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An Angry 'Times-Picayune' Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans on Sunday published its third print edition since the hurricane disaster struck, chronicling the arrival, finally, of some relief but also taking President Bush to task for his handling of the crisis, and calling for the firing of FEMA director Michael Brown and others.
In an "open letter" to the president, published on page 15 of the 16-page edition, the paper said it still had grounds for "skepticism" that he would follow through on saving the city and its residents. It pointed out that while the government could not get supplies to the city numerous TV reporters, singer Harry Connick and Times-Picayune staffers managed to find a way in.
It also cited "bald-faced" lies by Michael Brown. "Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach," the staffers pointed out. "We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry."
Here is the text.
***
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.
How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.
Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.
Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.
Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.
Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.
We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.
Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.
It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?
State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."
Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."
That’s unbelievable.
There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.
No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.
Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.
When you do, we will be the first to applaud.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586
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Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings. He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornadoes to accompany the storm as it came ashore.
"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.
"I keep looking back to see if there was anything else we could have done, and I just don't know what it would be," he said. Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.
Brown, Mayfield said, is a dedicated public servant.
"The question is why he couldn't shake loose the resources that were needed,'' he said.
Brown and Chertoff could not be reached for comment on Sunday afternoon.
In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff also briefed FEMA, which under the Department of Homeland Security, at FEMA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., its Region 6 office in Dallas and the Region 4 office in Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm.
He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center's records. And Mayfield said his staff also participated in the five-day "Hurricane Pam" exercise sponsored by FEMA and the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in July 2004 that assumed a similar storm would hit the city.
FEMA's own July 23, 2004, news release announcing the end of that exercise summed up the assumptions they used, which were eerily close to what Katrina delivered:
"Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.
"The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana."
That plan assumed such a hurricane would result in the opening of 1,000 evacuee shelters that would have to be staffed for 100 days, and a search and rescue operation using 800 people. The storm would create 30 million tons of debris, including 237,000 cubic yards of household hazardous waste.
The Times-Picayune -- which abandoned its New Orleans headquarters and temporarily ceased its print publication last week -- called on every Federal Emergency Management Agency official to be fired, "Director Michael Brown especially."
The editorial joined other voices criticizing the governmental response to the disaster, including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Criticism has come from people affected on the ground as well as from politicians of both parties
"We have been abandoned by our own country," said Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans.
He broke down in tears Sunday as he recounted how a colleague's mother drowned awaiting rescue from a nursing home.
"Everyday, she called and she said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' " Broussard told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's going to get you.
" 'Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday.
" 'Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday.
" 'Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday.
" 'Somebody's coming to get you on Friday,' and she drowned Friday night."
"Nobody's coming to get her. The secretary's promised, everybody's promised; they've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences.
"For God's sake, shut up and send us somebody."
The secretary to whom Broussard referred, Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security, on Sunday rejected criticism of his agency's work.
"This was not just a hurricane; it was a hurricane that was followed by a flood," Chertoff told CNN's "Late Edition."
"It was unprecedented and, I think, that created a challenge that, frankly, overwhelmed a lot of people -- state and local folks. We had people on the ground who were pre-positioned," he said, citing 50 Coast Guard helicopters as an example.
Chertoff said federal authorities "moved as rapidly as we could," and added that he, too, was frustrated that the pace of the response was not quicker.
"The fact of the matter is: It's never enough when there are still people suffering," he said.
"But there's also a tremendous amount of credit to be given," he said, pointing to the Coast Guard, FEMA, state and local rescue workers, the National Guard and the military.
Democrat to submit FEMA bill
Also Sunday, the top Democrat on the House Department of Homeland Security Committee blasted the federal government for its response.
"It was too little, too late," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. "We missed the mark."
Thompson said the blame can be traced to the merger of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with the Homeland Security Department, when domestic preparedness "took a back seat" to preparing for terrorist attacks.
Rep. John D. Dingell said he will introduce legislation Tuesday that would remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and make it, instead, an independent agency headed by a Cabinet-level executive.
"I can clearly see that FEMA has lost its way," the Democrat from Michigan said in a written statement.
James Lee Witt, a former FEMA director who has been brought in as an advisor by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, agreed that the agency "really needs to be put back as an independent agency."
"Since 9/11, FEMA has been basically dissected and taken apart," he told CNN.
FEMA, meanwhile, has refused to release 50 trucks carrying water and ice sitting at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree said.
"They're sitting down there right now because one person from FEMA won't make the call to say, 'Release those trucks,' " he said.
Two-thirds of the residents of the southern Mississippi city have no power, and that figure was 100 percent for three-and-a-half days, he added.
He said FEMA representatives did not arrive in Hattiesburg -- 95 miles from New Orleans -- until Saturday.
"People from all over America have come in to help us," he said. "But the people who get paid to do this haven't done what I think they should have done."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/katrina.blame/index.html