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Homeland security failed katrina the first big test Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-05-senators-dhs_x.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-05-senators-dhs_x.htm
Senators 'to demand answers' on slow action
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Hurricane Katrina has become the Homeland Security Department's first big test.
Air Force National Guard members shield storm victims as they wait to be airlifted from New Orleans.
By Mario Tama, Getty Images
Since the department was created after the 9/11 attacks to prevent and respond to catastrophes, it has spent tens of billions of dollars, studied disaster scenarios of every imaginable kind and run some of the nation's biggest emergency response drills.
It should have been ready for just about anything. But it wasn't ready for the power of Katrina.
Tuesday, as workers struggle to provide better relief for survivors, Congress will begin investigating why the government's response was so slow.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., leaders of the Senate Homeland Security committee, will discuss their committee's plan for an inquiry into the response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The agency is the disaster-response division of the Homeland Security Department. (Related story: Congress returning to crowded agenda)
"We intend to demand answers as to how this immense failure occurred," the senators said in a statement.
Despite the problems and the criticism, government workers are pushing ahead to help tens of thousands of people put out of their homes.
In the Gulf Coast region, two cruise ships based in Galveston, Texas, began boarding evacuees — 2,600 per ship — and the Postal Service began trying to reconnect evacuees with their mail. Customs officers are expected today at the Astrodome in Houston, where they will deliver 100,000 articles of clothing.
Emergency workers also plan to move people from the Astrodome and other large shelters into smaller community shelters.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who flew to the Gulf region over the weekend to take control of the relief effort, appointed Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen on Monday to run recovery efforts in New Orleans.
Chertoff will fly back to Washington for one day today to meet with members of President Bush's Cabinet and members of Congress.
Some, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., say Bush should appoint an independent national commission similar to the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks. "The slow pace of relief efforts in the face of a mounting death toll ... seems to confirm that our ability to respond to cataclysmic disaster has not adequately been addressed," Clinton wrote in a letter to Bush over the weekend.
The response in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf region shows "we're not at all prepared for the big one," said Randy Larsen of the Homeland Security Institute, a research group.
Brian Besanceney, head of public affairs at the Homeland Security Department, said Katrina and the subsequent flooding in New Orleans caused a level of devastation significantly beyond a terrorist's capability and the slow response should not be taken as an indication that the government isn't equipped to handle another terrorist attack.
Unlike the devastation in New York City on 9/11, which was confined to 16 acres, the wreckage from Katrina spreads over 90,000 square miles and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
"This is the type of force that only Mother Nature can really unleash," Besanceney said. "The sheer geography of it would be very difficult for terrorists to achieve."
But with a nuclear or large radiological device, or even with a major chemical attack, terrorists could render a city the size of New Orleans uninhabitable. And many of the rescue and recovery issues would be the same: Tens of thousands would need to be rescued, power would be out, areas of the city would be contaminated, mobile hospitals and medical equipment would be needed, and shelter and food would be scarce.
"This damage could just as easily have been caused by a terrorist attack, and many if not most of the same elements are involved in responding to natural disasters," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said.
Kyl also plans hearings as chairman of a terrorism and homeland security subcommittee in the Senate. "We need to understand from the key authorities what went wrong," he said.
An independent Cabinet-level agency whose chief reported directly to the president during the Clinton administration, FEMA was one of 22 agencies folded into the Homeland Security Department in 2003, and some experts say planning for how to respond to natural disasters took a back seat to planning for various terrorist scenarios.
"If this was a terrorist event, is this the kind of response we would have?" said James Lee Witt, the FEMA director under Clinton.
He said he doesn't understand why response was so slow. "We knew it was coming, we knew it was going to be a big disaster, we've run these scenarios many times," he said.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he'll introduce a bill today that would make FEMA once again an independent, Cabinet-level agency that reports directly to the president.
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