By Allen J Duffis
Published: September 7, 2005

     From hurricane Katrina’s lethal landfall to the arrival of federal relief for her victims, almost six days: which according to biblical reference is about how long it took to create the Earth. So why did it take so excruciating long to bring disaster relief to one city?

     Anyone who can’t figure that one out requires a brain transplant. In this modern age, this sort of watery disaster requires two key elements, National Guard troops and helicopters:both in short supply for rapid deployment due to the Iraq war.

     Most troubling in this nature driven holocaust is the haunting question: “What if this had been the long anticipated and feared terrorist biological or nuclear attack?”

     During hurricane Andrew’s assault on Florida on August 24, 1992, within 2 days of its end, 98 helicopters were deployed for the relief effort of that one state. After Katrina’s unexpectedly mean dance, a mere 60 helicopters were deployed to cover devastated areas of three states: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. If you do the simple math, that’s about 20 helicopters for each state.

     Within six days of Andrew’s surge inland the military supplied the following in addition to those 98 helicopters: To respond to the desperate needs of 165,000 people made homeless and the critical status of 250,000 residents without food or drinking water, they managed to bring in 1,300 trucks carrying food, 1,333 tents (capable of housing about 27,000 people), 100,000 blankets, 30 portable kitchens and 38,500 sleeping cots.

     In this same span of time, they were able to serve over 1.7 million free meals to hurricane survivors. And they were also able to ferry in 7000 National Guard troops and 22,000 military troops, marking at the time, the largest peacetime military operation ever to have been undertaken in America.

     Needless to say, even that response was criticized as being far too slow, despite the reports of only 26 deaths.

     Three days after Andrew had passed without meaningful relief being delivered, Dade County’s Emergency Relief Director, Kate Hale, became a local folk hero when she angrily spewed forth the words that became a rallying cry for help; “Where  in the hell is the Calvary on this one?” They were aimed at then President George H. Bush senior.

     Within hours, not days, the federal government sprang into action and those supplies and aid were delivered, effectively and efficiently, to Hurricane Andrew’s victims. After that event, to his credit, the President ordered a complete revamping of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

     So what happened with Hurricane Katrina? Why did FEMA fall so criminally short of its restructured goals? Well I for one feel race had nothing to do with the poor response, but was rather a matter of the individual in charge. That critical factor makes a big difference.

     Under President Bill Clinton, the man in charge of FEMA from 1993 to 2001 was James Lee Witt. During his tenure Witt (who had 25 years of disaster management experience) won high praise for the agency for its rapid response to the Midwest floods of 1994, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles.

     When the present administration transitioned FEMA to an appendage of the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), George W. Bush chose long time advisor, Joe Allbaugh to head the agency. His appointment to the post was more one of patronage than capability.

     Allbaugh soon appointed Michael Brown to the position of general counsel at FEMA. Then incredibly in 2003, skirting all reason and sanity, at Allbaugh’s request, President Bush promoted Brown to the post of Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Deputy Director of FEMA.

     Take note, Brown’s only management experience previous to ascending to this important position, was as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. A position from which he was forced to resign in the wake of mounting litigation for financial mismanagement: none of which is mentioned in his official resume.

     How this inept individual became the head of FEMA has to, without doubt, be the lead inquiry in any coming hearings on the Katrina debacle. Of course, there are many other unanswered questions:

     Why did the President leave Washington to attend a fundraiser, when he’d already been informed of the almost certain coming disaster?

     Why did the Bush Administration, three years in a row, slash by 80 percent the funding for levee improvement requested by the Army Corps of Engineers, when their studies predicted just such a coming disaster scenario?

     Why did they ignore a LSU(Louisiana State University)/FEMA financed, computer based category 3-hurricane study named “Pam”, which indicated that the city of New Orleans stood a 95 percent chance of being flooded because the levees could not withstand the force of such a cataclysmic weather system? Katrina was category 4.

     Why didn’t any White House staff not consult articles and books by recognized experts in environmental disaster prevention, such as: “The Drowning of New Orleans” by Mark Fischetti, published in Scientific American in 2001, and “Bayou Farwell” by Mike Tidwell, published 2003? Both texts predicted this disaster.

     Why didn’t FEMA anticipate that a city where almost 40 percent the inhabitants live paycheck to paycheck, well below the poverty line (and dependent on mass transit), required massive ground and air transport to evacuate?

     Most of all, with overwhelming evidence and warnings to the contrary, why did the President issue the stunning statement “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees”

     Such a statement chillingly echoes a similar remark made by now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after 9-11, “Who would have thought anyone would fly a passenger plane into a building as a weapon?”

     Don’t these elected officials know that exploration of every avenue of the unexpected and unanticipated is a vital part of their job description: particularly in the light of vivid warnings from reliable sources?

     On June 24th of 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published the following editorial, entitled:”Washing Away”, eerily forecasting events that would come to past:

     “A major hurricane could decimate the region. Flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands in just a matter of time..... The scene has been played out for years in computer models and emergency operations simulations.

     “New Orleans has hurricane levees that create a bowl dipping lower than the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. The levees would trap any water that gets inside by breach, overtopping or torrential downpour in any catastrophic storm....

     “The estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. But many will simply be on their own in homes or looking for high ground.

     “Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars in rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.”

     These very important questions do not constitute “Bush Bashing”, for we are talking about the possibility of thousands of lives lost, and the destruction of a major city vitally important to our commerce. This is an area of the country that supplies one fifth of our refined oil, one quarter of our natural gas, one third of our seafood, and just happens to be the nation’s largest natural port, stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

     Meanwhile dead and decaying bodies of American citizens litter the streets, infest abandoned houses and float in the floodwaters. Added to which our fragile economy, already struggling under the massive debt of the Iraq war, has been dealt a blow estimated at 60 to 150 billion dollars.

     Unfortunately, the Bush apologists and the White House staff are not gearing up to answer these questions, but to ‘spin’ themselves out of the path of public outrage, in fear of the impact on the November 2006 elections.

     They have already started by accusing the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, of not declaring a state of emergency, when the record clearly shows that she did on August 26th. She even wrote an urgent letter to President Bush on August 28th with a detailed grocery list of the disaster relief the state required – quickly.

     Our elected leader should step up to the plate and admit that his administration fumbled the ball, badly. Instead, he has chosen to stand in the rubble of New Orleans, embracing the man who was the chief component of the botched operation, Michael Brown, and state, “Let’s give a big thank you to the head of FEMA, who’s done a heck of a good job”.

     Mr. President, what frightens most sane Americans at this tragic moment in our nation’s history, is the thought of what the hell you might consider to be a bad job performance!