[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 7, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H7706-H7708]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        FEMA'S INEPTITUDE IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reichert). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue a discussion I 
began last evening about who is responsible for much of the human 
destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration has 
been in charge of relief efforts, and it is clear they have failed the 
American people. Why were relief efforts so painfully slow to get 
started and, in fact, FEMA not on the ground after 4 days?
  Meanwhile, trying to fill the gap of a failed Federal administration, 
our thousands of first responders, volunteers, members of the National 
Guard and active duty military personnel and religious and committed 
Americans who are performing exemplary service and deserve the highest 
praise.
  President Truman used to have a sign on his desk that said, ``The 
buck stops here.'' Truly, the buck in this instance stops with the 
President of the United States. It is he who appointed the Cabinet and 
subcabinet level individuals tasked with organizing and implementing 
the plan to deliver timely relief to those in need, and they failed to 
do that. Yes, the President holds responsibility. His appointees hold 
responsibility. Specifically, these include the Director of Homeland 
Security, Michael Chertoff, and the Federal Emergency Management 
Director, Mike Brown, and several other individuals.
  And it has been quite painful for me, as a Member of Congress who 
served on the FEMA Oversight Committee for a number of years, to 
witness the constant failures of judgment by this team, starting with 
the President himself when he took office, and importantly, early on in 
his administration, hollowed out FEMA, taking away its Cabinet status, 
saying that it should no longer be an independent agency that reported 
directly to the President, instead rolling it into the gargantuan 
Department of Homeland Security and tasking that with eliminating 
terrorism.
  FEMA is tucked three levels down in this lumbering massive 
bureaucracy of 170,000 people which still cannot figure out how to 
answer a letter.
  I voted ``no'' on that reorganization; was on the losing side when 
the President tried to pass that through Congress and was successful, 
and have now joined with my dear colleague, the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Dingell), to call for the removal of FEMA from the Department of 
Homeland Security in order to restore it as a fully independent agency 
headed by an actual professional with direct reporting to the President 
of the United States.
  Now, the first person that the President appointed to head FEMA was 
his campaign director from Texas who ran the Bush campaign in the year 
2000. His name is Joe Albaugh, and he accepted the FEMA position in 
2001. And here is what he said back then. He characterized the 
organization as an oversized entitlement program, and counseled States 
and cities to rely instead on faith-based organizations like the 
Salvation Army and the Mennonites Disaster Service. As important as 
they are, those organizations are not equipped to handle a national 
disaster. Thank God we have them, but even they know they are not up to 
the task fully. So the tone was set back in the first Bush 
administration. And it is instructive to see how the President's 
appointees have been locked in over at FEMA.
  We know that Mr. Chertoff, who heads the Department of Homeland 
Security, is an attorney. He has spent

[[Page H7707]]

more time in courtrooms prosecuting the Mafia than managing large-scale 
crises like these.
  Under him is Michael Brown, the Director of FEMA, who has absolutely 
no experience in national disasters or emergencies. In the last 10 
years before being appointed by President Bush as head of FEMA, he 
earned about $100,000 a year in a position with the International 
Arabian Horse Association, where his job was to ensure that judges 
followed rules and to investigate allegations of cheating in horse 
races.
  Most frightening is, after he got his position, and when Katrina hit, 
he waited 5 hours after Katrina actually reached land to officially 
request help and legal authority to send rescue workers and supplies 
into the affected regions. What was he doing during those 5 hours, and 
why was he not more active ahead of time in evacuating people?
  As noted by the Center for American Progress, those under Mr. Brown, 
his deputies, make him look qualified. The number two at FEMA is Chief 
of Staff Patrick Rhode, who was an event planner or advance man for the 
Bush Presidential campaign. He had absolutely no emergency management 
experience before joining FEMA. And under him, the number three person 
at FEMA, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris, was a press flak at the 
Bush campaign. He previously worked for Maverick Media, the firm that 
produced TV supports for Bush's campaigns.
  I say, who holds responsibility? The President of the United States 
holds responsibility. The buck stops with him.
  God bless the people who have suffered and God bless this country.
  On CNN, just his second day in Louisiana, Brown placed blame on the 
victims for not evacuating.
  Most frightening, though, is the fact that Mike Brown waited until 
five hours after Katrina reached land to officially request help and 
legal authority to send rescue workers supplies into the affected 
regions. Despite three to four days of constant alarms that Katrina was 
a Category 5 hurricane poised to strike Louisiana, Brown did 
practically nothing to prepare for the devastation that was predicted 
in the event of just such an occurrence.
  In spite of the dire warnings of what would happen should a Category 
4 or 5 Hurricane strike New Orleans (and the Gulf Coast in General) 
Mike Brown sat patiently by while the Hurricane delivered 100+ mph 
winds and a 25-foot storm surge into the region--obliterating towns, 
killing thousands of Americans and causing what will be hundreds of 
billions of dollars in damage.
  Mike Brown is not the only FEMA official with little to no 
experience, though. As noted by the Center for American Progress, 
``Brown's top deputies, however, make him look qualified. The number 
two at FEMA, Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode, was an event planner 
(``advance man'') for Bush's presidential campaign. He had absolutely 
no emergency management experience before joining FEMA. The number 
three at FEMA, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris, was a press flak at 
the Bush campaign. He previously worked for Maverick Media, the firm 
that produced TV spots for Bush's campaigns. Morris also has no 
emergency management experience. In contrast, the top deputies of 
Clinton-era FEMA Director James Lee Witt ran regional FEMA offices for 
at least 3 years before assuming senior positions in Washington.
  FEMA spokesperson Natalie Rule said the absence of direct managing 
emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need ``the ability to 
keep the organization running.''
  That's all well and good, except for the fact that this 
Administration cut more than six hundred million dollars last year from 
funding for local administrators and offices--diverting it to other 
accounts. Effectively, poor planning and management has created a 
vacuum of leadership anywhere in this agency that Congress and former 
President Clinton worked so hard to ``fix'' in the early to mid-1990's.
  As former chief-of-staff at FEMA Jane Bullock said yesterday, ``We 
knew that about 120,000 of the people who needed to be evacuated did 
not have cars, so we would have to position buses. The buses were not 
there. We knew that the levees would be under heavy stress and so we 
should position barges with pumps up the Mississippi in preparation for 
flooding. This was not done. We knew that the Superdome would be used 
as a refuge of last resort so we should pre-position food and medical 
supplies. They were not there. There was a lack of leadership.''

                [From the New York Post, Sept. 7, 2005]

                       FEMA Fool Sat on His Hands

            (By Douglas Simpson, Ted Bridis and Ian Bishop)

       The head of FEMA waited a mind-boggling five hours after 
     Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf before even contacting his 
     boss about sending personnel to the area--then suggested 
     workers be allowed two days to get to the ravaged region, 
     shocking internal documents reveal.
       One stunning Aug. 29 memo--sent from embattled Federal 
     Emergency Management chief Michael Brown to Homeland Security 
     Secretary Michael Chertoff--called killer Katrina a ``near-
     catastrophic event,'' but otherwise lacked any other urgent 
     language underlining the potential magnitude of the disaster.
       Brown then politely ended his memo with: ``Thank you for 
     your consideration in helping us to meet our 
     responsibilities.''
       In another note sent later to FEMA workers, Brown said one 
     of their duties would essentially be to make the agency look 
     good. ``Convey a positive image of disaster operations to 
     government officials, community organizations and the general 
     public,'' he wrote.
       In Brown's memo to Chertoff, he proposed sending 1,000 
     Homeland Security workers within 48 hours and then another 
     2,000 within seven days.
       In explaining the two-day period that workers had to arrive 
     in the disaster area, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke 
     said it was to ensure they had adequate training before going 
     down.
       The same day Brown wrote his memo to Chertoff, he also 
     urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, 
     Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency 
     workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for 
     help from state or local governments.
       Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue 
     efforts.
       Several congressmen have already called for Brown's 
     resignation.
       In other developments yesterday:
       President Bush and Congress pledged separate probes into 
     the feds' response to Katrina.
       The airline industry said the government's request for help 
     evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday 
     afternoon--three days after Katrina made landfall as a 
     Category 4 hurricane.
       A Long Island congressman ripped into New Orleans 
     officials, who he said did a woefully inadequate job of 
     responding to the hurricane, compared with how New York 
     handled 9/11.
       ``All New Orleans has to worry about is a hurricane. They 
     don't have to worry about terrorist attacks,'' Republican 
     Representative Peter King said. ``They've seen this coming 
     for 200 years.''
       As the Army Corps of Engineers battled to pump out flooded 
     New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin warned that the receding water 
     will reveal horrors.
       ``It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation 
     up again,'' he warned.
       Late last night, Nagin authorized law enforcement and the 
     military to forcibly evacuate residents who have refused to 
     obey orders to leave.
       A refugee from the devastated city attempted suicide aboard 
     a commercial flight bound for Washington, D.C., causing the 
     plane to be diverted.
                                  ____


               [From the Financial Times, Sept. 7, 2005]

           Staff Exodus and Cutbacks Curb Disaster Management

               (By Peter G. Gosselin and Alan C. Miller)

       While the federal government has spent much of the last 25 
     years trimming the safety nets it provides to Americans, it 
     has dramatically expanded its promise of protection in one 
     area--disaster.
       Since the 1970s Washington has emerged as the insurer of 
     last resort against floods, fires, earthquakes and, after 
     2001, terrorist attacks. But the government's stumbling 
     response to the storm that devastated America's Gulf coast 
     reveals that the federal agency singularly most responsible 
     for making good on Washington's expanded promise has been 
     hobbled by cutbacks and a bureaucratic downgrading.
       The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) once 
     speedily delivered food, water, shelter and medical care to 
     disaster areas and paid to rebuild damaged roads and schools 
     and get businesses and people back on their feet. Like a 
     commercial insurance company setting safety standards to 
     prevent future problems, it also underwrote efforts to get 
     cities and states to reduce risks ahead of time and plan for 
     action if calamity struck.
       But in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Fema lost 
     its cabinet-level status as it was folded into the giant new 
     Department of Homeland Security. And in recent years it has 
     suffered budget cuts, the elimination or reduction of key 
     programmes and an exodus of experienced staff.
       The agency's core budget, which includes disaster 
     preparedness and mitigation, has been cut each year since it 
     was absorbed by the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
       The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 
     4,735. Among the results, Fema has had to cut one of its 
     three emergency management teams, which are charged with 
     overseeing relief efforts in a disaster.
       Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in 
     local preparedness and first-responder grants go to 
     terrorism-related activities, even though a recent Government 
     Accountability Office report quotes local officials as saying 
     what they really need is money to prepare for natural 
     disasters and accidents.

[[Page H7708]]

       ``They've taken emergency management away from the 
     emergency managers,'' complained Morrie Goodman, who was 
     Fema's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration.
       Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, 
     acknowledged in interviews on Sunday that Washington was 
     insufficiently prepared for the hurricane that laid waste to 
     New Orleans and surrounding areas. But he defended its 
     performance by arguing that the size of the storm was beyond 
     anything his department could have anticipated and that 
     primary responsibility for handling emergencies rested with 
     state and local, not federal, officials.
       His remarks, which echoed earlier statements by President 
     George W. Bush, prompted withering rebukes both from former 
     senior Fema staffers and outside experts. ``They can't do 
     that,'' former agency chief of staff Jane Bullock said of 
     administration efforts to shift responsibility away from 
     Washington. ``The moment the president declared a federal 
     disaster, it became a federal responsibility.''

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