What happens when a right-wing “policy” think tank’s recommendations for a governmental emergency-management agency are followed without careful consideration of those 10 critical infrastructures the think tank sees as “not truly vital to the federal government’s functioning”? Below we list the 10, for each of which we consulted ePluribus Media’s Timelines project to find specific examples of the consequences of FEMA’s ignoring or downplaying that particular piece of the infrastructure during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The text following each link is quoted directly from the Timelines.
Chemicals
Oil spills after Katrina rival Exxon Valdez
(Sept. 16, 2005) Hurricane Katrina is rapidly becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history, with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes.
Bucket Brigade warns of toxins in St. Bernard
(Oct. 26, 2005) A Louisiana environmental group said Tuesday that the cake-like muck that Hurricane Katrina dumped in much of St. Bernard Parish is loaded with toxic substances in amounts exceeding federal and state recommended levels, and the group contends that federal and parish officials are not giving returning residents enough warning about potential health risks.
Continuity of Government
Katrina Recovery Officials Unsure What’s Been Spent
(Nov. 03, 2005) Officials responsible for doling out billions in Hurricane Katrina relief contracts told lawmakers yesterday that they still don’t have answers to central questions about why certain recovery efforts have stalled, whether money is being wasted and what’s keeping Gulf Coast firms from getting a bigger share of the work.
Gulf Firms Losing Cleanup Contracts
(Oct. 04, 2005) Companies outside the three states most affected by Hurricane Katrina have received more than 90 percent of the money from prime federal contracts for recovery and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, according to an analysis of available government data. The analysis by The Washington Post takes into account only the first wave of federal contracts, those that had been entered in detail into government databases as of yesterday. Together they are valued at more than $2 billion. Congress has allocated more than $60 billion for the recovery effort, and the ultimate total is expected to rise far higher. But already the trend toward out-of-state firms is clear, despite pledges by administration officials that federal funds for Katrina relief will become an engine of local economic redevelopment. Among the contracts analyzed, 3.8 percent of the money went to companies that listed an Alabama address, 2.8 percent to firms in Louisiana and just 1.8 percent went for Mississippi contractors. Taken together, that amounts to less than $200 million.
Law Enforcement
They Knew What to Expect
(Sept. 02, 2005) Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared. … In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State University, “It’s inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were.” He said a slow decline over several years in funding for emergency management was partly to blame. … Craig Marks who runs … an emergency management training company in North Carolina, said the authorities had mishandled the evacuation, neglecting to help those without transportation to leave the city. … Ernest Sternberg, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, said law enforcement agencies were often more eager to invest in high tech “toys” than basic communications. … Several experts also believe the decision to make FEMA a part of the Department of Homeland Security, created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was a major mistake. … “Under DHS, it was downgraded, buried in a couple of layers of bureaucracy, and terrorism prevention got all the attention and most of the funds….”
First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local Authorities
(Aug. 29, 2005) Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), today urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. “The response to Hurricane Katrina must be well coordinated between federal, state and local officials to most effectively protect life and property,” Brown said. “We appreciate the willingness and generosity of our Nation’s first responders to deploy during disasters. But such efforts must be coordinated so that fire-rescue efforts are the most effective possible.”
The Katrina Crawl
(Aug. 29, 2005) As traffic flooded east on Interstate 10 out of Mississippi and Louisiana on Sunday, it hit a familiar blockage in the major evacuation artery: the Wallace Tunnel under the Mobile River. ... Collier [spokesman for the Alabama Department of Public Safety] said that no plan existed to alleviate some of the traffic snarl by converting the westbound lanes of I-10 to be used for eastbound traffic. “That would have to come through the governor’s office,” Collier said.
Fire Services
Guardsmen ‘played cards’ amid New Orleans chaos: police official
(Sept. 03, 2005) A top New Orleans police officer said that National Guard troops sat around playing cards while people died in the stricken city after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled. His remarks fuelled controversy over the government’s handling of events during five days when New Orleans succumbed to lawlessness after Katrina swamped the city’s flood defenses. … Riley said that for the first three days after Monday’s storm … the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people. “We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance,” he told AFP in an interview. … “The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep. For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards.”
Forest Service offers planes to help fight fires
(Sept. 02, 2005) The Forest Service has offered fixed plane aircraft used to fight forest fires to help extinguish blazes in New Orleans, according to two congressional sources. But the sources said the planes, which can pour large amounts of water on fires, remained grounded in Missouri Friday because the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t authorized their use. The department is overseeing federal hurricane relief and rescue operations. “We’ve been asking them to request that the planes be used, but nothing has happened,” said one of the two congressional sources, both of whom asked to remain anonymous. The planes were offered by the Forest Service because of news reports that firefighters in New Orleans lacked adequate water pressure to fight a number of fires in the city. There was no immediate comment from the Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department, or the Department of Homeland Security.
Food Services
Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food
(Sept. 03, 2005) The Red Cross, Salvation Army and Southern Baptists report difficulties delivering aid: “As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.” … “The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross. “Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.” Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.
Broussard — FEMA prevented aid
(Sept. 04, 2005) Aaron Broussard, Jefferson Parish President — “Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA — we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, ‘Come get the fuel right away.’ When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. ‘FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.’ Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, ‘No one is getting near these lines.’ Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America — American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.”
Health Services
Charity evacuation begins
(Sept. 01, 2005) State and federal authorities on Thursday morning began evacuating about 350 patients from Charity and University hospitals in New Orleans who have been stuck for days in facilities lacking water and working plumbing and where severe shortages of fuel and medicine have put strains on their ability to provide basic care. … [T]he evacuation came nearly 2 1/2 days after hospital administrators first asked for an evacuation in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning when levee breaches sent floodwaters coursing through the city. … Smithburg said he did not know why it took so long to start the evacuations, and why a doctor working under primitive conditions was able to achieve the kind of rapid response that LSU administrators working from the Office of Emergency Preparedness in Baton Rouge were not.
New Orleans health care system destroyed
(Sept. 20, 2005) “Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone — it no longer exists,” said Cappiello... Although the city has more than a dozen hospitals, none have resumed normal operations. Officials at Children’s Hospital, which Mayor Ray Nagin had hoped would be ready when residents are allowed to return to the Uptown neighborhood this week, said they may need 10 more days to prepare. ... Many local doctors and nurses are without paychecks, he said: “There’s a nationwide shortage of nurses. People will try to recruit them and many may never come back.”
New Orleans Health Care Another Katrina Casualty
(Nov. 25, 2005) Providing medical care is one of the most daunting challenges for New Orleans as it rebuilds, and the choices made now will determine whether one of the nation’s poorest cities can adequately care for its legions of uninsured. Katrina damaged more than a dozen hospitals and uprooted thousands of private physicians. Now, nearly three months later, health care remains scarce. The last military medical unit in the city is gone, leaving only Touro and Children’s hospitals partially reopened. At the emergency room at Oschner Clinic Foundation in neighboring Jefferson Parish, visits are up 35 percent over this time a year ago, the number of uninsured patients has tripled and some wait as long as 10 hours for care, emergency chief Joseph Guarisco said. But for most of the 25,000 clean-up workers — many of them uninsured — and an estimated 75,000 residents, health care is delivered in military tents that recently moved from a parking lot to the concrete floor of the convention center.
Higher Education
Katrina floods wipe out years of research
(Sept. 14, 2005) Important work on heart disease, cancer, AIDS and a host of other ailments may be lost forever to scientists at Tulane and Louisiana State universities’ medical schools in New Orleans. LSU lost all of its 8,000 lab animals, including mice, rats, dogs and monkeys. ... About 300 federally funded projects at New Orleans colleges and universities worth more than $150 million — including 153 projects at Tulane — were affected in some way, according to an initial survey by the National Institutes of Health. One of the biggest blows is the likely destruction of frozen urine and blood samples from thousands of patients enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study, the world’s longest-running racial study of risk factors for heart disease. Samples collected and frozen since 1973 thawed out when the hurricane knocked out electricity and backup generators failed at a Tulane lab in New Orleans.
Only 4 Katrina evacuees in Alabama dorm housing built for 1,200
(Oct. 14, 2005) More than 2,000 volunteers showed up days after Hurricane Katrina to spruce up for hundreds of evacuees who were expected to stay in vacant barracks at the Army’s old Fort McClellan. The work wasn’t for nothing, but it was close: As of Friday, only four storm victims were staying in the barracks, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency renovated to provide space for 1,200 people. ... It’s not clear what will happen if storm victims don’t need the barracks, which officials had considered for use as a research park or college dormitory before Katrina.
Insurance
FEMA’s flood money has dried up
(Nov. 17, 2005) The Federal Emergency Management Agency has no more money to pay flood insurance claims and has advised the nation’s 96 companies that underwrite flood insurance to suspend payments, a spokesman for the agency said Thursday. Butch Kinerney, the FEMA spokesman for the flood insurance program, said Hurricane Katrina claims have totaled $23 billion — and FEMA has already borrowed its limit of $3.5 billion. Kinerney said the agency notified Congress in September, October and November of the problem and is waiting for Congressional approval to borrow more money. The House took up the matter Wednesday night, voting to extend FEMA’s borrowing authority to $8.5 billion. An initial attempt to up the limit to nearly $22 billion was changed during the debate. The Senate will take up the bill Thursday. Kinerney said all claims will be paid, insisting that claims would be delayed by three or four days at most.
Water
Doctors fear dysentery in Mississippi shelter
(Sept. 03, 2005) Officials closed a shelter in Biloxi, Miss., on Saturday because doctors think more than 20 ill people there may be sick with dysentery from tainted water. An additional 20 people in Biloxi, not staying in the shelter, were treated for vomiting and diarrhea. The shelter, at a Biloxi school, has had no water or power since Katrina hit on Monday. About 400 people had been staying there, and doctors said some may have ignored warnings to stay away from water. … Most of the patients were treated with antibiotics. About 30 were taken to a hospital in Mobile, Ala., while the rest were bused to a shelter in Thomasville, Ga.
This Is Not Just a Natural Disaster; This Is a Failure to Prepare
(Sept. 07, 2005) The people of the Gulf Coast region were struck by two disasters — first the Hurricane, and then the failure of the federal government in their time of great need. This is not just a natural disaster; this is a failure of lack of preparedness. It’s a natural disaster, but man-made mistakes have made matters much worse, having lost many more lives. Instead of unconscionably blaming others, President Bush must take charge and take responsibility, and must get it right, and that is my concern and the message that I will bring to the President: ‘Mr. President, you should have taken charge and you should have taken responsibility.’ After 9/11, Congress stood united to make homeland security a top priority. Yet in the four years since, our Republican Congress has given natural disaster preparedness secondary status in the federal budget, undermined the effectiveness of FEMA, and cut funding for the Army Corps flood control projects in and around New Orleans.
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Research and writing: Wanderindiana, Luaptifer, HeyThereItsEric and Kfred.
Contributors: BarbaraS, Kfred, SawcieLackey, Sue in KY, Susie Dow, Cho, JeninRI, Standingup, Beverly in NH, XicanoPwr
Photographs: © 2005 by, and used with the permission of, Sheldon Morton / World Eye Press