Lieberman Blasts Government's Response To Katrina

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

By Elizabeth Ellis, Shore Line Times

May 16, 2006

In a recent visit to Branford last Friday, U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman for Connecticut in the 109th Congress presented a report detailing the shortcomings of the federal government's response to the Hurricane Katrina Disaster.

"We are circulating this report to state and local officials for their emergency response programs," says Lieberman. "We want to make sure what happened there does not happen again."

"Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared" is a collection of views from United States senators Lieberman, Carl Levin (Michigan), Daniel Kahikina Akaka (Hawaii), Tom Carper (Delaware) and Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey) on the White House Katrina failures, lack of cooperation in investigation, and a failure to establish a unified command. It states that President George W. Bush failed to "provide critical leadership when it was most needed," which resulted in a flawed and ineffective response.

The report states that two days before landfall of the hurricane on Aug. 27, Chief of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Michael Brown spoke to Bush stating that Katrina could be catastrophic. The National Hurricane Center had rated the coming hurricane as a category four or five storm, with five being the most dangerous.

"For years, the New Orleans scenario has been is that the city is set in a bowl of land and if the levies broke, the city would flood," says Lieberman. "There were reports from the National Weather Service that this hurricane looks like a big one, one big enough to cause that to happen."

On Aug. 28, Bush issued a pre-storm declaration of emergency for the Gulf Coast states, which ensured that the federal government would finance any pre and post-landfall activities started by state and local officials. He also called Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to suggest calling a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, however it had already been done. When the level five hurricane hit on Aug. 29 at 6:10 a.m., Bush was in Arizona discussing Medicare plans, assuring the media he was in contact with local officials.

"The government failed in their response to this, and the failure began at the top," says Lieberman. "The president is our leader, the embodiment of the national people, and President George Bush was not out there the day of landfall."

Lieberman says approximately a year before the storm hit; the federal government turned down Blanco's request for $5 million to repair the damaged levies around the city.

"There was no good or acceptable reason the government could give not preventing this storm ahead of time," says Lieberman. "500 buses were requested by the city to FEMA to get these people out, and those buses still hadn't been requested by Tuesday at 12 a.m. after the storm hit."

Brown was asked by Lieberman about the delay in the buses, he told the senator that he couldn't get anything done.
"That is not acceptable," says Lieberman.

"I was with my family in Connecticut when it happened, but my partner was in the city [New Orleans]," says Megan Finn from Mid City, LA. "I was so angry that the whole world was there in helicopters to report on the city flooding, but it took the government so long to get people out of the convention center and the Superdome."

Lieberman says in most disasters, the first responders are the local and state organizations, with FEMA as a backup. Since Katrina, there has been a proposal to have regional offices of FEMA in every state to create more a rapid response in the event of another disaster.

"We are working on restructuring our homeland security and FEMA," says Scott Bates, vice-president for National Security, Washington D.C. "If we had a hurricane in Connecticut, we would be in the exact same situation. We need to move on this, because there will be more natural disasters in the future."

Finn is concerned about whether or not she will ever be able to return to New Orleans, and what jobs will be available for people in the area. Lieberman says there is a move in the federal government to bring businesses from other states to New Orleans with tax incentives to create employment opportunities.

"The population in New Orleans is 200,000 during the day and 100,000 at night," says Lieberman. "New Orleans will come back, but it will be a different city, and not as big. If we can get 250 to 300,000 people back, we will be doing well."