Raw Story, from WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response

[highplainsdem]

Separately, internal documents and emails from FEMA and other government agencies dating back to Aug. 31 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the extent to which the federal government bungled its response to the hurricane. The documents highlight serious deficiencies in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, a post-Sept. 11 playbook on how to deal with catastrophic events. Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an "Incident of National Significance."

In one instance, federal environmental health specialists, who were charged with protecting both rescue workers and evacuees, weren't called in by the Department of Homeland Security until Sunday -- 12 days after the Occupational Safety & Health Administration announced it had teams from various agencies standing by ready to assist. Even now, with mounting evidence of environmental problems, the deployment is being held up by continuing interagency wrangling, according to officials at the National Institutes of Health, which also is involved in the effort.

In addition, FEMA's official requests, known as tasking assignments and used by the agency to demand help from other government agencies, show that it first asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18 hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do ambulances."

FEMA ended up modifying the number of buses it thought it needed to get the job done, until it settled on a final request of 1,355 buses at 8:05 p.m. on Sept. 3. The buses, though, trickled into New Orleans, with only a dozen or so arriving on the first day.



The Raw Story article, with excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, is at

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Paper_Internal_documents_show_government_bungled_Katrina_re_0913.html

with a link to the WSJ story, for WSJ subscribers.

[Land Shark]

1. kick for source documents n/t

[fishwax]

7. I'd like to see the source documents too

[On the Road]

2. 1,355 Buses Were Needed?

OK, so if the feds could get only 12 buses into New Orleans in the first 24 hours, how can people expect expect the mayor to get OVER ONE HUNDRED TIMES as many for a forced evacuation AND drive them many hours out of the path of the hurricane? All in the same period of time?

[Arugula Latte]

3. Now is not the time to play the Blame Game, unless you can pin it

on "state and local officials" with a D beside their name! :eyes:

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. DOT doesn't do ambulances

so they canceled them? Excuse me. Then FEMA should have figured out before the disaster who did.

More proof they had no plan to evacuate critically ill people before or after the disaster. What a comfort, not.

[WiseButAngrySara]

5. Kick and recommended.........n/t

[MissMarple]

6. A failed plan, a failing administration.

They thought they could reinvent the wheel. And all they had was a half built travois and no horse.

[question everything]

8. Recommended. Also

the end of the WSJ report:

Some Homeland Security officials are already starting to acknowledge significant weaknesses in the national response plan, which was completely disregarded at times during the crisis.

"We at the department are not well prepared, and unfortunately, recent history has shown that that's the case," Lee Holcomb, the department chief technology officer told a breakfast meeting of Information Technology executives on Wednesday in Washington.

[spuddonna]

9. Thank you to the FEMA people who leaked the docs! :)

I wish we had the full story from the WSJ... :(

[CabalPowered]

10. I just read the WSJ over lunch

I wonder how they got the emails.. One of the emails indicates that all mails to fema were being bounced b/c their servers were down. It also said that they requested 500 some ambulances and then realized days later that DOT doesn't do ambulances.. :eyes: