This is a relatively short excerpt from an highly comprehensive and lengthy (31-page) updated report by Walter Brasch, Ph.D.
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Walter Brasch Ph.D.
Social Issues Journalist
http://www.walterbrasch.com/{EDITOR’S NOTE: We recommend that our readers print out this incisive special report and read it in print. The author is an award-winning syndicated columnist, professor of journalism, and a former emergency management official. This article is an in-depth look at the Bush policies that created the atmosphere not only for an ineffective FEMA response during the Katrina catastrophe, but which may have contributed to additional property destruction and deaths than should have occurred.}SPECIAL REPORT:
‘Unacceptable’:
The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina by Walter M. Brasch
(excerpt)
The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service issued a warning that if Katrina was at least a Category 4 hurricane when it hit land:
Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer. All gabled roofs will fail. The majority of industrial buildings will become non-functional. All wood-framed low-rising apartment buildings will be destroyed. All windows will blow out. Power outages will last for weeks. Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards. The vast majority of native trees will be snapped or uprooted. Few crops will remain.
Shortly before hitting land about 6 a.m., Monday morning, Katrina, a catastrophic hurricane bearing winds of 140 miles per hour and now labeled a Category 4 storm, veered slightly north. At first, it seemed as if New Orleans, which experienced heavy winds and rain, might have been spared from Katrina’s full fury. But the water from Lake Pontchartrain began spilling over the levees. By sunrise, Tuesday, the 17th Street Canal levee was breached; as others cracked, about 90 percent of the city lay beneath water as deep as 20 feet.
<snip>
Not even George W. Bush, who believes he is the most macho of all gunslingers, could have stood at the mouth of the Mississippi River and held back the winds and floods. But, his policies during four and a half years as president led to destruction of people and property that were greater than should have been.
FAILURE TO APPRECIATE SCIENCEBurning fossil fuels (coal and oil) is a major cause of global warming, which leads to the melting of polar ice caps, a rise in the sea levels, and warmer oceans. “It is increasingly clear that global warming makes {hurricanes} more severe and destructive,” Joseph Romm, a former official in the Clinton Administration’s Energy Department and well-regarded as one of the nation’s leading experts on energy, told Business Week. The intensity and rainfall from tropical storms and hurricanes “are probably increasing,” said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
But, George W. Bush, first as governor of Texas and then as president, had innumerable times discounted the existence of global warming, probably because he and his vice-president have deep ties into the oil industry. He rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; he left the United States almost alone among the world’s nations in not accepting the Kyota Protocol that called for a reduction of greenhouse gases.
<snip>
DESTRUCTION OF THE WETLANDSDuring the 1970s, the Nixon Administration created The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Drinking Water Act. The effect of the laws was to protect the environment, including the wetlands, the areas beside streams, rivers, and lakes that absorb flood waters. When developers begin replacing wetlands with concrete and asphalt, the floodwaters have no place to go but further onto city streets. The Clinton Administration used federal funds to buy land in the flood plains and increased wetland protection, slowing commercial development. However, in January 2003, the Bush Administration eviscerated the Clinton-ordered flood plains protection. The new policy allowed development of about 20 million acres of wetlands.
<snip>
Daniel Rosenberg, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, was blunt about Bush’s plan to reduce the wetlands—“There’s no way to describe how mindless a policy that is.” In response, James L. Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, dismissed the scientific report that Rosenberg helped author with a dismissive, “Everybody loves what we’re doing.”
<snip>
DIVERSION OF FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE<snip>
Fixated upon terrorism, the Bush Administration has neglected natural disasters which pose a greater threat to the people, and have been responsible for significantly more injuries, deaths, and property damage than all terrorist attacks, both past and projected. The improvements to the levee system couldn’t be completed by the Corps because funds for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project were diverted to support the war in Iraq, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
<snip>
DIVERSION OF MILITARY ASSISTANCE<snip>
A report from the Government Accounting Office in April 2004 sharply defined the problem of the country relying so heavily upon National Guard forces in Iraq:
...{There are} urgent personnel and equipment shortages in units that have not yet been deployed. . . . {E}quipment and personnel may not be available to the states when they are needed because they have been deployed overseas. Moreover, the Guard may have difficulty ensuring that each state has access to units with key specialized capabilities—such as engineering or medical assets—needed for homeland security and other domestic missions. . . . {U}nless DOD, Congress, and the states work closely to address these challenges, Guard units may continue to experience a high pace of operations and declining readiness that could affect their ability to meet future requirements both at home and overseas.
<snip>
A REPOSITORY FOR POLITICAL PAYBACKS<snip>
President Bill Clinton changed FEMA’s focus and image, appointing staff with strong experience in disaster operations, and then elevated the agency to cabinet-level status. During the eight-year Clinton Administration, FEMA re-established strong working relationships with local and state agencies, and businesses.
President George W. Bush’s opinion of FEMA was evident the month he was inaugurated when he appointed Joseph Allbaugh to head the agency. Allbaugh, who had been Bush’s chief of staff when he was governor and then ran the 2000 political campaign, had no disaster experience. He brought onto his staff Michael D. Brown to be chief counsel; Brown was soon promoted to deputy director. Brown—who also had no experience in emergency management—did have two primary qualifications: he was Allbaugh’s close friend and a fellow campaign worker who was active in Florida during the disputed 2000 recount. Before being named to FEMA, Brown had spent 11 years as commissioner for judges and stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association. Allbaugh left FEMA after two years to become a lobbyist, often for companies interested in contracts in Iraq. To fill Allbaugh’s position, Bush appointed Brown to be FEMA director. Shortly after Katrina hit, David Goldstein, editor of the political website, HorsesAss.org, with some of the information provided by one of his readers, broke the story about Brown’s previous work with the IAHA, his forced resignation, and his inexperience with natural disasters. The story was picked up by The Daily Kos, a larger website, and then published, often without credit, by the establishment newspapers. As the Katrina disaster continued, other information about Brown’s lack of experience was brought out. TIME Magazine, with confirmation by sources who had worked with Brown before he came to FEMA, reported that Brown’s official biography was padded, and that several items were outright lies.
<snip>
Within the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA lost its missions for planning and preparation. Some of that responsibility went to other parts of the Department of Homeland Security; much went to private industry, in keeping with Bush’s political philosophy. FEMA also lost about 500 staff and one of its three Emergency Management Teams, which take control of a major disaster.
<snip>
In March 2004, one year after FEMA was moved into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security, James Lee Witt, President Clinton’s FEMA director, testified before a joint meeting of two subcommittees of the House Committee on Government Reform:
I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, “it is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.”
<snip>
DERELECTION OF DUTY AND THE RETURN OF THE WATCHDOGIn March 2001, a FEMA analysis had warned there were three likely—not possible, but likely—scenarios, each of which would cripple the country. One would be an earthquake in San Francisco, similar or more damaging than the one in 1906. The second would be a terrorist attack upon New York City. The third would be a catastrophic hurricane and flood in the New Orleans area. Unfortunately, FEMA was right twice. Several computer projections and analyses by private and governmental agencies detailed the problem that would devastate New Orleans should a hurricane with category 4 or 5 force hit the city. Their studies were marginalized by the Bush Administration, just as it had once disregarded the terrorist threat. The federal government apparently also hadn’t learned much since Ivan, a category 4/5 hurricane, threatened New Orleans a year earlier, before hitting Alabama and Florida, killing 25 persons and causing more than $13 billion damage.
<snip>
Five hours after Katrina came ashore, Michael Brown finally asked Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, for authorization for 1,000 FEMA staff, active and reserves, to go into the flood areas—and then suggested they be given two days to respond. FEMA said the two day delay was to train the employees, a ludicrous claim that showed either the agency was lying to cover up the failure of an immediate response or that its disaster workers weren’t well trained and incapable of doing disaster work on a first responder basis. While it appeared that FEMA had finally responded, the lack of a full response was still buried within the Department of Homeland Security. Chertoff didn’t designate Katrina to be an “incidence of national significance,” which would have triggered significant federal assistance, until 36 hours after Katrina came onto land. Even with that designation, there were problems that prevented a full response.
<snip>
In addition to previous studies, the National Weather Service was aggressively trying to make officials aware of the probable impact from Katrina. “We were briefing them way before landfall,” Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune. Mayfield said he told both the FEMA director and Homeland Security secretary “It’s not like this was a surprise. We had advisories that the levee could be topped,” said Mayfield. The National Hurricane Center had also briefed FEMA at both its Washington headquarters as well as its Dallas and Atlanta regional headquarters, said Mayfield. The briefings, beginning days before Katrina hit land, according to the Times-Picayune, included “information on expected wind speed, storm upsurge, {and} rainfall.” Mayfield also briefed Bush, by video conference phone, the day before Katrina hit, according to the St. Petersburg Times. The President also had access to dozens of advisories from the National Weather Service, which detailed what destruction was likely.
<snip>
Emboldened by a nation that had begun questioning Bush’s policies, the media began to rise to the level the Founding Fathers demanded. With the federal government slow to react, the media moved into the Gulf Coast and began giving the nation unparalleled coverage of the disaster, free from manipulation, not forced to accept the role of being “embeds.” On the cable news channels, on TV network news, and on the radio, the people were getting almost unfiltered live coverage of Katrina’s destruction of property and lives, of hundreds of thousands of people helping each other, sacrificing for each other, of slivers of hope, of desperate people sometimes being forced to do desperate things, and of criminals who remained in the city to prey upon the victims and to shoot at rescue helicopters, the police, and the soldiers patrolling the streets. In their newspapers and news magazines, for one of the few times during the past four years, the people were getting far greater in-depth coverage about issues that mattered to them than earlier in the year when the trial of Michael Jackson, the divorce of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston, and the marriage of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner seemed to dominate the headlines. It didn’t take long for the nation and the media to realize that the federal government was displaying not courage in the face of disaster, but ineptness.
Hour after hour, the television networks showed the problems in metropolitan New Orleans, and one reality became clear—most of those who were unable to evacuate the city were mostly poor and Black; they had no way to leave, nor could they abandon their uninsured homes and possessions. They were left to the chaos and disorder caused by a failure of the government to act. But there was a story of race and class that the TV and newspaper reporters avoided. Several journalists from the alternative press had noticed and reported the problem. In Slate, Jack Shaffer explained:
This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact. . . .
I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm. . . .
What accounts for the broadcasters' timidity? I saw only a couple of black faces anchoring or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces reporting from New Orleans. So, it's safe to assume that the reluctance to talk about race on the air was a mostly white thing. That would tend to imply that white people don't enjoy discussing the subject. But they do, as long as they get to call another white person racist.
<snip>
POLITICIZING DISASTER RELIEF—PART II<snip>
To counter the growing criticism, the Bush administration found a clever way they thought might defuse some of the attacks; they went on the offensive. Senior officials now began chanting variations of, “We need to focus on the future and not dwell upon the past.” It was a call picked up by talk-show hosts and bloggers throughout the country. Several Bush Administration senior officials also told the nation that rescue and recovery would be hindered by the people playing the “blame game” and pointing fingers, a not-so-subtle variation of the Bush Administration and its followers claiming that persons who protested the war in Iraq weren’t patriotic and put the troops in harm’s way. Within a week, Google recorded more than 500,000 instances of “blame game.”
However, by the end of the first week, federal officials, who urged Americans not to point fingers and play that “blame game,” were now pointing fingers and blaming local and state officials for the problem for not acting sooner or requesting more assistance.
<snip>
Michael Chertoff told the media in Washington, D.C., that FEMA’s response was slow because “our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.” He was wrong. The National Response Plan allows the Department of Defense to provide immediate assistance, even if not requested by local authorities. It also directs FEMA to “prepare for, respond to, and recover {whenever} an incident or potential incident is of such severity, magnitude, and/or complexity that it is considered an Incident of National Significance.” The person with the full authority to issue that declaration and then to order a federal response, without waiting for local or state officials to request its assistance is the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. According to a probe by the Knight Ridder newspapers, Chertoff didn’t delegate Michael Brown to be the primary federal officer until 36 hours had passed after Katrina hit America’s coast. That Aug. 30 memo, according to Knight Ridder, suggests that Chertoff, by not taking immediate action, “may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.” Chertoff “does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with—nor does anyone who waits that long,” Gen. Julius Becton Jr., FEMA director under President Ronald Reagan in 1985–1989, told Knight Ridder.
<snip>
Almost everything related to the Bush Administration response to the disaster could be summarized by an extract from a memo Michael Brown wrote to his staff. According to the internal memo, uncovered by the Associated Press, Brown wanted his staff to “convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizers, and the general public.”
Some of that “positive image” was to keep photographers away from the disaster. Several journalists reported that Army and National Guard soldiers prevented them from taking photos or shooting video; a few reported that camcorders were confiscated; one soldier, said NBC-TV news anchor Brian Williams, pointed a rifle at him. After CNN went in the U.S. District Court to cite the First Amendment violation, FEMA removed its restrictions. But, the harassment of the media continued.
<snip>
Almost everything about the President’s visits to the devastation was carefully orchestrated for the mass media and the public. Christine Adelhardt, of Germany’s ARD television network, reported on the President’s first visit to the disaster area:
Here, just two minutes ago, the President drove by with his convoy. But what happened here throughout the day in Biloxi is really unbelievable. Suddenly salvage groups appeared here, suddenly clearing vehicles were here. Those had not be seen here all the days before and this in area where it really would not be greatly necessary to clean up {now} because nobody is living here {now}, far and wide, anymore. The people are further inside the city. {Translated by Bernhard Horstmann of Hamburg, Germany}
ZDF, also an independent German television network, confirmed that staged manipulation of public opinion:
{S}uddenly {a} help crew showed up, people who cleaned out the rubble, that searched the houses for dead bodies. And this exclusively along the route of the president. the president left Biloxi and with him all the help crews.
ZDF further reported that a food distribution center that Bush visited was set up before he arrived, and then closed after he and the TV cameras left.
On Bush’s return visit three days later, in the background of a hangar where he spoke were Coast Guard helicopters; they had been grounded from rescue, officially to protect the air space of the President, but in reality to provide a backdrop for TV cameras. Also not available for the victims while the President was mugging for the cameras were three tons of food, secured by Louisiana officials, which could not be airlifted to the victims because the helicopters to deliver that food were also grounded.
Crews were pulled off certain construction projects and sent into areas where the President and the hordes of media were. “Progress is flowing,” said President Bush. Nonsense, said Sen. Mary Landrieu:
Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.
It wasn’t an isolated instance.
Furious at the politicization of the disaster, she told ABC-TV, “Our infrastructure is devastated, lives have been shattered,” and rhetorically asked, “Would the President please stop taking photo-ops?”
<snip>
As Katrina proved, the federal government, with innumerable problems fighting a war in Iraq, under the failure of leadership of its commander-in-chief, was caught completely unable to fight a two-front war. Because of the policies enacted by George W. Bush, Americans had every reason to believe that two disasters hit New Orleans—Katrina and the federal response.
{Assisting on this column was Rosemary R. Brasch. The Brasches’ article, “An Ill Wind and American Policy” (September 2003) first outlined problems likely to face the nation during natural disasters if there was a continual flow of National Guard forces to Iraq. In that article, which also looked at FEMA, the Brasches stated, “Our nation’s disaster preparedness doesn’t meet the needs that any sizeable disaster might bring.” Dr. Brasch’s latest book is America’s Unpatriotic Acts; The federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights. You may contact Dr. Brasch through his website, www.walterbrasch.com}
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