Emergency Management Reform
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TheHurricaneKatrinaDebacle.docxThe Hurricane Katrina Debacle: 2005
As Secretary Chertoff proceeded with his reorganization, scientists like Max Mayfield (the director of the National Hurricane Center) predicted another active hurricane season. As always, the greatest fear was that a major storm would hit the Gulf Coast, particularly low-lying New Orleans.
Under James Lee Witt, a Category 5 hurricane impacting New Orleans was considered one of the three possible worst-case disaster scenarios. In fact, since the 1980s, FEMA funds had been used to contract multiple evacuation studies of the New Orleans area. In 1995, a national exercise of the Federal Response Plan entitled “Response 95” used a New Orleans hurricane scenario. This particular exercise was never completed because on the first day of play, a major flood event impacted the Gulf Coast (including the site of the exercise play, New Orleans) and abruptly ended the exercise.
Another disaster exercise termed “Hurricane Pam” was convened and completed in Jul. 2004 with appropriate follow-up requirements to correct the problems and deficiencies discovered during the previous exercise. Unfortunately, the funding to support these corrective actions, which had been adequately budgeted by FEMA, became part of a funding reallocation requested of FEMA by DHS management to support other DHS priorities.
The “Senate Report on Katrina” best describes what occurred during those fateful hours and days in late Aug. The specific danger Katrina posed to the Gulf Coast became clear on the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 26, when forecasters at the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service saw that the storm was turning west. Phone calls were immediately made to Louisiana emergency management officials, and in their 5 pm EDT Katrina forecast and accompanying briefings, the meteorologists alerted both Louisiana and Mississippi that the track of the storm was expected to shift significantly to the west of its original track to the Florida panhandle. The National Hurricane Center warned that Katrina could be a Category 4 or even 5 by landfall. By the next morning, Weather Service officials confirmed that New Orleans was squarely at risk.
Over the weekend, the drumbeat of warnings continued. FEMA held video teleconferences on both days, discussing the potential dangers of Katrina and especially the risks to New Orleans. Max Mayfield of the Hurricane Center called the governors of the affected states, something he had only done once before in his 33-year career, and President Bush took the unusual step of declaring a disaster in advance of an emergency event for the states in the projected impact zone.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Buras, Louisiana, on Monday, Aug. 25, 2005. At the time it was reported as a Category 4 storm when it made landfall. The National Hurricane Center would later downgrade it to a Category 3 storm. In any event, it was considered an extremely dangerous storm by weather forecasters and the National Hurricane Center. It impacted a broad geographic area stretching from Alabama to coastal Mississippi and southeast Louisiana, an estimated 90,000 square miles. In May 2006, the death toll from the storm was 1856, with another 705 individuals listed as missing ( Fig. 1.3 ).
FIGURE 1.3 New Orleans, Louisiana, on Sep. 18, 2005. This shows the damages to homes and property in the lower Ninth Ward due to Hurricane Katrina. The markings on these houses were made by the search and rescue teams who looked for survivors after the storm. Searchers wrote the date the house was searched, the time, which search party was involved, any survivors found, and any animals that were still in the house. From Andrea Booher/FEMA.
The storm impacted over 1.5 million people and displaced more than 800,000 citizens. The US Coast Guard rescued over 24,273 people, and FEMA search and rescue teams rescued nearly 6600 persons. Federal government disaster relief expenses were expected to exceed $100 billion, and the insurance losses were expected to exceed $35 billion. The National Flood Insurance Program paid more than $16.1 million to more than 205,000 people who filed claims related to Katrina. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia received emergency declarations to cover their expenses for sheltering millions of evacuees who had to be transported out of the Gulf.
By any account, Hurricane Katrina was a massive storm, deadly and destructive. It served to expose severe cracks in the nation’s emergency management system and its ability to respond to a catastrophic event. Government after-action reports, which are done after most disasters and media accounts, have judged the response a failure, and the recovery phase is considered to show the same level of incompetence. Changes that had been made to Louisiana’s coastal landscape, particularly the loss of wetlands and increased channelization, made New Orleans and the Louisiana coast more vulnerable to hurricanes. Design and construction decisions on the levee system and inadequate maintenance of that system contributed to the impacts of Katrina.
The storm challenged the capacities and capabilities of emergency management operations at all levels of government. The lack of planning for the Superdome as the designated shelter of last resort for New Orleans and the subsequent problems that occurred in that facility provided the most visible demonstration of the failed capacities. Many of the problems of the immediate response exposed the impacts of priority focus on terrorism and homeland security in recent years and may have contributed to the decrease in these capacities and capabilities.
Elected officials at all levels of government stumbled badly as they tried to provide leadership in the face of this disaster. The business community, voluntary agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) stepped up to provide extraordinary services to storm victims. The general public, corporations, unions, and foundations donated billions of dollars for disaster relief.
Despite the understanding of the Gulf Coast’s particular vulnerability to hurricane devastation, officials braced for Katrina with full awareness of critical deficiencies in their plans and gaping holes in their resources. While Katrina’s destructive force could not be denied, state and local officials did not marshal enough of the resources at their disposal. In addition to these shortfalls, years of inadequate funding of federal, state, and local emergency functions left them incapable of fully carrying out their missions to protect the public and care for victims.
Additional Research
In the aftermath of Katrina, both houses of Congress held extensive hearings on what went wrong. The Senate report, “The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. 2006. Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared” provides insight into the results of the hearings and deliberations.
More than 1800 people died from Hurricane Katrina, and tens of thousands were displaced and suffered for days in places like the Superdome, on freeway ramps, and on the tops of roofs while waiting to be rescued. Thousands lost their homes and were separated from loved ones. The dislocation, chaos, and desperation that lingered for months after the storm were direct results of the failure of government at all levels to plan, prepare for, and respond aggressively to the storm. Failure can be assessed at all levels, but when President Bush signed the federal declaration of disaster and announced it before Katrina even made landfall, the federal government, through DHS/FEMA, assumed the primary responsibility for the stewardship of the response to this storm’s aftermath. And by any objective evaluation of the response, it was a colossal failure.
The Steps Leading to the Katrina Debacle
In many respects, FEMA’s failures after Katrina were a predictable outgrowth of steps that were taken in the aftermath of Sep. 11. FEMA lost its status as an independent agency—and its direct access to the president—when it was absorbed into the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The director of FEMA was no longer on the same level as the cabinet secretaries whom FEMA had to task and direct during disasters. At the state level, many states created their own offices of homeland security that subsumed emergency management or were competitive structures, further complicating emergency response organization.
FEMA personnel and funds, including money for preparedness and mitigation intended for state and local agencies, were redistributed to support other higher priorities within DHS. The result of these actions was that the agency was even further hollowed out. The federal response plan was restructured into the National Response Plan to accommodate the new DHS arrangements and the operational oversight role of the department’s secretary. A new level of bureaucracy was added with the creation of the principal federal officer (PFO) as the new coordinator in a disaster. Where previously the director of FEMA had maintained a clear line of authority and accountability, the existence of a new PFO created confusion over who would be in charge in a disaster. As a result, the necessary civilian and military assets were not deployed to facilitate the evacuations and provide supplies to the evacuation shelters before Katrina hit.
FEMA also failed to work with the governors on how to use the National Guard. Another factor in the post-Katrina fiasco was the dramatic post-9/11 change from a focus on “all-hazards” management—in which responders prepare for calamities according to plans that apply regardless of their precise nature—to a focus on terrorism that led to significantly weakened national capabilities. At all levels of government, approximately 75% of available resources for emergency management activities were applied to terrorism. Preparing, mitigating, or responding to natural disasters like floods, tornadoes, or hurricanes, was subordinated to a narrow, if understandable, focus on terrorism. That reprioritization depleted the capabilities to respond to disasters at all levels of government.
Post-Katrina Changes
In the rush to examine and investigate what went wrong and to take corrective actions, both the House of Representatives and the Senate engaged in extensive hearings and investigations. The White House dispatched Frances Townsend, assistant to the president for Homeland Security, to conduct a thorough review of what went wrong and to generate corrective recommendations.
Additional Research
The Bush administration’s report, “The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned” (http://bit.ly/29HqiFL) was released in Feb. 2006. It was a weighty document and included 125 recommendations and 11 critical actions that needed to be completed by Jun. 1, the start of the 2006 hurricane season. Most of its recommendations have still not been implemented, but it remains a unique assessment of the federal government’s role in disaster relief as far as the Bush administration was concerned.
These organizational and leadership issues were not easily swept under the rug. Senators Clinton and Mikulski introduced legislation to restore FEMA to its independent status and make the director’s position a cabinet post. This legislation went nowhere. Powerful forces on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security blocked these efforts, particularly Senator Joe Lieberman, who had been instrumental in the DHS’s creation and clearly did not want his creation tampered with. Lieberman was joined by Republican Committee Chair Susan Collins, who would not even consider moving FEMA out.
The 109th Congress, in response to hearings and reports, passed legislation that revised federal emergency management policies that vested more power in the president, reorganized FEMA, and enhanced and clarified the mission, functions, and authorities of both the agency and its parent organization, DHS.
Six statutes enacted by the 109th Congress are notable in that they contain changes that apply to future federal emergency management actions. These public laws include the following:
• The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006
• The Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2005, known as the SAFE Port Act
• The Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006
• The Federal Judiciary Emergency Special Sessions Act of 2005
• The Student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act
• The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007
Most of these statutes contain relatively few actual changes to federal authorities related to emergencies and disasters. The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (commonly known as PKEMRA), however, contains many changes that have long-term consequences for FEMA and other federal entities. That statute reorganizes FEMA, expands its statutory authority, and imposes new conditions and requirements on the operations of the agency. In addition to the public laws just listed, Congress enacted supplemental appropriations, one-time waivers of requirements, and temporary extensions solely associated with Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
Additional Research
The Congressional Research Service’s publication “Federal Emergency Management Policy Changes after Hurricane Katrina—A Summary of Statutory Provisions” is an excellent report that identifies the requirements and changes for FEMA, DHS, and federal emergency management policies and programs under PKEMRA.
In summary, PKEMRA requires that DHS reconsolidate all of the emergency management functions (including preparedness) into FEMA, elevates the status of FEMA within the department, protects the FEMA assets from reassignment within DHS, and gives FEMA enhanced organizational autonomy. In addition, the act provides for FEMA to maintain ten regional offices. It adds to FEMA a National Advisory Council, Regional Advisory Councils, a disability coordinator, a small state and rural advocate, and regional strike teams. They provide autonomy for the FEMA administrator (formerly director) to communicate directly with Congress.
After Mike Brown resigned (or was terminated), David Paulison became FEMA administrator. Paulison had served as US Fire Administrator and had a long and distinguished career in the fire service in Florida. His elevation to the top position was well received by the fire service constituencies, who had long felt that they had not received their due within FEMA and the emergency management community. Harve Johnson, a former admiral in the Coast Guard, was appointed deputy administrator.
The new leadership came with the firm mandate to prevent another Katrina. To do so, FEMA leadership took a very different approach to the emergency management partnership with both state and locals. FEMA instituted the “new FEMA”—a top-down approach in which federal requirements for response planning and operations were imposed on state and local emergency management operations as a condition of receiving federal resources.
The Integrated Planning System that was created included different planning parameters than those used by state and local emergency planners in their certifications. State and local compliance with the National Information Management System (NIMS) was made a condition for continued funding. The old system in which the federal government supplemented state and local efforts and worked in partnership was replaced by a system where in a major disaster the federal government took charge and supplanted state and local authorities. To support this change, FEMA was able to substantially increase its staff in both its headquarters and the regions, and many of the new senior managers who were hired came from organizations such as the Coast Guard and the military, where federal supremacy and authority were the normal operational parameters.
At the direction of DHS leadership, at the federal level, FEMA concentrated on remaking the National Response Plan into a National Response Framework (NRF) that blurred the lines of responsibility among the federal partners in responding to disasters. Under the new NRF, DHS/FEMA assumed many more responsibilities such as acting as the lead federal agency for Mass Care, an Emergency Support Function (ESF) previously led by the American Red Cross (ARC). On the other hand, DHS/FEMA used the PKEMRA requirements to deflect problem areas such as post-disaster housings.
PKEMRA called for a new strategy for disaster housing, and FEMA engaged other federal agencies, specifically the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in development of this strategy and taking on a major role in providing post-disaster housing. This change in responsibility was piloted during the Texas disasters of 2008 to mixed results. A more complete discussion of this follows in later chapters of the text. Although the new FEMA was never really tested, problems persisted. Major portions of the Katrina recovery continued to languish, especially in New Orleans; the morale in FEMA was at an all-time low; and a federal, state, and local partnership on emergency management still did not exist.
Critical Thinking
What do you think could have been done in the years preceding Hurricane Katrina to better prepare the states to deal with this kind of event? Do you think that this event was so large that only a federal response could have managed it? Explain your answer.
