9/1/05

WASHINGTON - The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.

The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government was not prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.

The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al Qaeda.

'What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels,'' said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's disaster response chief. ``All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism.'

In interviews on Wednesday, several men and women who have led relief efforts for dozens of killer hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes over the years chastised current disaster leaders for forgetting the simple Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

PROUD OF RESPONSE

Bush administration officials said they are proud of their efforts. Their first efforts emphasized rooftop rescues over providing food and water for already safe victims.

'We are extremely pleased with the response . . . every element of the federal government [and] all of our federal partners have made to this terrible tragedy,' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

The agency has more than 1,700 truckloads of water, meals, tents, generators and other supplies ready to go to the affected areas of the Gulf Coast, Chertoff said. Federal health officials have started setting up at least 40 medical shelters. The Coast Guard reports rescuing more than 1,200 people.

But residents, especially in Biloxi, Miss., said they aren't seeing the promised help, and Knight Ridder reporters said they saw little visible federal relief efforts, other than search-and-rescue teams. Some help started arriving in areas Wednesday by the truckload, but not everywhere.

'We're not getting any help yet,' said Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney. ``We need water. We need ice. I've been told it's coming, but we've got people in shelters who haven't had a drink since the storm.'

The slow response to Katrina and poor federal leadership is a replay of 1992's mishandling of Hurricane Andrew in South Florida, said former FEMA chief of staff Jane Bullock, a 22-year veteran of the agency.

Bullock blamed inexperienced federal leadership. She noted that Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown had no disaster experience before they were appointed.

The slowness is all too familiar to Kate Hale. As Miami's disaster chief during Andrew, Hale asked: 'Where the hell's the cavalry?'

'I'm looking at people who are begging for ice and water and [a] presence,'' Hale said Wednesday. ``I'm seeing the same sort of thing that horrified us after Hurricane Andrew. . . . I realize they've got a huge job. Nobody understands better than I do what they're trying to respond to, but . . ..'

CUTS IN FUNDING

Budget cuts haven't made disaster preparedness any easier.

Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the city's Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens.

Funding for that planning was cut, Tolbert said. 'A lot of good was done, but it just wasn't finished.'

FEMA wasn't alone in cutting hurricane spending in New Orleans and the surrounding area.

Federal flood-control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget documents.

In 2004, the Army Corps of Engineers essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

The Corps' New Orleans office, facing a $71 million cut, also eliminated funds to pay for a study on how to protect the Crescent City from a Category 5 storm, New Orleans City Business reported in June.

Being prepared for a disaster is basic emergency management, experts say.

'These things need to be planned and prepared for -- it just doesn't look like it was,' said James Lee Witt, a former director of FEMA during the Clinton administration who won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill during his tenure.

A FEMA spokesman, James McIntyre, blamed the devastation in the region for slowing down relief efforts.

That explanation didn't satisfy Joe Myers, Florida's former emergency management chief.

'I would think that yesterday they could have flown in,' he said. 'Everyone was flying in. Put it this way, Fox [News] and CNN are there. If they can get there . . ..'

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