Hurricane Katrina - Blame Game

While the usual suspects try to blame Bush for everything that went wrong (I guess Halliburton must have moved up the schedule on weather control), what is becoming evident is that New Orleans was not ready - and her leaders especially were not ready.

When the smoke clears, and we're able to take a breath, we can step back and take a nice cold, clear look. But since blame is being flung in all directions, I'm going share a few of my impressions.
First of all, the scale of this disaster needs to be factored in. Katrina was a big Category 4 storm; big both in terms of strength and in terms of physical size. This was going to be a tough storm to respond to, regardless of where it ultimately struck. That's not to say there aren't lessons to be learned, but it would be well to keep that in mind. This was a massive, and quick disaster.

Also keep in mind: New Orleans' levees failed 18-24 hours after the hurricane hit. So one could look at this as two seperate major disasters, occuring at the same time. We may want to reconsider our disaster planning to take this into account.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is taking a lot of blame right now. There's a couple of things I would like to know: did the later failure of New Orleans' levees affect the response in any way? In other words - did FEMA get caught moving the wrong way, moving material and men to Mississippi and Alabama only to learn they would be needed in New Orleans? And where (and what) did FEMA pre-position to respond?

Yes, pre-position. That's why FEMA wasn't in the Superdome right away. See, FEMA is a response organization, and not even a first-response organization. FEMA coordinates the federal response, providing assets and manpower to assist (and, if necessary, relieve) local first responders (city and state personnel, plus local volunteers). If those assets are placed inside the hurricane strike zone, they'll need to rescue themselves before they can help anyone else. See John at Argghhh!!! for a succinct explanation of this. (Interestingly enough, his biggest problem with the federal response is a lack of information and visible leadership. He has some great info on the military response.) John also makes this exellent point: "...I would caveat that no government is perfect, is ever gonna be, and we'll fix a lot that went wrong here...and in 30 years, if it hasn't gone wrong on this scale again, we'll have trended back, because we'll want o spend the money on other things...which doesn't mean we don't try, it just means I'm a pessimist."

The state government of Louisiana and its response needs some close scrutiny. The fact that Mississippi has held together relatively well while southern Lousiana has not suggests that some major mistakes were made, and compounded upon by later mistakes.

The first response to any disaster occurs at the city, county and state level. Deploymnt of local police, fire, and state police can occur almost immediately; and National Guardsmen (once mobilized) and other state resources can be deployed faster than federal troops can be transported in and deployed. That doesn't even factor in the legal ramifications of the federal response; whereas the governor has the authority to deploy and respond immediately. But some of the first National Guard deployments occurred not in New Orleans but in Baton Rouge.

The New Orleans city government needs some close examination, too. Why did the evacuation take so long to begin? That was the mayor's call. Why weren't city buses used to transport evacuees, or at least relocated so they could be used afterwards? Was the city's emergency plan even implemented? And why did the city's police department come apart?

New Orleans' police force is down to one-third its pre-storm strength (approx. 500 now, down from 1500). From a Defense Department briefing:

Q: General, you mentioned a disintegration of the New Orleans Police Department. Do you know how many officers are still on duty?

GEN. BLUM: I would rather not say. I think you'd be better to refer that question to the mayor of New Orleans. I have my own estimate. I would say they are significantly degraded and they have less than one-third of their original capability.

That's right - most of the police force quit, right when their city needed them most. We can argue over their motives, but I think we can generally agree that they lack the level of professionalism displayed by New York City's police force during 9/11.

One more factor needs to be taken into account - how ready was New Orleans' population? Most of the city's population did get themselves out. And sadly, if the news is to be believed, the people in the shelters did little to help themselves. Again we can argue over the whys and wherefores - but were all of those people completely incompetent? Why couldn't they organize? (Did they, and we haven't heard about it?) It seems like those at the shelters just sat there and waited for someone else to come save them.

It is becoming increasingly clear that New Orleans and Lousiana had a plan, and chose to throw it away and wing it, instead. The plan might not have been perfect - no plan is - but when you have a category 5 hurricane bearing down on you is not a time to improvise. They waited too long to order an evacuation and did not use the resources they did have to help that evacuation. Then there is this tidbit:

In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.

The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

Question: why would the President need to call you and urge an evacuation? Shouldn't they have been able to figure that out?

There is one most significant lesson to draw from this: in the event of a major disaster; the only help you will have for some time is what you yourself can provide. Be Prepared. Too long has our civil defense ignored individual preparation - that needs to change. Everyone needs to be prepared to survive 72 hours without outside aid, and have stores of food and water sufficient for at least a week. And that is an individual responsibility.

For another, more cohesive reponse to some of the criticism, I present Jim Geraghty at National Review (quoted in its entirety):

September 07, 2005, 8:26 a.m.
We Failed You? Try Again.
Anne Rice blames America, not local officials.

"To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.” — novelist and New Orleans resident Anne Rice

Let me get this straight.

Ms. Rice, you live in (what was) a very attractive city which lies below sea level. On one side you have a giant lake; on the other side you have the Gulf of Mexico. Running through the middle is the Mississippi River. All of which are above you.

Preventing those giant bodies of water from flooding and drowning you are levees. These levees are described as “century-old.” People have been warning about the devastating effects of a direct hit from a hurricane for decades.

I’ve heard a great deal of complaint in recent days that the federal government may not have allocated enough money to speed up the upgrades to those levees. This does, however, raise the question of why city and state residents were waiting around for the federal government to send enough money to upgrade this, instead of paying for it themselves. I mean, it was only your homes, businesses, and lives at stake. Perhaps these upgrades would have been expensive. If only this city had some sort of events to attract tourists, from which to collect taxes.

Anyway, your state and local officials decided to spend your tax dollars on something else that they (and presumably you) found more important, and then they waited for the rest of the country to pay for these life-preserving necessities.

Your beloved city and region has a colorful political history, in which there is, oh, a wee bit of corruption. I’m from New Jersey, so I can’t throw stones at that glass house. But you guys have managed to pick leaders who give you the worst of both worlds — they’re scandal ridden and incompetent in a crisis. Look, Rudy Giuliani might have run around with Judith Nathan before his divorce, but he was a hell of a leader in our darkest hours. You know the National Review crowd isn’t a fan of Pataki, but the man was a rock after 9/11 compared to Governor Weepy I’ll-Evacuate-Eventually and Mayor It’s-Everybody’s-Fault-Except-Mine. Nobody’s throwing around the adjective “Churchillian” about any of your officials these days. We didn’t pick your local officials; you guys did.

Rice asks, “how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid?”

Ahem. What about those buses left unused, less than a mile from the Superdome? JunkYardBlog notes that it’s written in the Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan that buses are supposed to be used for evacuation of those who don’t have personal vehicles. As JYB observes, “there is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans.” (See more here.) Ironically, Nagin told CNN, “I need buses, man,” when he had plenty sitting around unused before the storm hit. Now they’re flooded and useless.

But it’s not like state and local officials could have seen this coming. They have never had a hurricane bearing down on them before and… oh, wait, there was Hurricane Ivan just last year. And after that dodged bullet, Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged they needed a better evacuation plan.

I would note that we’ve seen some pretty intense disasters in other parts of the country, like planes crashing into skyscrapers and subsequently collapsing, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, and yet somehow, none of these disasters had the total breakdown of law and order, civil society, etc. Jonah Goldberg’s early joke about a Mad-Max style post-apocalyptic tribal anarchy may have been in poor taste, but it has turned out to be nightmarishly prescient.

We failed you? No, oh brilliant creator of Exit to Eden, you failed. You might not think of it this way, but: Your leaders failed to upgrade the levees. You elected a bunch of weepers and blame-shifters who lost their head in a crisis.

Over the past decades, your elected officials have let a criminal element incubate and grow until they ruled the streets, instead of the forces of law and order. In pop culture, a New Orleans thief is always a charming rogue with a devilish smile. In reality, they’re a bunch of thugs.

If the number of residents who are looting thugs were such a “tiny minority,” we wouldn’t have seen this widespread, relentless anarchy. Madam, a noticeable number of your neighbors saw this disaster as an opportunity to smash a window and run away with a television, an act that reveals much about the inadequacies of the local school system, since that thief won’t be enjoying that television with any electricity anytime soon.

I would also note that this is one hell of a police force your local officials hired and that you and your neighbors tolerated. 50 percent turned in their badges during the crisis and quit. Your police superintendent is conceding that some cops were looting. Just want to refresh your memory — four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next… and the cops, among others, showed up to work.

To save you guys now, I — and a lot of other Americans — will pitch in. We are witnessing the biggest mobilization of civilian and military rescue and relief crews in history. But I have a sneaking suspicion you’re going to want the rest of us to pay for the rebuilding of your city. (In the near future, we’re going to have to have a little chat about the wisdom of building below sea level, directly next to large bodies of water.) And if you’re going to come to the rest of us hat in hand, demanding the rest of us clean up after your poor judgment, I’d appreciate a little less “you failed us” and a little more “we’ve learned our lesson.”

— Jim Geraghty is reporting from Ankara, Turkey, where the locals keep asking him how something like this could happen in America.