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Katrina response lacked a leader

The Government Accountability Office also found that the government still lacks sufficient plans and training programs to prepare for disasters.

By Times Staff Writer
Published February 1, 2006

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff or another top official should have been a "central focal point" of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, congressional investigators asserted Wednesday, saying the lack of a clear chain of command hindered relief efforts.

The Government Accountability Office also found that the government still lacks sufficient plans and training programs to prepare for catastrophic disasters like the Aug. 29 storm that devastated much of the Gulf Coast area.

"We need to be able to have somebody who is clearly responsible and accountable to the president, who has the authority of the president to deal with the overall response," said GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker, who presented the report to a special House investigative panel.

"You've got to cut through all the layers and bureaucracy and red tape," Walker added.

The report, which marks the first congressional conclusions about the much-criticized federal response to Katrina, offered a harsh assessment of the government's preparations and reaction to catastrophic disasters. It also singled out Chertoff in several shortcomings.

Until now, Chertoff has largely escaped widespread criticism of the government's sluggish response to Katrina. By contrast, then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, the principal federal official at the disaster site, quit his job after becoming the public face of the failures.

The report said that neither Chertoff nor any of his deputies in the disaster area acted as President Bush's overall storm coordinator, "which serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework."

Leadership "was unclear," the report found.

Because of the internal confusion, federal officials were indecisive and slow to realize Katrina was a catastrophic disaster, it said.

The report also noted that Chertoff declared Katrina an "incident of national significance" on Aug. 30, a full day after the storm hit. But Chertoff did not specifically classify the storm as a catastrophic disaster, which would have activated parts of the National Response Plan to trigger a faster response.

"As a result, the federal response generally was to wait for the affected states to request assistance," the report found.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke did not have an immediate response to the report Wednesday morning.

The report was a stinging slap to the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency and issued the National Response Plan last year.

The House committee chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. is expected to release its own findings by Feb. 15. Additionally, a Senate panel will conclude a separate investigation by mid-March.

"I'm very hopeful that our final report will answer a lot of questions the American people have," Davis said after being presented with the GAO report. "The most obvious being: How could our government fail so badly?"

The report also found that other federal agencies had an "incomplete understanding of roles and responsibilities" under the National Response Plan - one area that could be solved with better training for disasters. However, it praised the Coast Guard, the Pentagon, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Finance Center for taking a "lean forward" approach to preparing for and responding to Katrina.

Though Brown was named as the top federal officer in the Gulf Coast, his authority was unclear, the report found, leading to a "disjointed" response from all federal agencies.

"In the absence of timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability, there were multiple chains of command," the report found.

It also noted "a myriad of approaches and processes for requesting and providing assistance, and confusion about who should be advised of requests and what resources would be provided within specific time frames."

[Last modified February 1, 2006, 12:00:05]