http://2theadvocate.com/stories/091205/new_criticism001.shtml

Locals join criticism of tardy response
By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS
proberts@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff writer

The Bogalusa Medical Center limped along for a week with just enough power to run the emergency room before learning its plea for a generator was lost in a computer mishap.

Amtrak suggested its own trains quickly evacuate thousands of those trapped in the city -- but no call ever came.

And when the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office -- contending with an influx of desperate evacuees -- was down to 24 hours of fuel for patrol cars, its regular supply suddenly got shut off.

The culprit wasn't two-story floodwaters or downed power stations or gun-toting looters, local authorities claim.

It was the very government agency charged with saving the day in times of disaster: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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"I don't know where the problem was and I don't have time to assess it because we're still trying to survive and move forward," Kenner Mayor Philip Capitano said in an interview last week. "All I know is that FEMA wasn't here when we needed them."

The agency has been under fire for its response in Louisiana and other states since Hurricane Katrina laid siege to the coastline two weeks ago.

President Bush and Congress last week pledged separate investigations into the federal response to the disaster.

Even before there was time to appoint a special counsel or to convene a single hearing on Capitol Hill, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff apparently reached his own conclusion, replacing FEMA Director Michael D. Brown with Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen.

Answers as to exactly what went wrong soon may be forthcoming. While still dealing with rescue, recovery and law-enforcement problems last week, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's staff and other state agencies also began compiling a timeline that will indicate when assistance was requested and just how long it took to get there.

In the meantime, the governor has hired James Lee Witt -- the FEMA director under former President Bill Clinton -- to advise her.

"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher has said of the federal agency. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

No surprises

There are signs that FEMA knew it was wholly unprepared to handle the likes of Hurricane Katrina.

Last May, the federal agency hired a Baton Rouge firm -- Innovative Emergency Management, or IEM -- to provide intense training exercises. The last one was Aug. 24 -- a week before the tropical depression graduated to a Category 4 hurricane.

IEM President Madhu Beriwal said in an interview last week there was a sense that although New Orleans and the surrounding parishes had their hurricane plans and FEMA had its national plan, none could adequately deal with a large-scale disaster.

"There was concern at both the state and federal levels that we had dodged a bullet in catastrophic storms since Camille, and a sense of urgency because of what happened in Florida last year," Beriwal said. "We were trying to look outside the box at what needed to be done."

The nearly $1 million training -- based on the fictitious Hurricane Pam -- began last July, but never had the chance to cover the topics that proved most troubling after Hurricane Katrina: Search and rescue, law and order, and communications.

"I am quite distraught," Beriwal said. "There are so many people who worked so hard to make sure this day would never come. It's a major catastrophe."

As the real thing barreled toward the Gulf Coast, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said, Chertoff and Brown listened in on briefings about the strength of the storm and the potential disaster -- including a surge capable of overtopping levees and winds strong enough to blow out windows.

Still, federal records indicate FEMA positioned only seven of its 28 urban search-and-rescue teams in the area before the storm hit.

Brown waited hours after the storm passed before proposing in a memo to Chertoff that they send at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers and to "convey a positive image" about the government's response.

According to the memo, that was only after they had the required 24 hours of disaster training.

Take a number

As U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal tells it, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived in Washington Parish before FEMA did.

That's just one of the more dramatic examples and anecdotes state and local authorities say indicates FEMA was unprepared to manage the crisis.

The federal agency not only is criticized for failing to initiate its own efforts, but also for interfering with those of others.

Two days after the disaster, tourists from all over the world were put out in the streets of New Orleans to fend for themselves after the agency seized hotel-chartered evacuation buses for which guests paid $45 apiece to ride.

Sarah Gidlow, a 31-year-old school teacher from London, was among those camped out two weeks ago on the steps of Harrah's Casino, trying to figure out where to go and how to get there.

"The hotel management told us the federal government just took our buses," Gidlow said. "I can't believe they can do that. Don't they care?"

In Jefferson Parish, authorities claim FEMA turned away three semi-trailer trucks loaded with water, and barred the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel. A week after the storm, FEMA cut the parish's emergency communications line -- prompting Sheriff Harry Lee to restore it and to post armed guards to protect it.

An exasperated Parish President Aaron Broussard was on the radio two days after the storm, declaring Jefferson Parish "to be a foreign nation known as Jefferpotamia, because foreign countries get American aid faster than Americans do."

Kenner Mayor Philip Capitano said FEMA officials didn't arrive in his town until Tuesday of last week -- and even then didn't bother to notify city officials.

In the meantime, the city had been getting "truckload after truckload" of basic supplies like food and water from Wal-Mart.

"It's amazing to me that FEMA, the Red Cross and other agencies couldn't find their way to Kenner, but Wal-Mart did," Capitano said. "You have to ask yourself, 'How does Wal-Mart manage to mobilize and get help in here when the federal agency whose whole mission it is to give that type of relief wasn't there?' Wal-Mart needs to be sent over to FEMA to give them an education in logistics."

The 'run-around'

Even Louisiana's congressional delegation had trouble getting through to FEMA.

Jindal -- who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the federal agency -- said his own office "got the run-around" after asking whether a private company could send its own helicopter to rescue trapped employees before floodwaters encroached.

When his staff asked why Washington Parish was still without electricity, food, water and baby formula, a FEMA employee's reply was that "because communications are down, we didn't know what they needed." Private companies later rushed in supplies.

One of the congressman's staffers also put in a request for a generator for the hospital in Bogalusa. After five days and still no word, they contacted FEMA again. Jindal said his office was told FEMA "had no record of the request. When my staffer said he was there personally five days ago, the guy's response was that the computer had gone down and it must have been lost."

Jindal also said one New Orleans-area mayor who phoned FEMA to report low supplies in his town was put on hold for 45 minutes -- then told the situation would have to be detailed in a memo.

"I'm not particularly interested in assigning blame," Jindal said. "What I want to ensure is whether next time we can promise people it will be better, and we can promise that all the red tape is being cut. We can't allow red tape to continually strangle the recovery effort or reconstruction."

Indeed, there are stories as well of FEMA appearing more concerned about following policies and filing paperwork than saving lives.

Hundreds of firefighters who responded to a nationwide call for help in the disaster were first run through days of community relations and sexual harassment training in Atlanta, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News. A FEMA spokeswoman told reporters they primarily were going to do community relations work -- not rescue.

FEMA also halted two trucks carrying thousands of bottles of water to Camp Beauregard near Alexandria, former Fort Smith, Ark., Mayor William Vines told the New York Times. The trucks were stuck for several days on the side of the road, awaiting something called a "tasker number."

In East Baton Rouge Parish, Sheriff's Office Col. Greg Phares called FEMA the week of the storm, after the federal agency cut off its usual supplier of fuel.

The law-enforcement agency was down to less than 24 hours of fuel for its patrol cars and other vehicles.

"First, they told me there wasn't anything they could do," Phares said. "Then they offered me a tracking number. A tracking number? I thought that's what you got when you ordered a package through UPS."

The chief criminal deputy quickly turned to help from a Baton Rouge businessman whose family provides supplies to FEMA. The fuel was restored the same day.

At a news conference Sunday, Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness, criticized FEMA's sluggish response in providing temporary housing in the state.

Smith said a shortage is prompting residents to move away from Louisiana.

"We don't feel the process is fast enough," Smith said. "We need to get trailers rolling and things happening that just aren't happening. We've asked them to start thinking outside the box and get something moving on this."

FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said 10 families have gotten emergency housing in Louisiana, but another 5,000 mobile homes are tied up in legal wrangling with landowners.

The Louisiana emergency preparedness office estimates that more than 58,000 people are in shelters in Louisiana and at least another 150,000 out of state. Untold thousands are staying with friends and relatives.

'They've been tremendous'

FEMA isn't without its advocates.

Bridget Depland, a Louisiana Department of Social Services administrator who was helping coordinate shelter operations, said last week she doesn't know of "any instances where FEMA has not been responsive. They've been tremendous in the movement of people."

And Kevin Hardy, communications director for the Louisiana Board of Regents, described his experience with the federal agency as "fairly positive."

FEMA did not respond last week to numerous requests for interviews. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Chertoff dismissed the critiques for another day.

"Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back," he said, "what would be a horrible tragedy would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred."