Author's updates to " Michael Brown, FEMA, The News Media, And Bad Politics: Correcting Culpability and Fixing Fallacies in the Immediacy of Katrina"
Hurricane Katrina, Congress, testimony, Michael
Brown, senate hearing, house hearing
Author’s Note: I wrote this paper in October
2005. Many of the suggestions I made here have now been addressed by Congress.
For examples, I called for the FCO’s, SCO, governors, and mayors to testify in
order for the Katrina hearings to be credible and valid. I also made a public
appeal not to rush judgment and place so much blame on the political appointee
Michael Brown
when so many others below and outside the appointee had greater
responsibility for mistakes in Katrina and a greater role to play. As of late January 2006, much more
emphasis from the news media and Congress was given to lower level FEMA managers,
the state governors, and the mayors. Mayor Nagin, too, finally began
discussion of his involvement in Katrina preparations. However, Congress
continually placed blame on FEMA during the testimony of these secondary
emergency response officials and frequently downplayed their
responsibility--including Nagin's--in the immediacy and aftermath of Katrina. As
explained below in part, Homeland Security is not only about terrorism; it
is about keeping the homeland safe. In order for HLS to work, it is
imperative that the state and local government be responsible for it. Consequently, the
public is still being misled by both Congress and the TV news media. --Patrick Fagan, 02/01/06
Author’s Note #2: The Senate has held a hearing at which Michael Brown testified. At last, several Senators stated they believed Brown was being made a “scapegoat,” a claim I made early last October and a secondary theme in this paper. However, from 3 plus hours of Brown's testimony the TV news media have selected only 2 brief pieces to report to their viewers. The first was Brown's short give-and-take with Senator Coleman, which the media used to say the hearing was “combative.” Ironically, that part of the Q&A lasted less than 2.5 minutes. The second was Brown's short answer to Senator Pryor's single question whether Brown was being made the scapegoat by the Bush Administration (less than 45 seconds). Brown's concise answer, given after jokingly stating his wife should be issued a subpeona to answer in his stead, was that he “felt abandoned.” His brief comment on being abandoned was the major network news headline taken from the hearing; the secondary headline was that minor White House officials did not know about the severity of Katrina until Day 2, a claim Brown disputes. Whether underlings of Bush knew on Day 1 or Day 2 was a very marginal and succinct concern in the 3-hour hearing, but the news media chose it as a major issue to be used against the Bush Administration in the nightly news and on their websites. Again, none of this will help the Katrina victims or help fix the preparation and response problems.
It does indeed look as though the Senate is finally on the right track to making sure there is never another Katrina-like disaster on the Coast. The Senate has interviewed all the right people who played major and secondary roles in the Katrina preparation and response, and it has asked the right questions. --Patrick Fagan, 02/10/06
Author’s Note #3: On the same day the House is supposed to
be releasing its final report, Chertoff just appeared in a Senate hearing. In my
opinion, the most important statement he made was that he wanted to make it
clear to the Senate and the public that the state and local government have to
be responsible in responding to disasters. He said that FEMA can get the
emergency supplies and equipment in the area of the disaster, but state and
local officials have to be responsible for moving and distributing those
supplies once they are made available. Not one Senate member followed up on this
response by Chertoff; instead, each member kept pressing that FEMA and the
federal government were mostly at fault and wanted to place blame on just one
specific person.
Incredibly,
part of the hearing was spent on why "Chertoff went to bed on Monday night"
without knowing the levees in NO were broken. Several Senators made a huge
issue out of this, but the issue seems petty. Operating officials below him
knew, and they were certainly more responsible for the immediate response to the
levee breaks.
Senator Frank
Lautenberg raised the "scapegoat" issue again. However, with FEMA clearly being
responsible for the "response and recover" phase of the continual Katrina
disaster, it is understandable why FEMA is still being drilled.
The US House
final report is being released. It can be found here:
http://katrina.house.gov/index.htm.
In opening statements, Chairman Tom Davis distributed blame equally, being sure
to include the LA governor and NO mayor. It appears on the face of it that
the House cannot be accused of political fingerpointing and that the final
product was indeed bipartisan. During the press conference immediately
after opening statements, the news media constantly pressed the Representatives
to name one person to blame for Katrina. Several journalists pushed to have
Chertoff removed, even though Representatives constantly stated that Chertoff
was very adept and skilled for his position and that the citizens at the local
levels should be the ones to determine who was to blame for the Katrina fiasco.
The Representatives constantly had to tell the news media that officials of all
levels of government made errors. The gist of it is that the state
and local government did not do what they were expected to do, and when the federal
government realized that, neither did it do what it was expected. This is surely
the right approach for the House to take. The House made a very good decision in
this regard.
--Patrick
Fagan, 02/15/06
Author’s Note #4: I am reading the House report, but being 500 plus pages long, it is going to take some time to assess. On first impressions I am disappointed that a whole section was devoted to "FEMA Preparedness," but nothing similar was done for "state and local preparedness." I understand the Committee was on the federal level and more responsive to the federal agency everyone has decided was at fault. Still, if the state and local role in preparedness is slighted, Katrina victims and future victims in need of emergency homeland security services are not going to be served well.
The Democrats are still carping the Bush Administration for the Katrina results. Yesterday on C-SPAN after the presentation of the House report, Representative Nancy Pelosi repeatedly ignored media questions about the Katrina role of state and local officials in LA--even though most of those officials are Democrats. At every question about the LA officials, she turned the focus back to the Bush Administration. She said that the Democrats were not going to focus on those officials and that they were only concerned about the Bush Administration.
This Democrat diversion is most unfortunate. The federal government cannot rush into every area of the country where some levee or dam breaks or some earthquake occurs. It is most imperative that LA residents not be duped into thinking that their state and local government and emergency officials did not fail them. The Democrats are still misleading their constituents and they are doing it with petty politics.
It is interesting to note, however, that the Democrats on the Select Committee did not take this diversionary approach to responsibility for Katrina. In their televised presentations, the Democrat committee members distributed responsibility equally to the federal, state, and local officials. I have added all the C-SPAN videos from February 15 to February 16--after the release of the report--to the Katrina Social Science Bibliography. --Patrick Fagan, 02/16/06
Author’s Note #4: This will be my final update to this paper. When the Senate releases its final report, I plan to write a paper that compares that report to the House report. Here is a final thought based on my readings, videos, and studies of the governments in Hurricane Katrina.
It appears to me there was enough planning, and the right plans were in place for New Orleans. Similar plans worked well in Florida time and time again; they worked in California; they worked in Texas; and they worked in Mississippi. In my opinion, they did not work in Louisiana because of one thing: lack of practice. Hurricane operations go smoothly in Florida because it gets to practice 2 to 4 times a year. New Orleans does not.
Federal and state governments have a history of waiting till something goes awry, and then they fix it. Katrina was no different. Katrina broke New Orleans, but it will be fixed in time for the next hurricane. I have no doubt about that. However, I do not think huge changes are needed at the federal level. The state and local governments, though, do need more changes and much more practice in protecting its citizens in times of disaster. --Patrick Fagan, 02/19/06