Ike, Gustav Hearing Highlights FEMA Improvements

by Chris Bedford

Agency praised for better responsiveness, but bureaucratic red tape still a problem. The federal government’s response to the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Ike and Gustav shows a dramatic improvement over its handling of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but there is still much room for improvement, according to officials and representatives from all levels of the government, who attended Tuesday’s hearing by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery. Media coverage of the hurricanes did not last after they failed to cause the massive death toll that Katrina and Rita had in 2005, and so their effects on the states of Texas and Louisiana, according to senators representing both states, have gone largely unnoticed in the rest of the country. “It seems as though the second these storms did not result in catastrophic death tolls, although hundreds of people lost their lives,” subcommittee chair Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said in her opening statement, “the national cameras went off and there is a sense outside the Gulf Coast and particularly here in Washington that things went pretty well.” Hurricane Ike, said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) of Texas, “was one of the worst natural disasters in Texas history,” with 22,000 square miles of land affected. In Louisiana, where repairs from Katrina and Rita were not nearly completed, 1.9 million people fled as part of the largest evacuation in state history and in some areas storm surges even surpassed the records of 2005. “I want my colleagues in Washington to know, and people listening to this hearing, that we did not dodge a bullet,” said Sen. Landrieu. “The bullet hit the Gulf Coast. It hit Texas, it hit south Louisiana… We all learned in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita,” Landrieu added, “but we all know … that all things did not go well.” Praise for FEMA’s handling of the crisis, however, was voiced by all. “In a homeland security emergency, you have three major areas that you have to pay attention to,” said Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu (D). “One of them is clear command and control, one of them is coordination and one of them is communication. And I have to say,” he concluded,” that in all levels of government, across the levels themselves and between and amongst others, all of them did a much better job this time responding to the immediate crisis.” On FEMA’s major accomplishments, Landrieu elaborated: “One of them was developing the emergency plans over the past three years, the second was the support for the emergency transportation and the third was onside assistance.” “It is a very dramatic change from several years ago, having to deal with FEMA now almost continuously on various issues,” said Mayor Bill White of Houston. “Secretary Chertoff, Director Paulison, the president, Adm. Johnson- they’ve been very accessible and you don’t need to repeat things.” Louisiana state senator Reggie Dupre Jr. (D) agreed. “The actual response, pre-Gustav and through it, from FEMA and those federal agencies was very, very good,” he said, adding, “We’ve learned a lot from Katrina.” While encouraged by the showing of support for FEMA’s progress, Sen. Landrieu was cautious, fearing “that we have a long way to go in recovery efforts.” And FEMA did not escape without criticism. “The flow of the commodities, and getting food to the ground was difficult,” Dewhurst said. “And the pre-landfall declaration took longer than it should have, and of course the delay of our 100 percent cost-share request is making it very difficult for communities to stand themselves back up.” FEMA’s willingness to pay for cleanup and reconstruction in every county has been tempered by a fear of fraud and by the devastated communities hampered ability to submit evaluations of the damage, legally entangling the federal government in administrative red tape. “The law, as it is written, does not do a very good job in situations like this because it says you have to have everything quantified and evaluated and praised,” Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) told the witnesses, “and you can’t even get out to see the damage yet.” Calling the law “flawed,” Domenici promised to move to free up the money for the states and parishes. “The key here is that FEMA and the state work together while we [the senate] are doing out part in getting the funding,” agreed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas). “It’s not just that we’ve got the money here in Washington, it is that they're able to get it on the ground where they need it.” A different, but still major, issue of concern for the witnesses were failures on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers who, according to angry testimony by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), sat on $3.024 billion that he had procured for the construction of non-federal levees in 2006. If the Corps hadn’t wasted time on studies the senator deemed useless and had constructed the levees, and if repairs, replacements and new defensive construction in Louisiana and Texas in general had moved along faster, much of the disaster could have been averted. “I think there is a serious open debate about whether or not the preparation was adequate enough,” said Lt. Gov. Landrieu. “And we’ll find out on the rebuild side.” Government bureaucracy is a major problem cited by many of the witnesses. “I think that the FEMA director and administration should be given as much discretion to come up with innovative plans and programs that are tailored to the particular disaster,” said Mayor White. “As a business man I’ll tell you that there are too many standard operating procedures and not enough judgments that are tailored to the disaster.” “We have made significant progress,” said Sen. Landrieu, “but I will stake my reputation on the fact that before this final story is told there will be chapter after chapter after chapter of bankruptcies, of people losing their houses, of cities struggling to recover. So I would just caution everybody,” she concluded, “before we start padding each other on the back over what a great job we’ve done, let’s work harder to get… a housing plan and a community redevelopment plan and expedite the protection the people on the Gulf Coast most certainly deserve.”