Writing Assignments Evaluation Criteria Student will demonstrate topical awareness and evaluation methodologies Unsatisfactory 1-9 Points Paper demonstrates lack of awareness of and inability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security. Students will be able to frame a Did not develop a research question. No identification of research key concepts, synonyms, or question. related terms that describe the information needed. Students will understand ethical and legal issues affecting the use of information. No understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses no knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Does not use APA style for citing and referencing sources. Marginal 9.25 Points Satisfactory 10 Points Good 11-12 Points Exemplary 12.5 Points Paper demonstrates limited awareness of and/or limited ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security issues. Paper demonstrates developing awareness of and emerging ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security topics. Project demonstrates a high level of awareness of and an average level of ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security issues. Paper demonstrates a high level of awareness of and a high level of ability to critically evaluate contemporary Homeland Security issues. Develops a vague research question or thesis statement. Identifies few key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a general research question or thesis statement. Identifies obvious key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a clear research question or thesis statement. Identifies key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a focused research question or thesis statement. Thoroughly identifies relevant key concepts, synonyms, and related terms that describe the information needed. Incomplete understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses little knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Minimal use of APA style for citing and referencing sources with many errors. Basic understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with some errors. Clear understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Observes copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with few errors. Thorough understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Consistently observes copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Consistently uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with no errors. Paper formatting indicates competence with word processing applications. Some errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Use of spell and grammar check, some errors found. Paper formatting indicates proficiency with word processing applications. Few errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Obvious use of spell and grammar check, few errors found. Paper formatting indicates expertise with word processing applications. No errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and spacing. Obvious use of spell and grammar check, no errors found. Organization No transition between Some transition with poor paragraphs, ideas not in paragraph structure and logical order. No structure to some evidence of planning paragraphs. Transition between most paragraphs with limited paragraph structure. Sequence is not logical. Smooth transition between paragraph with adequate structure and sequencing of ideas. Well developed paragraphs. Sequencing enhances ideas and meaning. Ideas focused on central theme. Development Does not follow the theme; contains muddled, unclear ideas. Few ideas address central theme. Ideas ramble and are difficult to identify. Ideas are clear. Some ideas address the central theme. Central theme is linked to the topic. Central theme is matched Ideas focus on the central to the topic, most ideas theme. All ideas are clearly explore the central presented and unified. theme, clear and unified. Conventions Multiple errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation -general structure 4-5 errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation 2-3 errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation 1 error -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation -general structure -general structure -general structure Several errors in: -cover page -in text citations -reference page 4-5 errors -cover page -in text citations -reference page 2-3 errors -cover page -in text citations -reference page 1 error -cover page -in text citations -reference page -general format -general format -general format -general format Paper formatting indicates little skill in word processing Students will be applications. Many errors in able to use formatting of title page, technology to headers, pagination, margins, communicate headings, and/or spacing. No information. use of spell and grammar check, excessive errors found. APA Style Paper formatting indicates basic skill in word processing applications. Several errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Minimal use of spell and grammar check, many errors found. No errors noted. No errors noted. Writing Assignments Evaluation Criteria Student will demonstrate topical awareness and evaluation methodologies Unsatisfactory 1-9 Points Paper demonstrates lack of awareness of and inability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security. Students will be able to frame a Did not develop a research question. No identification of research key concepts, synonyms, or question. related terms that describe the information needed. Students will understand ethical and legal issues affecting the use of information. No understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses no knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Does not use APA style for citing and referencing sources. Marginal 9.25 Points Satisfactory 10 Points Good 11-12 Points Exemplary 12.5 Points Paper demonstrates limited awareness of and/or limited ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security issues. Paper demonstrates developing awareness of and emerging ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security topics. Project demonstrates a high level of awareness of and an average level of ability to critically evaluate current Homeland Security issues. Paper demonstrates a high level of awareness of and a high level of ability to critically evaluate contemporary Homeland Security issues. Develops a vague research question or thesis statement. Identifies few key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a general research question or thesis statement. Identifies obvious key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a clear research question or thesis statement. Identifies key concepts, synonyms, or related terms that describe the information needed. Develops a focused research question or thesis statement. Thoroughly identifies relevant key concepts, synonyms, and related terms that describe the information needed. Incomplete understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses little knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Minimal use of APA style for citing and referencing sources with many errors. Basic understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Possesses knowledge of copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with some errors. Clear understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Observes copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with few errors. Thorough understanding of issues concerning plagiarism (proper paraphrasing, quoting, and citing of information sources). Consistently observes copyright laws regarding print and online sources. Consistently uses APA style for citing and referencing sources with no errors. Paper formatting indicates competence with word processing applications. Some errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Use of spell and grammar check, some errors found. Paper formatting indicates proficiency with word processing applications. Few errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Obvious use of spell and grammar check, few errors found. Paper formatting indicates expertise with word processing applications. No errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and spacing. Obvious use of spell and grammar check, no errors found. Organization No transition between Some transition with poor paragraphs, ideas not in paragraph structure and logical order. No structure to some evidence of planning paragraphs. Transition between most paragraphs with limited paragraph structure. Sequence is not logical. Smooth transition between paragraph with adequate structure and sequencing of ideas. Well developed paragraphs. Sequencing enhances ideas and meaning. Ideas focused on central theme. Development Does not follow the theme; contains muddled, unclear ideas. Few ideas address central theme. Ideas ramble and are difficult to identify. Ideas are clear. Some ideas address the central theme. Central theme is linked to the topic. Central theme is matched Ideas focus on the central to the topic, most ideas theme. All ideas are clearly explore the central presented and unified. theme, clear and unified. Conventions Multiple errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation -general structure 4-5 errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation 2-3 errors -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation 1 error -sentence structure -capitalization -grammar -presentation -general structure -general structure -general structure Several errors in: -cover page -in text citations -reference page 4-5 errors -cover page -in text citations -reference page 2-3 errors -cover page -in text citations -reference page 1 error -cover page -in text citations -reference page -general format -general format -general format -general format Paper formatting indicates little skill in word processing Students will be applications. Many errors in able to use formatting of title page, technology to headers, pagination, margins, communicate headings, and/or spacing. No information. use of spell and grammar check, excessive errors found. APA Style Paper formatting indicates basic skill in word processing applications. Several errors in formatting of title page, headers, pagination, margins, headings, and/or spacing. Minimal use of spell and grammar check, many errors found. No errors noted. No errors noted. Kennedy School of Government Case Program C15‐06‐1843.0 Hurricane Katrina (A): Preparing for “The Big One” in New Orleans On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, meteorologists at the US National Weather Service (NWS) spotted a tropical depression in the southeastern Bahamas, the twelfth of a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic. The following day, as it strengthened into a tropical storm, weather officials gave it a name—Katrina—and closely tracked it as it turned into a hurricane, crossing south Florida and then moving into the Gulf of Mexico. There, fed by the gulf’s warm waters, Katrina grew into a monster: a “Category five” hurricane—the most intense on the scale used by the NWS—with winds gusting past 170 miles per hour and an unusually wide span extending over 100 miles from its center. Katrina appeared to be heading next for the Florida Panhandle, but on Friday it made what a Louisiana official later called “one of the most dramatic shifts in weather history.” 1 It turned westward and appeared to take dead aim at one of the most storied, and fragile, cities in the US: New Orleans. The specter of a major hurricane striking low‐lying New Orleans had long hung over the historic city of almost half a million people. The catastrophic results of a direct hit had been predicted by computer models, described in emergency planners’ scenarios, and imagined in harrowing detail in the press. Now, after years of dodging its fate, New Orleans seemed about to encounter the long‐dreaded “Big One,” as it was sometimes called. Weather officials did not mince words. “This is really scary,” said Max Mayfield, director of the NWS’s National Hurricane Center, on Saturday. “… This is the real thing.” 2 1 Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina (hereafter referred to as House Select Committee), December 14, 2005. 2 The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), Web Edition, August 27, 2005. This case was written by Esther Scott for Arnold Howitt, Executive Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, for use at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Funding for the case was provided by the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. (0606) Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. No part of this publication may be reproduced, revised, translated, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the written permission of the Case Program. For orders and copyright permission information, please visit our website at www.ksgcase.harvard.edu or send a written request to Case Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 With landfall on the southeastern coast of Louisiana predicted for early Monday morning, August 29, city and state officials swung into action, following the roadmaps laid out in their various emergency response plans: activating emergency operations centers; putting emergency responders on alert; issuing advisories and evacuation notices to the public; pre‐staging equipment, supplies, and crews; and opening emergency shelters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) kept close tabs on activities at the state and local level, and mounted the largest operation to position food and supplies for storm victims in its history. Only a few days later, most of these plans would be in a shambles, and the response to Hurricane Katrina already rated as perhaps the worst in US history. But in the hours before the storm struck, those charged with preparing for it and dealing with its aftermath appeared confident that they had done their homework. Many of them had worked together on emergency response plans and exercises, readying themselves for just such an event, and their preparations seemed commensurate with the challenges Katrina would pose. “We’ve planned for this kind of disaster for many years because we’ve always known about New Orleans and the situation,” Michael Brown, director of FEMA, told a TV reporter the day Katrina came ashore. “… We were so ready for this.” 3 Background: New Orleans and the “Big One” New Orleans has variously been likened to a soup bowl, a cereal bowl, a punch bowl, a fish bowl, and even a bathtub—all metaphors to describe its precarious relationship to two large and looming bodies of water: the Mississippi River to the south and the broad but shallow Lake Pontchartrain to the north. (See Exhibit 1 for map of metropolitan New Orleans.) Except for the oldest parts of the city—including its legendary French Quarter—most of it was below sea level, and in constant danger that the water would “slosh” over during a storm and “fill the bowl.” Greater New Orleans, which comprised the city proper and its surrounding parishes, was protected by an elaborate 475‐mile long system of levees, floodwalls, canals, bridges, floodgates, and pumping stations, intended to both hold back and channel the waters. 4 A key part of the system was a complex chain of levees, floodwalls, and canals along Lake Pontchartrain (see Exhibit 2), which had been built in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965—a calamitous Category three storm that swamped parts of New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish, leaving 81 dead and thousands homeless. But, as many noted, this system—called the “Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project”—was designed to withstand the effects of a composite hurricane, known as the “standard project hurricane,” which was roughly the 3 Nicole Gaouette, Alan C. Miller, Mark Mazzetti, Doyle McManus, Josh Meyer and Kevin Sack, “Katrina’s Aftermath: The Response,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2005, p. A1. 4 Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes, which are roughly comparable to counties in other states. Levees are generally earthen mounds, while floodwalls are large slabs of concrete and steel, sometimes perched atop a levee. [John Cloud, “Mopping up New Orleans,” Time, September 19, 2005, p. 54.] 2 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 equivalent of a Category three storm. This meant, as Louisiana’s leading newspaper, The Times‐ Picayune, pointed out, that there was “currently … no defense against a surge from a major storm”—i.e., a Category four or five hurricane. 5 New Orleans’ vulnerability to flooding had, moreover, been exacerbated by the very defenses that had been erected to protect it from a storm surge. The levees and floodwalls that kept the waters at bay also walled out the silt that renewed and rebuilt the Mississippi Delta land. Consequently, the city and its suburbs had begun to subside, a process hastened by heavy development on soil that had been drained and subsequently compressed. 6 This, combined with coastal erosion and rising sea levels, helped put the “Crescent City”—an allusion to the semi‐ circular shape of New Orleans along the banks of the Mississippi—on the short list of major disasters waiting to happen. Anticipating the Big One. Over the decades since Betsy had pummeled the city, there had been various proposals put forward by the state of Louisiana and by the US Army Corps of Engineers—which was responsible for the design and construction of the levee system—to strengthen the Pontchartrain levees or otherwise improve New Orleans’ defenses against floods. 7 But, primarily because of budget shortfalls and competition from other priorities, the protections afforded by the levee system had not been upgraded to withstand the force of a severe hurricane. Major improvements to the existing system, such as raising levees that had settled over time, were delayed as well due to lack of funds. 8 At the same time, however, those decades brought few serious hurricane threats to the city; when a major hurricane did approach, it veered off, sometimes at the last minute, as happened with Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Ivan in 2004. But with hurricane activity in the Atlantic picking up in the mid‐1990s, hurricane experts and emergency planners cast a worried eye on the slowly sinking city, and studied the likely effects of an intense storm making a direct hit, which most considered an inevitability. Computer models all told the same story: if a Category four or five hurricane were to strike it, New Orleans—one of America’s most celebrated cities—would be virtually destroyed. 5 John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, “In Harm’s Way,” The Times-Picayune, first in a five-part series, “Washing Away,” published June 23-27, 2002. Online at www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway. The paper also noted that the levees along the Mississippi, which were elevated to over 25 feet after disastrous flooding in 1927, were much higher than those on Lake Pontchartrain. 6 Ibid. 7 The Army Corps was generally responsible for construction of the flood protection infrastructure, and local governments for its upkeep. In Louisiana, local levee boards—whose members were appointed by the governor and parish governments—along with water and sewer boards, were charged with operating and maintaining the flood protection system. The Army Corps, however, operated and maintained the Mississippi River levees. 8 Congressional Research Service, “New Orleans Levees and Floodwalls: Hurricane Damage Protection,” September 6, 2005, p. 4. 3 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Possibly the most graphic depiction of the consequences of a major hurricane in New Orleans was detailed in a five‐part series—entitled “Washing Away”—which appeared in The Times‐Picayune from June 23‐27, 2002. It presented a worst‐case scenario of a storm moving toward New Orleans from the south, pushing huge volumes of water ahead of it into the area’s waterways and canals and, ultimately, Lake Pontchartrain; as the eye of the storm made its way northward (and just east of New Orleans), the counterclockwise winds of the hurricane would begin to blow from the north across the swollen lake, sending waves of water surging down into the city. Eventually, they would either “overtop” the levees or, far worse, break through them and create a gap or breach through which billions of gallons of water would pour unchecked into “an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.” 9 Between wind and water, 90 percent of the city’s structures would likely be decimated. An estimated 200,000 who did not evacuate would be “struggling to survive,” The Times‐Picayune wrote with eerie prescience. “Some will be housed in the Superdome [a sports facility owned by the state of Louisiana]. … Others will end up in last‐minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. … Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. … Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, on buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.” The death toll, according to some sources, could range from 25,000 to 100,000. “Filling the bowl,” The Times‐Picayune noted in its “Washing Away” series, was rated “the worst potential scenario for a natural disaster” in the US by emergency officials. It stood at or near the top of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s list of most worrisome, and probable, disasters, along with a few other familiar, grim scenarios, such as an earthquake in San Francisco. As more time passed since the infamous Hurricane Betsy had devastated New Orleans in 1965, observers grew more uneasy. “I think everyone familiar with this is sitting on pins and needles because nothing has happened in that lake [Pontchartrain] for 50 to 60 years, and you start to think, are we due,” an engineering consultant told The Times‐Picayune. “And the answer I think is yes, statistically you’re due. And that’s scary. Based on my knowledge of hurricanes, I’d watch what happens very closely—and I’d get out of Dodge.” Planning for the Big One. It was New Orleans’ preeminence among potential disaster sites that prompted FEMA to sponsor an initiative that would lead to the development of comprehensive plans for responding to a catastrophic hurricane in the city. The project—called “Hurricane Pam”—was, in the words of Madhu Beriwal, the consultant who helped design it, both “a planning workshop and a scenario‐based exercise” that brought together officials from all 13 Southeast Louisiana parishes, most of Louisiana’s state agencies, and 15 federal agencies. 10 When 9 10 While a levee failure could happen, a Louisiana State University engineer told The Times-Picayune in 2002, it was “not something that’s expected.” Madhu Beriwal, “Preparing for a Catastrophe: The Hurricane Pam Exercise,” statement before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (hereafter referred to as Senate Homeland Security Committee), January 24, 2006, p. 2. Hurricane Pam was not the first such exercise. In 2000, scientists at Louisiana 4 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 the 300‐plus participants assembled in July 2004 for an eight‐day workshop, they were presented with a chilling scenario of the hypothetical Hurricane Pam, a “strong, slow‐moving Category 3 storm” that unleashed tornadoes and dumped 20 inches of rain on metropolitan New Orleans. The “projected consequences” of such a storm included, among other things, overtopped levees that would leave New Orleans under 10‐20 feet of water, over 60,000 dead, 55,000 in public shelters and a total of 1.1 million residents displaced, and many thousands needing rescue by boat or helicopter. Participants were divided into groups organized by topic—e.g., search and rescue, sheltering, temporary medical care—and asked to devise plans to respond to the conditions laid out in the scenario. It was expected that the exercise would produce a preliminary “bridging document” between existing state and local emergency response plans and the new federal National Response Plan, which was still in development at the time (see below), and serve as a “test‐bed for catastrophic planning for other locations.” The workshop culminated in the draft “Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Functional Plan,” released in August 2004, which covered 14 different areas of response. Some of these were highly detailed, others were sketchy in parts, with the particulars “to be decided” at a later time. Although the plan was envisioned as a response to a catastrophic event, some of its components did not always address the most dire scenarios. For example, the section on “unwatering”—i.e., draining the flooded city—“assumed there are no levee breeches [sic]. This is the worst case situation.” Nor was the draft comprehensive in scope. There was not enough time in the eight‐day session, Beriwal noted, to cover the full array of issues that would arise in the wake of a major storm; consequently, a number of “topics”—including security, command and control, feeding, and communications—were deferred for future workshops. After the initial July 2004 session, there were three more workshops, involving smaller numbers of participants, to do some additional planning on specific areas. But, one FEMA official later told The New York Times, “funding dried up” for more follow‐ups to Hurricane Pam, leaving plans in some key areas unfinished. 11 But even without the “bridging document” envisioned in the Hurricane Pam exercise, officials at the state, local, and federal level could turn to their own plans, which were designed, and in some cases explicitly tailored, to help them prepare for and respond to a major emergency such as Katrina was likely to create. State University created the hypothetical “Hurricane Zebra” for Louisiana and federal agencies to test their response to a catastrophic storm striking New Orleans. The Zebra project was smaller and briefer than Hurricane Pam, lasting only six hours. [J. Taylor Rushing, “Hurricane exercise tests state’s readiness,” The Advocate Online, July 14, 2000.] 11 Scott Shane and Eric Lipton, “Storm and Crisis: Federal Response,” The New York Times, September 2, 2005, p. A1. 5 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Getting Ready: State and Local Emergency Response Plans In Louisiana, the Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993 parceled out the general duties and powers of state and local officials—who would be on the frontlines of the response to Katrina—in the event of a disaster or emergency. Under its provisions, the governor was authorized to, among other things, declare a state of emergency; “direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area”; “commandeer or utilize any private property” if necessary; and “[p]rescribe routes, modes of transportation, and destination in connection with evacuation.” The state law conferred many of the same emergency powers on parish presidents and the chief executives of municipalities, including the authority to declare emergencies and order evacuations. In accordance with the Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LOHSEP), housed in the state’s Military Department and headed by the state adjutant general (who was also head of the Louisiana National Guard), was responsible for preparing and implementing the state emergency operations plan. The law also required each parish president to establish an office of homeland security and emergency preparedness, which would work with LOHSEP to develop local emergency plans. The State Plan. Given the state’s vulnerability to Gulf Coast storms, it was not surprising that Louisiana’s emergency operations plan had two supplements devoted solely to hurricane emergencies—one each for the southwestern and the southeastern sections of the state. Their focus was on getting residents out of harm’s way as a hurricane approached. The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan, which included metropolitan New Orleans, was intended to provide, in its words, “an orderly procedure” for the 13 area parishes—home to a population of almost 1.7 million (in 1999)—“in response to a catastrophic hurricane.” The plan did not, however, “replace or supersede any local plans,” nor “usurp the authority of any local governing body.” The plan outlined three “phases” of evacuation—precautionary/voluntary, recommended, and mandatory—and the duties of state and local authorities in each of them. It did not specify who would issue the evacuation notices, although one of the tasks assigned to the state was to prepare “proclamations for the State to intervene in local situations if local governments fail to act. …” The earliest phase—precautionary/voluntary—was aimed at those “most vulnerable” to a hurricane, chiefly workers on offshore oil rigs and residents of coastal islands; the other two phases were invoked as the probability of a major storm increased. In the event of a mandatory evacuation, when authorities would “put maximum emphasis on encouraging evacuation and limiting ingress,” evacuation routes could be “augmented” by turning the inbound lanes of some highways into outbound ones—often referred to as a “contraflow” pattern. 6 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 After a chaotic evacuation that jammed the state’s highways in advance of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had ordered state police and transportation officials to retool the evacuation plan for southern Louisiana. The new plan also had three phases, though these were more geographically driven. It called for residents to leave according to where they resided: those living in areas unprotected by levees would leave first, 50 hours before the onset of tropical storm winds; those living in levee‐protected areas that were nonetheless considered vulnerable to Category two or higher storms would evacuate 40 hours before onset; finally, those living on the east bank of the Mississippi River in metropolitan New Orleans—within the protection of the levee system but vulnerable to a slow‐moving Category three or higher storm—would leave 30 hours before onset. (See Exhibit 3 for evacuation map.) The state plan assumed that the “primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles,” although school and municipal buses and other government‐owned vehicles “may be used” to evacuate those who had no means of transportation. It would be the responsibility of the parishes to mobilize transportation and establish “staging areas,” where residents needing help could go to be taken to shelters. Hospitals and nursing homes were required to prepare their own state‐approved “pre‐determined evacuation and/or refuge plans.” The state plan also assumed that shelters would not be opened in “risk area parishes”; instead, “host parishes”—those out of harm’s way—would be required to open designated shelters to receive evacuees. Though the plan did not make mention of it, there would also be no Red Cross shelters opening in risk areas in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. According to The Times‐ Picayune, after an incident in the mid‐1990s, when a shelter in South Carolina was flooded and the people in it nearly drowned, the Red Cross decided it would not open shelters in any area that could be “inundated by a storm surge from a Category 4 hurricane”—which, the paper noted, would include “all of south Louisiana.” 12 For those who did not evacuate, parishes within the risk areas were responsible for setting up “last resort refuges”; unlike shelters, which offered food and bedding, refuges were barebones facilities, with “little or no water or food and possibly no utilities.” They were intended, the state plan noted, “to provide best available survival protection for the duration of the hurricane only.” The City Plan. As with the state, the city’s emergency plan had a special supplement—in this case, an “annex”—devoted to hurricanes. It, too, focused on evacuation issues, although there were sections on “recovery” and “mitigation” as well. “The safe evacuation of threatened populations when endangered by a major catastrophic event,” the annex declared, “is one of the principle reasons for developing” emergency management plans; it further noted that the “thorough identification of at‐risk populations, transportation and sheltering resources,” among other things, was one of the “primary tasks of evacuation planning.” Management of the evacuations was the responsibility of the mayor—to whom state law delegated the authority to 12 McQuaid and Schleifstein, “Left Behind,” in “Washing Away,” June 23-27, 2002. 7 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 order evacuations—“in coordination with” both the director and the shelter coordinator of the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. The annex to the city’s emergency plan described a “Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedure” that was “designed to deal with all case scenarios of an evacuation in response to the approach of a major hurricane towards New Orleans. It is designed to deal with the anticipation of a direct hit from a major hurricane.” The annex itself, however, provided few specifics on how it would achieve its ends. There was little, for example, on how at‐risk populations would be identified and helped, although it did report, in a section on “shelter demand,” that about 100,000 New Orleans “citizens” did not have “means of personal transportation.” It noted that “[s]pecial arrangements” would have to be made to evacuate people “unable to transport themselves or who require specific life saving assistance”; but it was silent on what those arrangements would be, other than to state that “[t]ransportation will be provided to those persons requiring public transportation from the area.” 13 The plan did give the Regional Transit Authority, which operated buses in the metropolitan area, the task of supplying “transportation as needed” and dispatching “evacuation buses,” but provided no further details. Later, after Katrina had come and gone, a remark by Col. Terry Ebbert, the city’s director of homeland security, appeared to explain, indirectly, the lack of specifics in New Orleans’ evacuation plan. “We always knew,” he said, “we did not have the means to evacuate the city.” 14 Mutual Aid. In the event that local resources were exhausted by a disaster, such as a severe hurricane, the Louisiana emergency operations plan advised parishes to turn next to “mutual aid agreements with volunteer groups, the private sector and/or neighboring parishes.” 15 In addition, the state of Louisiana could draw on the resources of other states by invoking the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), which was approved by Congress in 1996. Under the provisions of EMAC, a disaster‐stricken state could request assistance from a “menu” of resources, including temporary shelters, cargo aircraft, helicopters, and National Guard troops. 16 13 In addition, according to the House Select Committee’s report, the city had established a “Brother’s Keeper” program, in conjunction with local churches, that would help match riders with drivers in the event of an evacuation. 14 Susan Glasser and Michael Grunwald, “The steady buildup to a city’s chaos,” The Washington Post, September 11, 2005, p. A1. 15 As quoted in “The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned,” report to President George W. Bush (hereafter referred to as White House report), February 23, 2006, chapter 2, p. 6. 16 “A Failure of Initiative,” final report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina (hereafter referred to as House Select Committee report), February 15, 2006, p. 31. According to the committee report, EMAC built on a regional compact created by Florida and 16 other states as a result of dissatisfaction with federal and state response to the catastrophic Hurricane Andrew in 1992. 8 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Sending in the Cavalry: The National Response Plan The federal government, too, had its own emergency response plan it could draw on when the first responders, state and local governments, had exhausted their resources and turned to it for help. When this happened—or, in some cases, threatened to happen—the governor of the affected state could invoke the Stafford Act, and formally request that the president declare a state of emergency or, where appropriate, a major disaster. This would signal the federal government to send in “the cavalry,” as some liked to put it, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the nation’s “chief steward of disaster response. …” 17 Established in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, FEMA had been made a cabinet‐level agency during the Clinton administration, with its head reporting directly to the president. A relatively small agency—in 2005, it had roughly 2,500 employees—FEMA did not itself provide disaster assistance, but managed “the operational response, relief and recovery efforts” of the federal government, assigning tasks to agencies and departments and coordinating their work. 18 It also drew on state and local governments, private contractors, volunteers, and the National Guard to supply equipment and manpower in its relief efforts. 19 Along with its disaster response duties, FEMA also had responsibility for disaster readiness—or preparedness—which included helping state and local governments enhance their own capacities to deal with disasters. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal emergency preparedness and response apparatus was overhauled, and FEMA became part of a massive new agency: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created by Congress in 2002. 20 Under the new organization, FEMA was housed in the department’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate, and its head became an undersecretary of homeland security, reporting to the DHS secretary. The NRP. Along with establishing a new emergency management structure, the federal government, in compliance with a mandate in the 2002 Homeland Security Act, embarked on an ambitious overhaul of its existing emergency response plans. In a February 2003 presidential directive, President George W. Bush ordered the DHS secretary—then former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge—to create a “comprehensive National Incident Management System” (NIMS) that would provide a “consistent nationwide approach” for all levels of government to work together on domestic incidents, and to develop an “integrated National Response Plan” 17 White House report, chapter 2, p. 8. 18 Ibid., chapter 2, p. 6. 19 David Kirkpatrick and Scott Shane, “Ex-FEMA chief tells of frustration and chaos,” The New York Times, September 14, 2005, p. A1. 20 DHS officially opened its doors on March 1, 2003, assuming operational control of 22 departments, agencies, and offices, and almost 180,000 employees. [White House report, chapter 2, p. 2.] 9 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 (NRP) that would set policy and “operational direction” for federal support to state and local emergency managers. 21 The NRP, officially adopted in December 2004, was generally more concerned with the organization of emergency response than with the operational particulars. It provided, in its own words, a “comprehensive, all‐hazards tool for domestic incident management across the spectrum of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.” The plan was designed primarily for use in what it termed an “Incident of National Significance.” This was defined as “an actual or potential high‐impact event that requires a coordinated and effective response by [an] appropriate combination of Federal, State, local, tribal, nongovernmental, and/or private sector entities in order to save lives and minimize damage, and provide the basis for long‐term recovery and mitigation activities.” It was this kind of incident that would need “DHS coordination” and, consequently, lead to activation of the NRP. As the White House‐led inquiry into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina later noted, the NRP was not clear as to how and when an incident of national significance was to be declared, 22 but once invoked, it set in motion a complex array of “incident management activities” led by a number of agency and multi‐agency coordinating entities. At the federal headquarters level, DHS’s Homeland Security Operations Center and its “component element,” FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center, were responsible for coordinating “incident information‐ sharing, operational planning, and deployment of Federal resources. …” The Interagency Incident Management Group—composed of senior federal department and agency officials—was expected to provide “strategic incident management planning and coordination” and to act as an “advisory body” to the DHS secretary. At the local level, the “joint field office”—which would be set up near the incident itself—was responsible for coordinating “operational Federal assistance activities to affected jurisdiction(s). …” The joint field office was headed by a “principal federal official” (PFO), “personally designated” by the secretary of DHS. 23 (See Exhibits 4 and 5 for organization charts.) The role of the PFO was, in the words of the NRP, to “facilitate Federal support of the … Unified Command structure and to coordinate overall Federal incident management and assistance 21 White House report, Chapter 2, p. 2. NIMS, in the words of the report, “standardized incident management protocols and procedures that all responders—Federal, State, and local—should use to conduct and coordinate response actions.” Its “central component” was the “incident command system” (ICS), which coordinated the activities of individual responders and agencies; under ICS, it was assumed that the “command function” would be “set up at the lowest level of the response, and grow to encompass other agencies and jurisdictions as they arrive.” 22 The NRP stated in one section that the DHS secretary was responsible for making the declaration, and in another, that all presidentially declared emergencies and disasters under the Stafford Act were automatically considered incidents of national significance. 23 The principal federal official was not to be confused with the “federal coordinating officer” (FCO), who was designated by FEMA to manage an incident under the Stafford Act. Unlike the PFO, whose role was primarily one of coordination, the FCO was in charge of federal response operations and had the authority to obligate funds. [House Select Committee report, p. 189.] 10 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 activities….” 24 The PFO did not, however, “direct or replace the incident command structure” or “have directive authority” over other federal and state officials on the scene, including the federal coordinating officer (see footnote 23). The actual delivery of federal resources and assistance was organized according to 15 “emergency support functions” (ESF), each headed by one or more “primary” departments or agencies (or, in one instance, the Red Cross), with other agencies designated to play a supportive role. (See Exhibit 6.) In the event of an incident of national significance, representatives from the appropriate ESF agencies would sit in at national and regional coordination centers and the joint field office. Dealing with Catastrophes. Appended to the National Response Plan were seven “incident annexes,” each dealing with a specific kind of event—e.g., biological incidents, nuclear/radiological incidents, catastrophic incidents. This last annex dealt with incidents, either “natural or manmade,” which resulted in “extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions.” Such an incident, the NRP annex continued, “could result in sustained national impacts over a prolonged period of time; almost immediately exceeds resources normally available to State, local, tribal, and private‐sector authorities in the impacted area; and significantly interrupts governmental operations and emergency services to such an extent that national security could be threatened.” The severity of these consequences was expected to draw an unusually forceful response from the federal government. The process of obtaining federal assistance in most incidents was often described as a “pull system,” in which a state or local government whose resources had been overwhelmed by a disaster essentially asked the president to send help. By contrast, the catastrophic annex was characterized as a “push system,” in which the federal government would take the initiative in the face of circumstances so devastating that state and local governments, as the White House report put it, became “victims themselves, prohibiting their ability to identify, request, receive, or deliver assistance. This is the moment of catastrophic crisis. …” 25 It was the moment that the federal government would step in with, in the words of the annex, “an accelerated, proactive … response.” While the NRP catastrophic incident annex outlined “an overarching strategy” and “guiding principles” for a proactive federal response, it did not provide a specific plan of action to deliver on that promise. That would be left to the Catastrophic Incident Supplement, which would 24 The “unified command,” as explained in the White House report was an “application” of the incident command system, and was established when more than one agency or jurisdiction was involved. Under the NRP, “senior officials from multiple levels of government” were required to “come together at a single location to establish a common set of objectives and a single incident plan.” 25 White House report, chapter 2, p. 7. 11 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 present a “more detailed and operationally specific” roadmap for federal responders. A draft of the supplement had been prepared, but final approval and promulgation were still pending in late August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina boiled up the Gulf Coast. Although parts of the NRP had been used “to various degrees and magnitudes” in 30 “Stafford Act events,” as the White House report put it, Katrina would be its first major test. As it would turn out, not everyone viewed it, or DHS, as a helpful addition to the federal government’s response arsenal. Trouble in FEMA. Despite the NRP’s depiction of a “cohesive, coordinated, and seamless framework for domestic incident management,” beneath its calm, confident prose lay a turbulent drama of bureaucratic displacement and discontent. The integration of FEMA into the fledgling Department of Homeland Security had not gone smoothly. FEMA’s director, Michael Brown, who assumed the job and the new title of undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response in February 2003, had vowed to make sure that “FEMA remained FEMA,” in the words of one account, and not lose its identity and mission in the huge new department. 26 Although Brown succeeded in keeping the agency’s name, his determined efforts to hold on to its traditional roles and responsibilities alienated those who were seeking to “create a unified DHS brand. …” 27 When it came time to put together the National Response Plan, Ridge did not turn to FEMA, though it had overseen the development of its predecessor, the Federal Response Plan. Instead, he gave the job to James Loy, a Coast Guard admiral and head of the Transportation Security Administration within DHS. Brown did not disguise his disdain for the resulting document. He disparaged, for example, DHS’s decision to establish its own emergency operations site—the Homeland Security Operations Center—arguing that it was redundant, since FEMA already had one. Similarly, he opposed creating the new post of principal federal official—a job that, as designed, would not necessarily be filled by a FEMA official—labeling it “just another dad‐gummed layer of bureaucracy.” 28 Brown was not alone in his concerns about the direction DHS was taking. Others in FEMA worried that the new preoccupation with terrorism came at the expense of natural disaster preparedness and response. The numbers seemed to confirm their fears. By 2005, Time magazine reported, nearly three‐fourths of every dollar the federal government gave in grants to state and local emergency response organizations was “earmarked for terrorism.” 29 Brown and others also complained about the “DHS tax,” which they argued siphoned off FEMA funds to other areas 26 Michael Grunwald and Susan Glasser, “Brown’s turf wars sapped FEMA’s strength,” The Washington Post, December 23, 2005, p. A1. Brown, a lawyer by training, had earlier served as FEMA’s general counsel and then deputy director. Previously, he had held positions in city and state government in Oklahoma and, most recently, served as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Mark Thompson, “Why did FEMA and its chief, Michael Brown, fail their biggest test?” Time, September 19, 2005, p. 39. 12 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 within the department; in a 2005 memo, Brown maintained that his agency had lost almost $78 million from its operating budget base since joining DHS. 30 More disturbing, perhaps, was DHS Secretary Ridge’s decision in late 2003 to move control of federal preparedness grants from FEMA to another rival office in DHS—the Office of Domestic Preparedness. This upset FEMA staff members, who believed that separating emergency response from preparedness would disrupt their “relationships with first responders” and degrade emergency response operations. 31 But there was worse to come: when Michael Chertoff succeeded Ridge as DHS secretary in February 2005, he endorsed a plan that would move what remained of FEMA’s preparedness mission to a new directorate within DHS. These developments were blamed for what some called FEMA’s “brain drain”—the steady exodus of some of its “top disaster specialists, senior leaders, and experienced personnel. …” By August 2005, FEMA had “about 500 vacancies and eight out of its ten regional directors were working in an acting capacity.” 32 Brown expected to follow suit. When his appeal to reconsider the plan to eliminate FEMA’s preparedness mission was rebuffed, he decided, according to The Washington Post, “to submit his resignation after Labor Day.” 33 Before he could act on that decision, however, Hurricane Katrina made its ominous appearance in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina Approaches. Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall in south Florida on Thursday, August 25, 2005. Although it was then only a Category one storm, it visited considerable destruction on the area, leaving more than a dozen dead, over one million without power, and almost $2 billion in damages. 34 As it churned into the Gulf of Mexico, few doubted that it would become more deadly, and state and local governments up and down the Gulf Coast went on alert. Initially, it appeared that the storm’s path might take it to the Florida Panhandle, but, in the words of one account, it shifted dramatically on Friday afternoon, moving roughly “150 miles west in a matter of hours.” 35 Late that night, the National Hurricane Center advised that computer models were pointing to landfall “between the eastern coast of Louisiana and the coast of Mississippi.” All through the following day, the storm grew stronger and the forecast grimmer. Weather officials confidently predicted that Katrina would strengthen into a Category four storm, and possibly into a rare Category five; it also appeared increasingly likely that it would strike at, or 30 Grunwald and Glasser, December 23, 2005. DHS officials, according to the House Select Committee report, “vigorously” disputed this claim. 31 Grunwald and Glasser, December 23, 2005; House Select Committee report, p. 154. The National Emergency Management Association sided with FEMA on this issue, and on its argument that DHS was emphasizing terrorism readiness to the detriment of other kinds of hazards. 32 House Select Committee report, p. 152, p. 157. 33 Grunwald and Glasser, December 23, 2005. 34 White House report, chapter 3, p. 2. 35 Jeff Smith testimony, December 14, 2005. 13 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 close to, New Orleans. Landfall was expected late Sunday night or early Monday morning. As Katrina, and the anxiety it stirred, intensified, officials in New Orleans, the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rouge, and Washington, DC dusted off their emergency plans and activated their emergency operations centers, and prepared to meet the full force of the monster storm. Saturday, August 27 In Metropolitan New Orleans. At the local level, early action on Hurricane Katrina varied from parish to parish. Some parishes, like St. Tammany, St. Charles, and the low‐lying Plaquemines, issued mandatory evacuation notices on Saturday morning; others, like Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes, went with voluntary or recommended evacuations. (See Exhibit 7 for map of parishes.) In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin, a former cable company executive who was elected in 2002, called for a voluntary evacuation as well, though he couched his recommendation in urgent terms. “This is not a test. This is the real deal,” he declared at a joint Saturday afternoon news conference with Governor Kathleen Blanco. “Things could change, but as of right now, New Orleans is definitely the target for this hurricane.” Nagin strongly encouraged the city’s residents to leave town. “We want you to take this a little more seriously,” he said, “and start moving—right now, as a matter of fact.” 36 Nagin had reason to be concerned that citizens would not necessarily take his warnings to heart. Perhaps lulled by years of relatively little hurricane activity and a few near‐misses, a significant portion of the population seemed unlikely to evacuate despite the threat of a major storm. A 2003 Louisiana State University poll indicated that 31 percent of New Orleans residents would opt to stay in the city even if a Category four hurricane were to strike. 37 This tendency to play “hurricane roulette,” as it was sometimes called, was not limited to New Orleans—it was noted as well by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who spoke of “hurricane fatigue” among evacuation‐weary residents of the Gulf Coast. 38 But, at least in the case of New Orleans, the roulette was sometimes played of necessity by the poor and disabled, who often did not have the means to leave the city. New Orleans had a large number of residents who fell into these categories: 28 percent lived below the poverty line, compared to nine percent nationwide, and 24 percent of its adults were disabled, compared to 19 percent across the US. 39 An analysis of 2000 census data indicated that a large percentage of the city’s poor did not own cars. According to one Brookings Institution study, a little over 123,000 36 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, August 27, 2005. 37 Peter Applebome, Christopher Drew, Jere Longman and Andrew Revkin, “A delicate balance is undone in a flash, and a battered city waits,” The New York Times, September 4, 2005, p. 25. 38 House Select Committee report, p. 114. 39 Applebome et al., September 4, 2005. 14 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 New Orleans residents lived in households with no access to a car; of these, almost 47 percent fell below the poverty line. 40 Still, Nagin did not call for a mandatory evacuation from New Orleans on Saturday. Early that morning, the state had decided to recommend that its new phased evacuation plan for Southeast Louisiana be implemented. By 4:00 p.m. that day, the plan—which called for the first phase to begin 50 hours before the onset of tropical storm winds—had been activated, and the exodus from the vulnerable coastal sections begun. During his afternoon press conference with Blanco, The Times‐Picayune reported, Nagin indicated that “he would stick with the state’s evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low‐lying surrounding areas to leave first.” Nagin did, however, announce that the Superdome—a state‐owned sports facility located near the city’s Central Business District—would open on Sunday as a shelter of last resort for people with “special needs”; the following day it would be declared open to the general population as well. He advised those seeking shelter there to bring their own food and drink and other comforts, such as folding chairs. “No weapons, no large items,” he said, “and bring small quantities of food for three or four days, to be safe.” 41 In Baton Rouge. Governor Blanco—like Nagin, a Democrat serving her first term in office—had already declared a state of emergency in Louisiana on late Friday, which cleared the way for evacuation and other emergency procedures that would follow the next day. Early on Saturday morning, the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LOHSEP), which would lead the state’s response to Katrina, activated its emergency operations center in Baton Rouge; the previous evening, it had commenced regular conference calls with other state agencies, affected parishes, federal officials, and the Red Cross. State agencies began stockpiling supplies and equipment, and moving “key assets” out of harm’s way. The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries pre‐positioned roughly 200 boats—many of them small—both within the metropolitan area and on its outskirts to be ready to begin search and rescue efforts once the storm blew over. 42 The Louisiana National Guard had begun to mobilize as well: 2,000 guardsmen were called to active duty on Friday, and another 2,000 on Saturday. 43 “Never before in Louisiana’s history,” Major General Bennett Landreneau—the state’s adjutant 40 Alan Berube and Steven Raphael, “Access to Cars in New Orleans,” The Brookings Institution, September 15, 2005. The total population of New Orleans, according to 2000 census data, was roughly 485,000. 41 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, August 27, 2005. The Superdome was designated as a special needs shelter in the state’s emergency response plan. 42 “A Nation Still Unprepared,” report of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, May 2006, chapter 21, p. 5, p. 9. New Orleans itself, the report noted, had few assets to contribute to the search and rescue effort—the city police department owned five boats; the fire department, none. 43 House Select Committee report, p. 67. The Guard’s local ranks were thinner than usual, with 3,200 of its members deployed to Iraq. [Scott Shane and Thom Shanker, “When storm hit, National Guard was deluged too,” The New York Times, September 28, 2005, p. A1.] 15 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 general and head of LOHSEP—later testified, “had so many National Guardsmen been called up before a hurricane.” 44 While the National Guard helped bring supplies of food and water to the Superdome, state police oversaw implementation of the state’s phased evacuation and contraflow traffic plan, which was getting its first real test with Hurricane Katrina. Amid the bustle of preparations for the storm, the increasingly ominous reports emanating from the National Hurricane Center prompted Blanco to take an unusual step that Saturday: she formally asked President Bush to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana under the provisions of the Stafford Act. “I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude,” she wrote, “that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.” That night, Bush, who was vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, signed the emergency declaration for Louisiana; he would do the same the following day for Mississippi and Alabama—whose coasts were also in Katrina’s path—at the request of their governors. It was rare, Blanco pointed out, for a president to declare an emergency before a storm had even made landfall. “At the highest levels of our nation,” she said, “they believe this is a very serious storm.” 45 In Washington, DC. There could be little doubt that FEMA was taking the storm very seriously. The agency, Michael Brown later testified, “pushed forward with everything it had in order to be ready to help the states respond after landfall. … Every single team, every single program of FEMA was pushed to its limit to respond to Hurricane Katrina.” 46 In fact, said William Lokey, who served as FEMA’s federal coordinating officer in Louisiana for its Katrina response, the agency “pre‐positioned more commodities and staged more rescue and medical teams than ever in our history. …” 47 In its report on the response to Katrina, the House Select Committee reeled off the “staggering” number of supplies and equipment “staged at various strategic locations” in advance of Katrina: 11.3 million liters of water, 19 million pounds of ice, 6 million “meals ready to eat,” 17 truckloads of tarps. In addition, FEMA pre‐positioned 18 teams from the National Disaster Medical System and nine urban search and rescue teams. 48 FEMA also conducted daily video teleconferences with the affected states from its National Response Coordination Center in Washington to discuss preparations; meteorologists 44 Maj. General Bennett C. Landreneau, statement before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, February 9, 2006. 45 Jan Moller, “Revised contraflow starts off smoothly,” The Times-Picayune, August 28, 2005, p. 1. 46 Michael D. Brown, statement to the House Select Committee, September 27, 2005. 47 William Lokey, testimony before the House Select Committee, December 14, 2005. 48 House Select Committee report, p. 59. According to a later report issued by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, FEMA pre-staged only three search and rescue teams in Louisiana itself. The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) enlisted volunteers in the medical field who would be deployed in teams to help out in disasters. Originally part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the NDMS had been transferred to FEMA’s directorate when the Department of Homeland Services was created. 16 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 from the National Hurricane Center also joined these sessions to update officials on Katrina’s progress. After briefings from the hurricane center, the meetings largely focused on what steps each state—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—was taking to brace for the storm. Likewise, officials from FEMA’s region four (serving Mississippi and Alabama) and region six (serving Louisiana) offices called in from their regional response coordination centers to report on what they were doing—activating Emergency Support Functions, deploying emergency response teams, pre‐staging commodities and equipment, etc.—to ready themselves to respond as soon as Katrina moved on. The video teleconference conversations were crisp and matter‐of‐fact, with a “can‐do” tone, but as the Saturday briefing drew to a close, Brown spoke to participants with some urgency about the potentially catastrophic storm that was brewing in the Gulf. “I know I’m preaching to the choir on this one,” he said, “but I’ve learned over the past four‐and‐a‐half years, five years to go with my gut on a lot of things, and I’ve got to tell you my gut hurts on this one. It hurts. I’ve got cramps. So we need to take this one very, very seriously.” To his FEMA staff, he stressed the need to “lean forward as much as possible. This is our chance to really show what we can do based on the catastrophic planning that we’ve done, based on the teamwork we’ve developed around here. This is our chance to really shine.” Brown urged FEMA officials to do “whatever it takes to get it done. … You’re not going to catch any flak from me. … [I]f you lean forward and get right to the edge of the envelope, you’re not going to hear me screaming about it.” The Military. Various branches of the military also made their preparations for the storm. Historically, in the US the primary military responder to domestic crises was the state National Guard. In Louisiana, the 4,000 National Guardsmen called to active duty before Katrina struck were a visible presence in the lead‐up to the storm: helping to ready and supply the Superdome and other state shelters, assisting in law enforcement and traffic control, and in some cases providing medical personnel. 49 Blanco, as well as the other Gulf Coast governors, could also ask other states to send their National Guard troops under the provisions of EMAC. While there were discussions with nearby states about what forms of assistance might be needed, in advance of the hurricane Louisiana limited its requests to aircraft and aviation forces to help with post‐storm search and rescue efforts. 50 In contrast to the National Guard, the federal military role in domestic disaster response was limited, largely because of “traditional reliance on local control,” according to the House Select Committee report. The Department of Defense (DOD) viewed itself as a “resource of last resort” in matters of “civil support,” usually responding to a disaster only at the request of a “lead federal agency”—most typically, FEMA. 51 In addition, the military was barred by federal law from 49 House Select Committee report, p. 67. 50 House Select Committee report, p. 66; Landreneau, February 9, 2006. 51 House Select Committee report, pp. 39-40. FEMA, however, normally sought federal forces only at the request of the state. 17 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 engaging in law enforcement activities at home. Nonetheless, the military was an invaluable resource, providing manpower, equipment, and logistical support to states in times of emergency. In a 1993 appearance before a Senate subcommittee, an official from the General Accounting Office, reporting on his agency’s review of the response to three earlier hurricanes, observed that in a “catastrophic disaster,” DOD was often “the only organization capable of providing, transporting, and distributing sufficient quantities of items needed. 52 The process of obtaining active‐duty federal troops or “capabilities” was an arduous one, requiring, according to the White House report, 21 steps to final approval. Once approved, it was the responsibility of the Northern Command, or NORTHCOM—which was created in the aftermath of September 11—to provide the needed military assistance. If, however, NORTHCOM wished to be “forward leaning,” in the words of the House Select Committee report, it could designate a “defense coordinating officer” (DCO)—essentially, a liaison to a state’s emergency operations center—prior to a formal request for aid from FEMA. This was what the Northern Command chose to do for Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana on August 26, the day Katrina struck south Florida. Two days later, DCOs were deployed to Mississippi and Louisiana. Other steps were taken as well to “organize military assets that might be needed,” including deployment of a joint task force to Camp Shelby in Mississippi. 53 No federal troops, however, were sent to the Gulf Coast ahead of the storm. Meanwhile, other components of the military were more active in and around the Gulf Coast area. The Army Corps of Engineers, which would play a key role if the levees were damaged, pre‐positioned equipment and supplies; while most of its staff in the Corps’ New Orleans District Office evacuated, the district command and eight staff members remained behind—in a bunker “designed to withstand a Category five storm”—to monitor the levee system and provide assessments once Katrina departed. The US Coast Guard, which would have a major role in rescue and recovery operations, evacuated personnel and equipment, such as cutters and helicopters, from the New Orleans area, but pre‐staged aircraft and crews from eight states to be ready to provide rapid support. 54 Saturday Night. As night fell, Katrina continued to grow and intensify over the warm Gulf of Mexico waters and to set its course inexorably for New Orleans. But despite the warnings from Nagin and Blanco and news stories on the dangers the hurricane posed, there was some evidence that the message to get out of town was not getting through to some residents. One state representative, The Times‐Picayune reported, had seen a crowd of 700 people at a Little League game at 7:00 p.m., who seemed unconcerned or unaware that a major hurricane was fast 52 As quoted in House Select Committee report, p. 145. 53 Ibid., p. 66. 54 Ibid., pp. 68-69. Within 12 hours of landfall, according to the House Select Committee report, the Coast Guard had “assigned 29 helicopters, eight fixed-wing aircraft, and 24 cutters to the area to support rescue operations.” 18 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 approaching. 55 Part of the problem, Nagin later reflected, was that the weather gave no sign of the terrible storm bearing down on the city. That Saturday, he recalled during an appearance on PBS’s Frontline in October, “the sun was beautiful, and nobody was really paying attention to this event.” At the National Hurricane Center, however, all eyes were on Katrina. Around 7:30 on Saturday night, the center’s director, Max Mayfield, took the unusual step of calling the governors of all three states in the hurricane’s path to warn them of “the severity of the situation.” Later, in testimony before a Senate committee, Mayfield remarked that he had made such a call only once before in his 36‐year career. “I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night,” he said, “knowing that I did all I could do.” 56 After talking with Blanco, Mayfield, at her suggestion, called Mayor Nagin as well. As Nagin later related their conversation, Mayfield told him that “in his over 30 years experience in watching hurricanes, he had never seen a storm or conditions like this. I immediately called my staff and visited every television station in the city to alert the citizens to stress the need for evacuation.” 57 In addition, to “provide a safety net” for those who relied on public transportation, Nagin said, he “took another very important step by encouraging our faith‐based community to reinforce evacuations through buddy systems within their communities.” He did not, however, issue a mandatory evacuation—a move that would be unprecedented in the city’s long history. His legal staff, The Times‐Picayune reported, was looking into “whether [the mayor] can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he’s been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses.” But, Nagin told one local TV station, “come the first break of light in the morning, you may have the first mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.” 58 Meanwhile, at 10:00 p.m., Central Daylight Time, the National Hurricane Center upgraded its hurricane watch to a hurricane warning for the North Central Gulf Coast, including “the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.” The warning predicted “coastal storm surge flooding of 15 to 20 feet above normal tide levels”—and as high as 25 feet in some spots. “The bottom line,” the hurricane center’s advisory concluded, “is that Katrina is expected to be an intense and dangerous hurricane … and this has to be taken very seriously.” 55 Moller, August 28, 2005. 56 As quoted in White House report, chapter 3, p. 6. In 2002, Mayfield called a different governor of Louisiana to warn about Hurricane Lili in the Gulf of Mexico. The hurricane appeared headed for the Louisiana coast as a Category four storm, but after weakening dramatically, made landfall as a Category one. 57 Mayor Ray Nagin, testimony before the House Select Committee, December 14, 2005. In his testimony, Nagin said that he himself had called Mayfield, at Blanco’s urging. 58 Bruce Nolan, “Katrina takes aim,” The Times-Picayune, August 28, 2005, p. 1. 19 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Sunday, August 28 Evacuating New Orleans. At 9:30 on Sunday morning, Nagin did what no previous mayor of New Orleans had done—he ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city. According to Nagin’s later testimony, he had issued the order after a “statewide conference call,” but he had also been urged to do so by no less than President Bush, who had phoned him and Blanco earlier that morning. The president’s call was apparently prompted by a request from Michael Brown. As Brown testified before the House Select Committee in February 2006, he had “specifically talked to the president [asking] would you please call Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco and use your powers of persuasion to have them order a mandatory evacuation.” Bush, he recalled, “was astonished that I was actually asking him to call a mayor and a governor to order a mandatory evacuation. And I said, ‘Sir, they just don’t get it; for whatever reason that I can’t fathom, they are not ordering a mandatory evacuation. I need you to do that.’ And he agreed that he would. …” Nagin and Blanco called a press conference that morning to announce the evacuation order. “[W]e are facing a storm that most of us have feared,” the mayor declared. The storm was now a Category five, he said, with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour, and wind gusts of 190 mph. The storm surge, he warned, “most likely will topple our levee system. … So that’s why we’re ordering a mandatory evacuation.” Blanco invoked the president to drive home the urgent need to flee the city. “Just before we walked into this room,” she told the assembled press, “President Bush called and told me to share with all of you that he is very concerned about the citizens. … And he asked me to please ensure that there would be a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. … And I just want to say, we need to get as many people out as possible.” To help get the word out about the evacuation, The Times‐Picayune reported, Nagin ordered police and fire crews to drive through the city’s neighborhoods that day “with bullhorns, directing people to leave.” He also announced that, using the powers granted to him by state law, he was authorizing the police to commandeer private buildings and vehicles—including boats— “as they see fit.” 59 While some surrounding parishes also ordered mandatory evacuations, others continued to use the terms “voluntary” or “recommended.” 60 Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, which bordered New Orleans to the west and south, did not issue a mandatory order because, he said in a conference call with officials from other parishes, he did not have the “resources to enforce” one. 61 59 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, August 28, 2005. 60 In all, according to the White House report, 15 parishes issued some form of evacuation order. The House Select Committee report noted that in Mississippi—where Governor Barbour chose not to “usurp” local authority—five counties in the affected area issued mandatory evacuation notices for specific parts of their counties and/or people living in mobile homes. 61 House Select Committee report, p. 110. 20 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 As Sunday wore on, it appeared that residents of metropolitan New Orleans were heeding the dire warnings of their leaders and taking to the roads in huge numbers. For the most part the traffic, while glacially slow, kept moving, although there were later reports that some people were unable to get out of the city because of gridlock. In all, some 1.2 million residents left the area before Katrina made landfall—a figure that state officials later pointed to with pride. “I ask you,” said LOHSEP Deputy Director Colonel Jeff Smith in his testimony, “what is the benchmark for evacuating over one million people out of an area such as New Orleans that has very restricted roadways in and out?” The governor’s revised evacuation plan had been “executed almost flawlessly,” enabling 90 percent of residents in the affected parishes to flee in the space of about forty hours. “I don’t know of any other evacuation that has occurred,” Smith continued, “with that many people under these circumstances … in that short of a time period.” But even with over a million evacuated, tens of thousands remained behind—an estimated 70,000 in New Orleans itself. “We begged all those people to get out,” Blanco said later. “Even those with limited circumstances were given the opportunity [to leave].” 62 There were constraints, she would later maintain, on what the state could do to make people leave. The “word ‘mandatory,’” she argued, “doesn’t mean any more than us getting up [and] saying, get out.” Officials would not resort to strong‐arm tactics. “[I]n the United States of America,” Blanco declared, “you don’t force people [out of their homes], you urge them to leave.” 63 The Last Resort. For those who could not or would not evacuate New Orleans, there were two options: staying home or seeking shelter in the designated refuge of last resort, the Superdome. At 8:00 on Sunday morning, the Superdome was opened only for people with special needs (see below). Later that day, when the facility was opened to the general population, people began streaming in. Those who could not get there on their own power could go to one of twelve staging areas in the city where they could board buses that would take them to the sports facility. Once there, they were screened by a contingent of about 200 National Guard and New Orleans police officers before being allowed to enter the shelter. 64 Estimates varied as to the number of people at the Superdome when Katrina struck; the White House report put the figure at 10,000 to 12,000, including 300‐500 with special needs, while one FEMA official guessed 15,000. According to The Times‐Picayune, the Louisiana National Guard had delivered enough food and water to the Superdome to supply 15,000 people for three days. But Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA public affairs officer who was in the city to do “advance work” for Brown—he was, as he later noted, the only FEMA official deployed to New Orleans itself ahead of the storm—painted a different picture. On Sunday evening, he testified, members of the National Guard told him that they expected 360,000 “meals ready to eat” (MREs) and 15 trucks of water to arrive later that night; 62 Sam Coates and Dan Eggen, “In New Orleans, a desperate exodus,” The Washington Post, September 1, 2005, p. A1. Blanco did not specify what opportunity was offered to those in limited circumstances. 63 House Select Committee report, p. 114, p. 110. 64 Ibid., p. 117. 21 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 instead, however, only 40,000 MREs and 5 trucks of water were delivered. Earlier that day, Bahamonde recalled, as thousands flocked to the Superdome seeking shelter, the city’s homeland security director “asked the maintenance staff to gather up all of the toilet paper in city hall and any other commodities they could find” and bring them to the Superdome. “I specifically note this,” Bahamonde said, “because it told me that supplies at the Dome might be a serious issue.” 65 The contingent of National Guard and city police would remain at the Superdome to hand out supplies and maintain order. In keeping with its policy not to set up shop in risk areas, the Red Cross was staying out of metropolitan New Orleans altogether; but by Sunday night, according to The Times‐Picayune, it had opened 45 shelters elsewhere in the state that were already serving about 3,000 evacuees. 66 Special Needs and Medical Care Facilities. In the frantic hours before Katrina made landfall, both the state and the city worked to transport special needs residents to shelters outside New Orleans. Just how many people with special needs lived in New Orleans was a matter of some debate, but the city itself put the figure at roughly 1,000. 67 According to Nagin’s testimony, about 400 of these were evacuated to a state shelter—one of four Louisiana had set up for people with special needs—outside the risk area. In addition, another 200 were transported by bus from the Superdome to hospitals in Baton Rouge. 68 Because of “traffic congestion,” according to later testimony, some 600 special needs residents remained in the Superdome, 69 where there would be little medical care available beyond what could be provided by National Guard personnel and the city. Although officials with the National Disaster Medical System—recently made part of FEMA—had pre‐positioned nine Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) in the Gulf Coast, none of them made it to the Superdome before Katrina closed in. Medical supplies were scarce as well. Meanwhile, most of greater New Orleans’ 16 acute care hospitals chose not to evacuate their patients. Although required by state law to have evacuation plans, hospitals generally “sheltered in place” during hurricanes, citing time and money as major barriers to transporting 65 Marty J. Bahamonde, testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, October 20, 2005. 66 By early Monday morning, The New York Times reported, 52,000 people were in 240 shelters in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas; the largest number were in the Superdome. [Joseph Treaster and Kate Zernike, “Hurricane slams into Gulf Coast,” The New York Times, August 29, 2005, p. A1.] 67 House Select Committee report, p. 278. Neighboring Jefferson Parish, with an “equivalent population,” the report noted, counted 45,000 special needs patients within its precincts. As the report pointed out, “special needs” was variously defined by the state and by the parishes. In New Orleans, individuals with chronic diseases, requiring “intermittent or occasional assistance,” who were dependent on electricity for medical treatments or refrigeration of medications, were considered eligible for admission to special needs shelters; people with acute illnesses were not. According to the director of the city’s health department, New Orleans did not maintain a list of its special needs residents for evacuation purposes. 68 Ibid., p. 279. 69 City of New Orleans Health Department, response to Senate Homeland Security Committee, January 31, 2006. 22 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 their often frail charges to facilities outside the risk area. 70 As Katrina drew near, hospitals took what measures they could to protect their patients—The Times‐Picayune reported that Children’s Hospital, for example, discharged as many patients as it could safely do so, and moved those who remained to upper floors in case of flooding—and prepared to ride out the storm. Many of the city’s 63 nursing homes chose to do the same. According to the House Select Committee report, only 19 nursing homes evacuated their residents before the storm. Later, Joseph Donchess, executive director of the Louisiana Nursing Home Association, testified that health care facilities had “less than 48 hours’ notice of the impending danger,” far less, he said, than the 72 hours they typically received before a storm. Moreover, Donchess maintained, “many people remembered the transportation nightmare of Hurricane Ivan the year before. The transportation of elderly, fragile patients on buses for nine to twelve hours to traverse the eighty miles to Baton Rouge is an ordeal no one wishes to repeat.” 71 The perils of evacuation for the elderly were underscored when three patients from one nursing home facility died on Sunday as they were being taken by school bus to a church in Baton Rouge. 72 A Worsening Outlook. Throughout Sunday, the reports on Katrina’s progress grew steadily more worrisome. At 10:00 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a warning that described the consequences of the storm—now hovering in the Category four/five range—in the starkest terms. Katrina, it said, was “a most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength” that could render most of the New Orleans area “uninhabitable for weeks … perhaps longer. … Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards.” What made Katrina especially daunting was not only its strength but its size. During FEMA’s noontime video teleconference that day, Max Mayfield noted that Katrina was “very similar to Hurricane Andrew”—a devastating storm that struck Florida in 1992—in its “maximum intensity,” but, he added, “there is a big, big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was.” By mid‐day on Sunday, the National Hurricane Center was forecasting that Katrina’s eye would pass just east of Lake Pontchartrain; if it maintained its intensity, it would generate a storm surge of about 12 ½ feet in the massive lake. “The big question is going to be, will that top some of the levees,” Mayfield said in the video teleconference. Although the current track of the storm suggested “minimal flooding” in New Orleans itself, he explained, if the storm’s track were to “deviate just a little bit to the west,” it would make “all the difference in the world,” and lead to the overtopping of some of the levees. It was as yet impossible to predict whether this would happen, Mayfield concluded, “but that’s obviously a very, very grave concern.” 70 House Select Committee report, p. 268. 71 Joseph A. Donchess, prepared statement for Senate Homeland Security Committee, January 31, 2006. According to Donchess, 21 nursing homes evacuated before the storm. 72 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, August 28, 2005. 23 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 The gravity of the impending crisis permeated the conversation during the August 28 video teleconference—the last that would be held before Katrina made landfall. This time the briefing was attended by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who spoke from the department’s Homeland Security Operations Center, and by President Bush and his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, from Crawford, Texas. Chertoff, who would later leave to attend a conference in Atlanta on avian flu, asked Brown, “Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?” Brown responded that there were “DOD assets over here at EOC. They are fully engaged, and we are having discussions with them now.” “Good job,” Chertoff replied. 73 The president did not ask questions, but underscored the federal government’s commitment to come to the aid of the states that lay in the path of the giant hurricane. “I want to assure the folks at the state level,” he said, “that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm.” But Brown himself sounded uncertain about some aspects of preparedness, particularly in New Orleans. “They’re not taking patients out of hospitals,” he fretted, “[not] taking prisoners out of prisons, and they’re leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I’m very concerned about that.” He worried, too, about the advisability of designating the Superdome as the refuge of last resort. The facility was “12 feet below sea level,” Brown said. “… I don’t know whether the roof is designed to … withstand a Category five hurricane.” In addition, he expressed doubts about whether there would be enough federal medical and mortuary teams inside the Superdome. “I’m concerned,” he told those in attendance, “about … their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe.” 74 Once again, Brown spoke of his “gut” feeling—that “this [storm] is a bad one and a big one”—and once again encouraged his FEMA team to cut through red tape to speed the government’s response. “I want that supply chain jammed up as much as possible,” he said. “Just keep jamming those lines as much as you can with commodities.” He reiterated his plea for FEMA officials to “get to the edge of the envelope. … Go ahead and do it,” he urged. “I’ll figure out some way to justify it. … Just let them yell at me.” Hunkering Down. By early evening, the first tentacles of the coming storm had reached the Gulf Coast, lashing it with heavy rains and high winds. At about 7:00 p.m., the buses taking residents to the Superdome ceased operations as the weather worsened. 75 The Coast Guard closed down ports and waterways along the coast; state police shut down the contraflow pattern at 5:00 p.m. and prepared to close down interstate highways once conditions grew too dangerous for motorists. Mayor Nagin called a 6:00 p.m. curfew and, for once, most seemed to have obeyed. 73 Margaret Ebrahim and John Solomon, Associated Press, “Video shows Bush warned before Katrina hit,” Dallas Morning News, March 2, 2006. Brown did not elaborate as to what those assets were. Later that day, he would fly to Baton Rouge to join officials at the state EOC. 74 Ibid. 75 House Select Committee report, p. 65. 24 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Even bars in the French Quarter, famed for their studied indifference to hurricane warnings and curfews, shut down, and the streets of the normally bustling Quarter were deserted. Boarded up and battened down, the city waited tensely as Hurricane Katrina barreled up the coast for its rendezvous with New Orleans. Monday, August 29: Katrina Comes Ashore Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish shortly after 6:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time, but the effects of the huge storm—its hurricane‐force winds extended outward for over 100 miles from its center—had been felt long before then. As LOHSEP’s Jeff Smith testified, Louisiana was battered by hurricane winds for almost 11 hours. Later, the National Weather Service determined that Katrina came ashore somewhat weaker than predicted, as a strong Category three storm—the same strength as envisioned in the Hurricane Pam exercise—rather than Category four or five. But for those in the storm’s path, the distinction meant little, as Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on its journey northward. With sustained winds of 115 miles per hour and gusts as high as 130, it knocked down power lines, leaving almost three million people without electricity; it also toppled telephone poles and cell towers, wiping out both wireline and cell phone service to millions. At the Superdome, the thousands waiting out the storm were shocked and frightened when winds tore off a portion of the roof, forcing the National Guard to move people off the field and up into the seating area to get away from the rain that began pouring in. When the power failed, the uneasy evacuees sat sweltering in the heat with only dim emergency lights to illuminate the vast sports facility. Katrina’s ferocious winds also shattered the windows of high‐rise hotels, uprooted trees, and smashed homes. Its storm surge—cresting as high as 27 feet in some places—tossed casino barges onto land and flattened entire towns along the Mississippi Coast. In all, the hurricane’s devastating effects were spread over 93,000 square miles—an area roughly the size of Great Britain. 76 Dozens were dead, many more missing; those figures were expected to climb once officials could get outside and assess the damage. Yet, despite Katrina’s violent assault, initial reports from New Orleans that day indicated that the city had once again escaped the devastation that so many had forecast and feared. It appeared to be the coastal towns of Mississippi—Gulfport, Waveland, Biloxi, and others—that had sustained the greatest destruction from the storm. After surveying some of the hardest‐hit areas in his state, Governor Barbour told reporters, “It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like.” 77 In New Orleans, the worst damage was in eastern sections of the city, which bore the brunt of the storm. There were reports of major flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard 76 White House report, foreword, p. 1. 77 Joseph Treaster and N.R. Kleinfield, “New Orleans is inundated as 2 levees fail,” The New York Times, August 31, 2005, p. A1. 25 Hurricane Katrina (A) ________________________________________________________ C15‐06‐1843.0 Parish, with water standing eight to ten feet deep, but much of the rest of the city appeared to be relatively dry. (See Exhibit 8 for map of New Orleans neighborhoods.) “Streets were littered with debris,” The Washington Post reported, “but they were not covered with water as many had feared.” Among longtime New Orleans residents, there was “a palpable relief,” that, although the city had suffered significant damage, it had “avoided a far worse catastrophe.” As one resident put it, “This wasn’t [the Big One.]” 78 At that day’s noontime video teleconference with FEMA and state officials, there was less sense of relief, with information only just beginning to trickle in. Brown, who spoke from the Louisiana Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge, continued to talk of the need “to push the envelope” and maintain urgency. “I know there is this natural tendency, once it makes landfall to [think], ‘Whew, we dodged that one.’ Well, there’s still a lot of work to do, so keep it up. …” The president, he added, “remains very, very interested in this situation. He’s obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome; he’s asking questions about reports of breaches. He’s asking about hospitals. He’s very engaged. …” There was discussion of the need to begin search and rescue efforts in the flooded areas once the storm abated, and to get more food and water to the Superdome. William Lokey, the federal coordinating officer for Louisiana, also mentioned problems at Charity Hospital, where the staff was reduced to using hand pumps to maintain patients on life support. Still, officials spoke with some confidence as they discussed preparations. Jeff Smith, LOHSEP’s deputy director, praised FEMA for its “outstanding” coordination and support. “We heard Secretary Brown yesterday just say, push it, push it; we are ready to receive it,” Smith said. “We know we are going to need it and we are prepared to start that process just as soon as we can. So I think a lot of the planning that FEMA has done with us over the last year has reall...
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