FY2003 FY2004 FY2004 FY2004 FY2004
Operational component Enacted Request House Senate Conf.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title III: Preparedness and Recovery
Office of Domestic Preparedness............................... 3,236 3,558 3,513 3,638 4,037
Basic formula grants (state and local).................... 1,006 -- 1,900 1,250 1,700
Emerg. Wartime Supplement. (P.L. 108-11).................. 1,330 -- -- -- --
St. & loc. law enforce., terrorism prevent................ -- 500 500 500 500
Firefighter assistance grants............................. -- 500 -- 750 750
Hi-threat, hi-density urban areas......................... 700 -- 500 750 725
Other assistance; national programs....................... 200 2,558 613 388 362
[[Page H7664]]
Counter-terrorism fund........................................ 160 40 20 20 10
Emergency Preparedness and Response........................... 3,373 4,352 5,110 3,603 4,402
Admin; regional operations................................ 798 165 169 -- 171
Operating expenses........................................ -- -- -- 827 --
Prepare., mitigation, response & recovery................. -- 163 363 150 225
Public health programs.................................... 498 434 484 -- 484
Biodefense countermeasure (current year).................. -- 890 890 -- 890
(advance appropriations).................................. -- (4,703) (4,703) -- (4,703)
Biodefense countermeas. (10-year total)................... -- (5,593) (5,593) -- (5,593)
Grant programs............................................ 169 300 200 165 180
Emergency food and shelter................................ 152 153 153 153 153
Firefighter assistance grants............................. 745 -- 760 -- --
Disaster relief........................................... 776 1,956 1,800 1,956 1,800
National pre-disaster mitigation fund..................... -- -- -- -- 150
Flood map modernization fund.............................. 149 200 200 200 200
National flood insurance fund............................. 89 90 91 110 110
Disaster assistance direct loan program................... 1 1 1 1 1
Cerro Grande Fire claims.................................. -- -- -- 38 38
Misc. adj.; rescissions; transfers; rounding.............. -4 -- -- 3 --
Subtotal: Title III (current year, net)................. 6,769 7,950 8,643 7,261 8,449
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Rounding may affect totals. Amounts for FY2004 do not include a 0.59% across-the-board reduction called
for by conferees on H.R. 2673 (Consolidated Appropriations for FY2004), to which the House has agreed, and
which awaits Senate action (see page 10).
Source: H. Rept. 108-169; S. Rept. 108-86; H. Rept. 108-280 (Conference report).
____________________