FEMA denied request for rubber boats
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- A day before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries fired off an urgent request for 300 rubber rafts to rescue people from what was expected to be high water in New Orleans.
Marked "Red-High"
priority, the plea went to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency headquarters in Denton, Texas, where a
team of disaster experts considered it. As Katrina
lashed southeast Louisiana and ruptured New Orleans'
levees Aug. 29, FEMA gave its answer: "Request denied."
The episode, which came to light Monday at a hearing of
the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, is just the latest in a growing collection of
planning miscues that, despite years of warnings, left
the region woefully unprepared for the storm.
The hearing also laid bare evidence of infighting and
back-biting among state, local and federal emergency
responders once the levees broke and plunged 80 percent
of New Orleans underwater. Countless acts of bravery
were intermingled with squabbling over scarce rescue
equipment as first responders operated in a virtual
communications blackout.
"What strikes me is the utter lack of coordination in
the search and rescue," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine,
told a panel of four front-line officials involved in
the Katrina response. "Don't you all talk to one
another?"
The hearing was the 12th the committee has held looking
at the government's actions before, during and after
Katrina. Several more are scheduled this week and next
week as the committee prepares to wrap up its work and
issue a report in mid-March. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
is slated to testify Wednesday and Gov. Blanco is
expected Thursday.
'We were not prepared'
The most stunning revelation from Monday's hearing was
the urgent missive for rubber rafts as Katrina remained
on course to swamp the New Orleans area. At that point,
the National Hurricane Center was warning of potential
breaches in New Orleans' levees and high water
throughout much of the city.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
wanted to use the rafts to carry those stranded by the
expected floodwaters to higher ground. As predictions
about the storm's ferocity grew more dire Aug. 28, the
request was increased to 1,000 rafts.
"We could have used them to tow additional evacuees, and
in lower water the rescuers could have used them to load
people who were sick and handicapped," said Lt. Col.
Keith LaCaze of Wildlife and Fisheries, which was
instrumental in the search and rescue effort in New
Orleans.
But William Lokey, chief of FEMA's operations branch,
told the Senate committee that the request was denied
because "the boats would not be effective." He said
rubber boats would not have performed well bobbing
alongside the debris that the storm was expected to
churn up.
It's not that FEMA didn't have resources at its
disposal. The committee released documents showing that
the U.S. Department of the Interior offered 300 boats,
400 trained rescue workers and 11 airplanes to FEMA in
the crucial days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
"I was not aware of that offer at the time," Lokey said.
"That shows we have a lot more work to do at the federal
level."
Lokey later conceded bluntly: "We were not prepared for
this."
FEMA wasn't the only agency that had difficulty managing
its resources when storm victims needed them most.
Collins questioned Louisiana National Guard Brig. Gen.
Brod Veillon about why boats and high-water vehicles
requested before the storm by the New Orleans Police
Department weren't made available.
Instead, many of the National Guard's boats and vehicles
were left at Jackson Barracks, one of the lowest points
in the city, where they were covered by floodwaters when
the levees broke.
"We have always placed them there," Veillon said. "We
were aware of the danger but believed it was the right
place to put the equipment."
Layers of bureaucracy
Capt. Tim Bayard, commander of the New Orleans Police
Department's vice and narcotics section, said he was
turned down by Wildlife and Fisheries for boats. Bayard
had set up a command post at Harrah's New Orleans
Casino, where he and another captain dispatched search
and rescue teams using five boats they managed to rustle
up on their own, two of which were commandeered.
Bayard said that two days after the levees broke, one of
his men spotted on high ground near City Hall a line of
20 flat-bottomed boats on trailers under the command of
the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department.
Bayard said he asked to use the boats for search and
rescue missions but was turned down. It wasn't the first
instance of friction between state and local agencies
scrambling to mount their rescue efforts with little or
no coordination.
"In an effort to coordinate, several contacts were made
with the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries. Each contact
was met with a great deal of resistance," Bayard said in
written testimony. "I often wonder how many stranded
citizens we could have rescued with those boats!"
LaCaze said five of the boats were lent to the New
Orleans Police Department. He said his agency refused to
give up the rest because they were being used to save
patients stranded at Tulane Medical Center.
The plan, LaCaze said, was to ferry the patients out of
the hospital to higher ground to be transported to
waiting buses. After hearing that the National Guard had
five buses parked nearby on Interstate 10, LaCaze got
permission from the state Office of Emergency
Preparedness in Baton Rouge to use them.
He told the committee that he dispatched a firefighter
to tell the National Guardsmen guarding the buses to
turn them over.
"He came back to me and said they needed to know who
made the request and could we put it in writing," LaCaze
said. "The fireman took the message over. A few minutes
later, he came back and said, 'They want to talk to
you.' I went over, and the senior sergeant said he
didn't have the authorization and couldn't release the
buses. I said, 'What are the buses for?' He said,
'Special needs people.' "
LaCaze said the patients ultimately were loaded into
pickup trucks and driven out of the flood zone.
"That sounds like bureaucracy at its worst," Collins
said.
. . . . . . .
Bill Walsh can be reached at bill.walsh@newhouse.com or
(202) 383-7817.