The federal response to Katrina is a disaster in its own right

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.

Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 13, 2005

So, disastrous - or outright criminal - actions or inactions on the part of the low-level operatives in charge notwithstanding, we have a confirmation of a catastrophic, no less than 36 hour long, inaction on the part of the man specifically appointed to head the DHS - the department whose mission includes, among other things, the task to "prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation".

The discussions currently abound as to whether the disastrous response to Katrina was a result of a conspiracy or of general incompetence. To an extent the difference here is not all that significant when stacked against the following realization: our government is not just inefficient in some details, it is criminally negligent on a grand scale as it spends days even initiating response to events to which a response is needed immediately and preparations to respond must begin even beforehand.

But we must look beyond Brown's, or Chertoff's, or Bush's politicking or incompetence - we must look at the executive branch as a whole. I would urge anyone interested in properly assessing the situation to consider just the few of a myriad of facts associated with the events of the last few weeks. Consider, for instance, the fact that a blogger - one of the many, of course - had a pretty good idea of the scale of the disaster in New Orleans a day before the administration saw it fit to designate it an "Incident of National Significance". Or consider the ex-FEMA chief Brown who as late as September 1 claimed to have just learned about the Convention Center in New Orleans being used as an emergency shelter - the piece of information, needless to say, pretty much everyone reading the blogosphere as well as the major media would have been aware of long before then. Or consider the fact that on so many occasions loosely organized groups of volunteers, or even individuals acting alone, sometimes against the directions of the federal authorities - specifically FEMA - managed to do more good than the said authorities.

Do you consider that acceptable? I certainly do not. And I do not plan to allow the everyday routine to make me forget and stop asking the questions of those officials who are in our service and whose work is paid for with our tax dollars. I am not going to relent and just let go of it, just write this off as yet another inevitable failure. And if you ask me - neither should you.

tags: fema  nola  incompetence  dhs  coverup  chertoff  katrina