Split Thread Michael Brown and Katrina

[RandFan]

delete

 

[RandFan]

what do you believe about state and local failures? Not "for arguments sake", what do you personally believe? Why are you afraid to engage in discussion or conversation?

red her·ring
noun
noun: red herring; plural noun: red herrings

something, especially a clue, that is or is intended to be misleading or distracting.

 

[RandFan]

So you still want to talk about Brown and Bush, but you won't answer my question about what the feds et al could have done to fix the levees, during the tenure of messrs. Brown and Bush.

If, for whatever reason, you won't answer that question, might you at least state why? As always there is NO RUSH! Take your time and think it out.

Does your point about fixing levees absolve Brown of any and all responsibility?

 

[Augustine]

What exactly is misleading or distracting about asking someone to engage in the conversation? Do you actually have conversations with people like this? Seriously, I cannot remember ever using "for arguments sake" in a discussion. Have some courage and own what you believe in.

 

[CORed]

Although I think Brown's handling of Katrina was poor, I don't think it is unfair or a red herring to say that the state and local handling was equally poor, if not worse. The one thing that could have made a significant difference would have been getting the people the hell out of there, which would have meant both issuing the evacuation order sooner and providing transportation for people who didn't have cars. This was the responsibility of state and local government. As has been pointed out, there were school buses available, which ended up getting destroyed in the flood.

Katrina was a screwup by all levels of government. A major hurricane hitting New Orleans was perhaps the most predictable disaster in a long time, and government at all levels should have been much better prepared for it.

 

[RandFan]

Although I think Brown's handling of Katrina was poor, I don't think it is unfair or a red herring to say that the state and local handling was equally poor, if not worse. The one thing that could have made a significant difference would have been getting the people the hell out of there, which would have meant both issuing the evacuation order sooner and providing transportation for people who didn't have cars. This was the responsibility of state and local government. As has been pointed out, there were school buses available, which ended up getting destroyed in the flood.

Katrina was a screwup by all levels of government. A major hurricane hitting New Orleans was perhaps the most predictable disaster in a long time, and government at all levels should have been much better prepared for it.

I will agree with you so long as the locals are not used as a distraction for the monumental cluster **** everyone knew was likely but no one wanted to take the hit for preparing for it.

So long as I'm not demanded to address the behavior of the locals or shift focus away from Brown. Let's be clear. I have on a number of occasions asked others to make a case for why the actions of locals should mitigate or excuse Brown. I'm willing to discuss the locals if anyone can make a case for how it does so.

People are free to make that case. However, they need to make the case not just assert it's there.

 

[carlitos]

Does your point about fixing levees absolve Brown of any and all responsibility?

No, but "any and all" is yet another strawman. You are the one claiming that "Brown did nothing," and there is myriad evidence to the contrary, much of which is cited from sources that you posted.

I'm really surprised at your unwillingness to engage here.

 

[RandFan]

No, but "any and all" is yet another strawman. You are the one claiming that "Brown did nothing," and there is myriad evidence to the contrary, much of which is cited from sources that you posted.

It's relative. It's meant to demonstrate the paucity of substantive preparation.

Edited by kmortis: 

Removed off topic content

 

[sunmaster14]

I will agree with you so long as the locals are not used as a distraction for the monumental cluster **** everyone knew was likely but no one wanted to take the hit for preparing for it.

Your own reference to the Hurricane Pam Exercise shows that FEMA was doing a great deal to prepare. Those exercises take a lot of time and money. In just the 14 months prior to Katrina, FEMA conducted an 8-day exercise and held several workshops with local and state emergency officials in Louisiana to work out a disaster plan for New Orleans. That's really quite a lot of planning to spend on one city, which represents 1/4 of 1% of the nation's population.

So long as I'm not demanded to address the behavior of the locals or shift focus away from Brown. Let's be clear. I have on a number of occasions asked others to make a case for why the actions of locals should mitigate or excuse Brown. I'm willing to discuss the locals if anyone can make a case for how it does so.

I've made the case several times already in this thread. An orderly evacuation was not supposed to leave 40,000 people trapped at the Superdome and Convention Center. That was supposed to be a shelter of last resort. It was not even approved as a shelter since it wasn't hurricane proof. As is true with military invasions, large scale mobilizations of men and materiel depend on a choreographed series of steps, links in a chain if you will, and if one step fails, or is delayed or otherwise not completed, the pooch can be screwed rather rapidly. You have harped on the fact that FEMA prepositioned only enough supplies to take care of 15,000 people for three days, and it turned out that 40,000 people had to be supplied for 5 days. Well, whose fault is that actually? Was it the designer of the plan, or the people who were implementing the plan who were at fault? Or was it instead just bad luck?

Whenever I run into people who toss around accusations of incompetence or negligence when things don't go according to plan, I always like to test their knowledge of history. No doubt you've heard of the successful D-Day landings whose anniversary we celebrated two days ago, but have you ever heard of Exercise Tiger? It's kind of remarkable that almost nobody but the most devoted war historians have ever heard of that monumental ***************, isn't it?

 

[Augustine]

I am no fan of Mike Brown; I'm not sure who has tried to mitigate or excuse his failure. However, I have said that Chertoff is more culpable and in many respects Brown gets a bad rap. (Ironically, I am not the only one who feels that way. James Lee Witt was interviewed by PBS Frontline very shortly after Brown resigned and asked the following: Q: You think he got a fair shake in this? JLW:… I think that he was dealt a bad hand in the sense of the leadership and the responsibility, and the resources [were] taken out of the agency to the extent that it made [it] difficult to lead. James Lee Witt had been hired by Louisiana a couple days after Katrina made landfall to come in and help the state - to include giving them classes on NIMS. Am I allowed to say that? Anyway, you can tell JLW has a lot more criticism for Allbaugh, Brown's predecessor and "friend" who hired him and then skipped out when FEMA got rolled up under DHS.)

Big topic of FEMA getting rolled under DHS and stripping funding as well as removing Preparedness from FEMA and rolling it under a DHS Directorate, I would again recommend reading the full chapter on FEMA Preparedness in "A Failure of Initiative". (Probably wasting my breath here, but worth a try.)

When did Brown get appointed as PFO (Principal Federal Official) for Katrina? Look it up, it was August 30, 2005 at 9 PM. Tuesday evening.

Who was it before?
:::::
Chertoff.

References:NRP Dec 2004, pages 3, 4, and 9;
HSPD-5; Management of Domestic Incidents

The Secretary of Homeland Security is the principal Federal official for domestic incident management.

Pursuant to HSPD-5, as the principal Federal official for domestic incident management the Secretary of Homeland Security declares Incidents of National Significance (in consultation with other departments and agencies as appropriate) and provides coordination for Federal operations and/or resources, establishes reporting requirements, and conducts ongoing communications with Federal, State, local, tribal, private-sector, and nongovernmental organizations to maintain situational awareness, analyze threats, assess national implications of threat and operational response activities, and coordinate potential or actual incidents.

HSPD-8 National Preparedness

The Secretary is the principal Federal official for coordinating the implementation of all-hazards preparedness in the United States.

The President appoints FCOs - which happened when emergencies were declared in the states, triggering the release of funds, which only FCOs can obligate; the DHS Secretary designates PFOs. When had a FEMA Director (used to be Director, now it's Administrator) been a PFO previously: never. When since: never. Brown was untrained and not on the PFO roster. But Chertoff flicked the booger very adeptly onto Brown.

The chain of responsibility for urban evacuation, highly debated after Katrina, was really quite simple, according to homeland-security mandates: the mayor; the New Orleans director of homeland security; the governor; the federal secretary of homeland security; the president.

Brinkley, the Great Deluge

I don't see FEMA Director in there at all.

So, yeah, Brown was not all that and a bag of chips, but he did perform ably in 2004 hurricane season. No, he was not cut out to be a PFO or even perform PFO duties, but there's a reason no FEMA Director or Administrator before or since has performed those duties - the position had only been written into the NRP by DHS for the 2004 NRP, and then was killed first by Congress through writing provisions into funding bills, then officially killed in 2010. It was a bad concept.

Why does Brown get the hate while Chertoff gets to slip past most discussions? (As I noted, he's only been mentioned once or twice in this thread and very much in passing.) My opinion is the reasons are: Bush praising Brown "heckuva job", and the revelations of stupid emails (and possibly the fact that he clearly resented being PFO, and defensiveness post-Katrina). If Chertoff had been publicly praised or any emails had surfaced, maybe it would be different. As it is, I would say Brown gets overly blamed and Chertoff gets largely a free pass for something that he was more culpable for.


Regarding the prepositioning, and magnitude of prepositioning; I will defer to one of the FEMA "bureaucrats" as Randfan likes to call them. (I would also recommend Scott Wells' testimony). The Katrina Lessons Learned excerpt does remind us that initially Katrina was projected to hit mid-panhandle Florida before moving to hit New Orleans, and some prepositioning occurred to have items closer to the Florida area.
Interview with Paulison, Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; acting director after Brown (September 2005); previously director of the Preparedness Division of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate/FEMA in DHS 2003-2004; U.S. Fire Administrator December 2001-2003

FEMA had response plans and resources dedicated to this hurricane before it made landfall, resources which, based on previous experience, would have provided a good beginning to the response and recovery efforts. FEMA expected a Category 4 or 5 storm, so we had prepositioned a tremendous amount of equipment; hundreds of tractor-trailer loads of food, water, and ice; urban search and rescue teams; and disaster medical assistance teams (DMATs). This was a standard predeployment action for our agency, just as a fire department would preposition resources at a large sporting event in its jurisdiction. If the event goes well, you return the assets; if not, you are ready to respond quickly where you anticipate needing them. Because of initial reports of the potential size and scope of Katrina, FEMA had sent a considerable amount of supplies and manpower. As I look back at FEMA’s initial prepositioning of resources, it is clear we expected, in terms of need, what we’d see in normal level 4 or level 5 hurricanes. I say normal; however, clearly, they’re all somewhat different. The FEMA pre-event needs assessment was for a standard level 4 or 5 hurricane. That’s what the FEMA system expected to see.

I think what FEMA didn’t expect was the failure of the levees. The large and stranded population in the Superdome was a good example of a few of the things FEMA had not expected, ending up with 20,000 to 30,000 people in the Superdome (probably nobody will ever know the exact number) with no food, no water, and very little security. We did not expect the staggering number of people that showed up at the convention center. We did not expect to end up evacuating entire hospitals. We needed to assist thousands of patients, many of them invalids, from hospitals and nursing homes. That’s not what FEMA normally does, but we ended up in this role. We ended up doing air lifts, which we don’t normally get involved in.
The levees were a point of failure. Although we had preincident information that there was a probability of flooding, we had assumed that that would happen if a storm were to stall over the city of New Orleans. Failure of the levees was a possibility; however, we had assumed it would be the result of a stalled continuous downpour.
The resultant issues surrounding our need to organize the largest rescue efforts ever undertaken in our country stalled some of our other more routine efforts, as resources and manpower were shifted to rescue the trapped and stranded Americans in New Orleans. These efforts were further complicated by the lack of infrastructure and access, which prevented the immediate insertion of our ground-based forces. The geographic enormity of this event is also worth mentioning here: FEMA had an area of response of 90 square miles.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) positioned an unprecedented number of resources in affected areas prior to Katrina’s landfall. Indeed, FEMA’s efforts far exceeded any previous operation in the agency’s history. A staggering total of 11,322,000 liters of water, 18,960,000 pounds of ice, 5,997,312 meals ready to eat (MREs), and 17 truckloads of tarps were staged at various strategic locations in and near the Gulf region prior to Katrina’s landfall.1 FEMA also pre-positioned 18 disaster medical teams, medical supplies and equipment, and nine urban search and rescue task forces (US&R) and incident support teams.2 Rapid Needs Assessment Teams also were deployed to Louisiana on the Saturday before landfall.3 In Louisiana alone, on August 28, a total of 36 trucks of water (18,000 liters per truck) and 15 trucks of MREs (21,888 per truck) were pre-staged at Camp Beauregard.

In preparation for Florida landfall, FEMA delivered 100 truckloads of ice to staging areas in Georgia, and thirty-five truckloads of food and seventy trucks of water to Palmetto, Georgia. Also, anticipating a potential second Gulf Coast landfall, FEMA pre-staged over 400 truckloads of ice, more than 500 truckloads of water, and nearly 200 truckloads of food at logistics centers in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia , Texas, and South Carolina. This was the beginning of the pre-staging efforts that increased to the largest pre-positioning of Federal assets in history by the time Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall on August 29, 2005

I realize some people want this to be as simple as a National Geographic picture, and a mission statement of "don't fail", but the whole picture is a little more complex. A Failure of Initiative is nearly 400 pages; A Nation Still Unprepared is nearly 800 pages; Brinkley's Great Deluge was 400-500 pages if I remember; the DHS OIG Report OIG 06-32 is nearly 200 pages - but hey, let's boil it down to bumper stickers. I've already said that I think sunmaster's order of blame is pretty accurate, with the inclusion of Chertoff.

 

[RandFan]

The thread is in response to a question about Brown and Katrina. Not Chertoff. I'm happy to stipulate that Chertoff, Brown and Bush would be happy together in the same cell.

That's not going to happen of course. As to the rest of your thread, it's a bit of a Gish Gallup but I don't find much to complain about.

I do want to give you some credit. Would Katrina have been significantly different had it occurred during the Clinton Administration or Obama administration?

It's impossible to say for sure. I'd happily hold both accountable for such negligence. I doubt either are anywhere near as incompetent as George Bush and company who showed no sense of urgency whatsoever. Everyone was on vacation and shopping for shoes and discussing other matters (see time line).

I realize some people want this to be as simple as a National Geographic picture, and a mission statement of "don't fail", but the whole picture is a little more complex.

This is a straw man. I've made clear countless times that Brown and the Bush admin were not the only ones culpable.

If you keep repeating a lie it won't make it true.

ETA: I'm providing a more in-depth response to the FEMA followup report.

 

[RandFan]

The Art of Apologetics

Katrina Lessons Learned[/B]]In preparation for Florida landfall, FEMA delivered 100 truckloads of ice to staging areas in Georgia, and thirty-five truckloads of food and seventy trucks of water to Palmetto, Georgia. Also, anticipating a potential second Gulf Coast landfall, FEMA pre-staged over 400 truckloads of ice, more than 500 truckloads of water, and nearly 200 truckloads of food at logistics centers in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia , Texas, and South Carolina. This was the beginning of the pre-staging efforts that increased to the largest pre-positioning of Federal assets in history by the time Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall on August 29, 2005

CYA. Spread it out. Make it look enormous. To be fair, it was a lot. Not nearly enough. If the City of NY had sent only have the forces that they did send to the Twin Towers they could have listed all of those resources lost and it would have been impressive. Not even close to enough. I don't know how to make this clear. FEMA issued dire warnings if certain events occurred (flooding of NO). Let's back up. What where the original death toll estimates? How many would survive the flood?

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

50,000, right? So, what can we make of this? These are btw FEMA numbers from the original report.

1. FEMA predicts a large storm to cause catastrophic damage.
2. Katrina was a Cat 5 storm.
3. Thousands die waiting to be rescued.
4. Is this what Brown expected?
5. Is this what Brown got?

Consider this:

MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]

 

[Jango]

Let me be the first.

FACTS:

• A direct hit by a hurricane was at the top of the list of things for Brown to take care of.
• Brown did NOT take care of it. People died even though Browne knew it was likely they would.

That is criminal negligence. There is no argument here. He was the head of an agency that determined that a direct hurricane on Louisiana would result in a catastrophe the like of a nuclear explosion in New York.

Don't believe me? Her's an article from the National Geograpic printed one year before Katrina.

Read it again. And again. It doesn't matter how many times you read it, the facts cannot change.

Now, look at the time line for Katrina (wiki for info only, sources provided on request though they are at the bottom of the article).

1. America spent enormous resources to assess potential disasters.
2. America spent enormous resources to create a system that could save lives.
3. Brown knew the risks of a hit on Louisiana (it was his job to know).
4. Brown knew there was a significant risk that Katrina would strike Louisiana.
5. Brown did nothing.

Brown (and Bush) are criminally negligent. Both showed depraved indifference.

Scapegoating of Ray Nagin in 3... 2.. 1.

The FEMA Director was but one decision making bureaucrat in the chain of command. The buck surely makes a stop at Mr. Brown's desk, but ultimately, it lands and stays on President Bush's. Why? Bush has advisers just like every other POTUS and he was informed by these advisers about all sorts of different things from the economy to warfare. It flies in the face of any kind to reason to believe that President Bush was not notified of the hurricane and its severity. In those briefs, plans/options for dealing with the event are also talked about because FEMA is appropriated only so much money every year to try and handle the disasters that ravage this country coast-to-coast all year long. To be completely blunt, it isn't surprising that the people affected by Katrina were left to fend for themselves and die given the fact that the President was already known to have sat on his ass and not do his job when the nation was engulfed by an on-going crisis.

 

[RandFan]

The FEMA Director was but one decision making bureaucrat in the chain of command. The buck surely makes a stop at Mr. Brown's desk, but ultimately, it lands and stays on President Bush's. Why? Bush has advisers just like every other POTUS and he was informed by these advisers about all sorts of different things from the economy to warfare. It flies in the face of any kind to reason to believe that President Bush was not notified of the hurricane and its severity. In those briefs, plans/options for dealing with the event are also talked about because FEMA is appropriated only so much money every year to try and handle the disasters that ravage this country coast-to-coast all year long. To be completely blunt, it isn't surprising that the people affected by Katrina were left to fend for themselves and die given the fact that the President was already known to have sat on his ass and not do his job when the nation was engulfed by an on-going crisis.

I agree. If my thread makes it seem that I'm putting the blame all on Brown I'm not. I could be persuaded that it was such a [epithet removed] and Brown had been placed under Chertoff perhaps he has plausible cover.

While I personally think he is criminally negligent I'm willing to say that Brown is not the most culpable and perhaps I should reserve more vitriol for Chertoff.

 

[Augustine]

So are you able to state what you personally think about Johnny Bradberry yet, or are you still unable to answer?

 

[RandFan]

So are you able to state what you personally think about Johnny Bradberry yet, or are you still unable to answer?

I answered you on multiple occasions. I'm not unreasonable. Tell me why you think Johnny Bradberry is relevant to the OP, if the reason is material to the discussion I will go find my answer and quote it for you.

 

[sunmaster14]

Augustine, you're doing a yeoman's job, but I'm afraid it's going in one ear and out the other. I am not religious, nor much of a biblical scholar, but I think the advice in Matthew 7:6 applies here.

 

[Wolrab]

This is killing me. Bush being blamed for 1000+ deaths of people that should have not been there as the state and city dropped the ball on evacuations.

 

[RandFan]

This is killing me. Bush being blamed for 1000+ deaths of people that should have not been there as the state and city dropped the ball on evacuations.

So, you think Bush bears no blame whatsoever? He made no mistakes?

 

[sunmaster14]

So, you think Bush bears no blame whatsoever? He made no mistakes?

Bit of a strawman there. There's a lot of room between making no mistakes and being criminally responsible for 1,000+ deaths. For my part, I think the Bush administration's main mistakes were in the field of public relations. I can't think of much that they did wrong that affected the situation on the ground.

I mean, sure, it looked bad for Condi Rice to go shoe shopping in NY. But she was Secretary of State. What does that have to do with responding to a hurricane in the US?