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Hurricane Katrina

Dueling inquiries

A comparison of a White House investigation into Hurricane Katrina, released Thursday, and a Feb. 15 House report:

Evacuation

HOUSE: Mandatory evacuations ordered in Alabama and Mississippi went well. Evacuations in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish were declared late or not at all, a failure that "led to preventable deaths."

WHITE HOUSE: Federal performance was weak across the Gulf Coast due to poor planning for evacuations, communications, equipment and evacuee processing. Though fundamentally a state and local responsibility, the federal government must be ready to evacuate people.

Levees breach

HOUSE: Despite reports from FEMA and the Coast Guard the night Katrina hit, the Homeland Security Operations Center failed to conclude that New Orleans' levees were breached.

WHITE HOUSE: Confusion about the difference between levee overtoppings and breaches contributed to delays in responding to flooding in New Orleans.

Military response

HOUSE: Military assistance was invaluable, but the military failed to coordinate with state, local and other federal assistance organizations.

WHITE HOUSE: The Defense Department was one of the only federal departments able to respond to presidential orders effectively. But active duty military and National Guard operations were not coordinated and served two bosses, the president and governors. The military may need to oversee the federal response in the worst catastrophes.

Communication

HOUSE: Damage to communications was extraordinary, but officials failed to plan adequately for alternatives. Multiple levels of government did not prepare for the loss of power. Government failed at all levels to deal with long-standing problems of "interoperability," the ability of different public safety units to communicate with each other.

WHITE HOUSE: Disjointed and conflicting reports from the disaster gave agencies a confused picture of what was happening. Lacking and inadequate communication systems added to the confusion because radios and telephones were knocked out. Federal agencies did not understand their missions.

Bush role

HOUSE: President Bush's remarks, shortly after Katrina hit, that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" showed he was not being briefed by a disaster specialist. Delays in assigning relief missions "may have been avoided if the president had been advised of the need for early presidential involvement."

WHITE HOUSE: Bush is not specifically blamed, but the White House should have activated an emergency alert system before Katrina hit. White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend said the White House should have acted faster to cut red tape.

State and local governments

HOUSE: New Orleans police were ill-prepared and lost "almost all effectiveness." Despite adequate warning 56 hours before Katrina made landfall, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin delayed ordering a mandatory evacuation in New Orleans until 19 hours before landfall.

WHITE HOUSE: Two days before the storm's Aug. 29 landfall, Gulf Coast officials knew tens of thousands of residents would be unable to evacuate. Changes at all levels of government are needed.

Chertoff and Brown

HOUSE: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff should have more quickly declared Katrina an "incident of national disaster" to trigger resources. Michael Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, should not have been in charge of the response because he had not been trained for it.

WHITE HOUSE: Chertoff was having trouble coordinating activities of various federal agencies and was not receiving fast, accurate information. Still, Chertoff is not faulted at length because the report says the government's disaster response plan is unclear. Brown was still working on an organizational chart more than three days after the hurricane made landfall.

[Last modified February 24, 2006, 01:41:24]