[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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