Staffing Shortages Loom Large . . . in Woeful Response to Katrina

[MountainLaurel]

A slightly different perspective from a DC columnist on federal personnel issues.

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the Department of Homeland Security in a number of ways, but one of the biggest involved staffing. When the monster storm hit, the department was short-handed.

That's one of the key findings in a report released yesterday by the House committee that investigated preparations for and the response to Katrina, which hit New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The report by the committee, chaired by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), portrays the government as unable to learn from experience or unable to act on what it had learned.

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In Mississippi, Bill Carwile , the federal coordinating official, described the personnel shortfall as "perhaps his most difficult challenge," the report says. He deployed supervisors to the state's coastal counties but did not have enough people for the cities of Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula. FEMA turned to the Forest Service and city firefighters from across the nation "to staff FEMA positions in the state," the report says.

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FEMA also had other staffing problems. Since 2002, FEMA has lost a substantial number of its top disaster specialists, senior leaders and other experienced hands in a "brain drain," the House report says. "Many emergency management professionals had predicted this 'drain' would have a negative impact on the federal government's ability to manage disasters of all types," the report says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502546.html