FEMA turned away thousands of
rescue workers from other government
agencies as Katrina victims drowned
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by Eric Lipton, The New York Times
Jan. 30, 2006
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 -- As Hurricane Katrina passed across the Gulf Coast last August, the federal Interior Department offered hundreds of trucks and flat-bottomed boats, thousands of law enforcement officers and even 11 aircraft to help with the rescue effort. But much of the equipment and personnel were not used as part of the federal response, or at least not used effectively, according to an account prepared by department officials.
"Clearly these assets and skills were precisely relevant in the post-Katrina environment," said the department's assessment, prepared at the request of a Senate committee investigating the government's flawed reaction to the storm. The report focused on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Interior Department, the docu-
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ment says, has a staff of 4,400 law enforcement officers, "many of whom work in harsh environments and are trained in search and rescue, emergency medical services and evacuation," and many of them were in the Gulf Coast area. Yet the report says they were not called to help by FEMA until late September.
The Interior Department was not the only government agency to offer assistance that was not used, or at least not used effectively. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said in September that Amtrak had offered, before the storm, to carry residents out, but that its train had left nearly empty. New Mexico offered National Guard troops, but for days officials waited for formal approval to use them.
But the internal documents note that the Interior Department is formally a part of the January 2005 Southern Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan, prepared by FEMA, and was supposed to play a support role in the "need for rescue and sheltering of thousands of victims," according to the plan.
Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that the department realized that mistakes were made and that it, along with FEMA, was studying what went wrong.
"We are going to be our own toughest critics," Mr. Knocke said.
Even without an official federal assignment, some Interior Department boats and security squads took part in rescue efforts, but it occurred on an ad hoc basis, ultimately helping about 4,500 people, the department said.
The examination of the Interior Department's role also says that some agency employees may have used government resources to repair their own homes, or the homes of friends or relatives, after the storm.
Monday's scheduled hearing, on the search and rescue efforts, is the first of two weeks of hearings by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which hopes to wrap up its investigation by mid-March.
As originally published
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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Commentary by Helen & Harry Highwater:
FEMA disregarded its own hurricane disaster plans, and ignored other agencies' offers of help.
FEMA had no use for "hundreds of trucks and flat-bottomed boats, thousands of law enforcement officers and even 11 aircraft to help with the rescue effort"?
"Mistakes were made," says some schmuck at Homeland Security, FEMA's mother agency, but I'd like someone at FEMA or DHS to explain -- under oath -- how this could be a "mistake."
With a major American city in ruins and who-knows-how-many thousands of people suddenly homeless across the South -- thousands of people are still 'missing' today -- FEMA turned away thousands of trained rescue personnel ... by "mistake"?
There's incompetence, and beyond incompetence there's outright malfeasance. And this is miles beyond malfeasance.
This is mass murder.
The management at FEMA, beginning with former FEMA Chief Michael Brown, should be prosecuted.
=Helen & Harry Highwater=
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