Blowing Katrina

The governmental response to Katrina, while not as prominent in the news as as importance would indicate (we're talking about the loss of a major US city and port here), has been shown to be even worse than thought in the past few days. First the New York Times reported that, contrary to White House accounts, they knew about the irreparable damage to the levees in New Orleans on the same day that the hurricane struck:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.

This puts to rest all the revisionist history that DHS thought they had "dodged the bullet" and weren't able to redouble their efforts until Tuesday. Unlike Iraq, they had the intelligence on the ground. Like Iraq, they managed to bungle it. The "dodged the bullet" meme was always a cover for the slow and disorganized repsonse.

The House Committee report on Katrina was just as unsparing:

Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government's failure to learn the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as leaders from President Bush down disregarded ample warnings of the threat to New Orleans and did not execute emergency plans or share information that would have saved lives, according to a blistering report by House investigators.

A draft of the report, to be released publicly Wednesday, includes 90 findings of failures at all levels of government, according to a senior investigation staffer who requested anonymity because the document is not final. Titled "A Failure of Initiative," it is one of three separate reviews by the House, Senate and White House that will in coming weeks dissect the response to the nation's costliest natural disaster.

Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, who somehow still has his job, gets the greatest amount of scrutiny in the report:

The 600-plus-page report lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Operations Center and the White House Homeland Security Council, according to a 60-page summary of the document obtained by The Washington Post. Regarding Bush, the report found that "earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response" because he alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance.

The report portrays Chertoff, who took the helm of the department six months before the storm, as detached from events. It contends he switched on the government's emergency response systems "late, ineffectively or not at all," delaying the flow of federal troops and materiel by as much as three days.

Indeed, on the Tuesday following the storm, Chertoff went to Atlanta for a briefing on the avian flu. Chertoff's defense was of the "blame the Brownie" variety:

Chertoff spokesman Russ Knocke said, "every ounce of authority" and "100 percent of everything that could be pre-staged was pre-staged" by the federal government before landfall once the president signed emergency disaster declarations on Aug. 27. Brown had "all authority" to make decisions and requests, and his "willful insubordination . . . was a significant problem" for Chertoff, Knocke said.

That's a bunch of garbage. Brown was Chertoff's employee. If an employee isn't cutting it, if he's practicing willful insubordination, and human lives are at stake, you fire the guy and take over. The cool reserve with which Chertoff spent the days after Katrina was damning. Tim Russert asked if he was contemplating resignation immediately. Why hasn't this drumbeat continued?

And remember, these are the findings of a Republican-only investigation that most Democrats boycotted. If this is what came out on partisan grounds, can you imagine what an independent commission would find?

I urge you to read the whole article. Blanco and Nagin are not spared criticism at the state and local levels, but the brunt of the critique goes to the feds. They were the ones with the National Repsonse Plan, they were the ones who could order the hurricane "an incident of national significance," they were the ones in the position to marshal a variety of resources to the cause. They didn't.