Former FEMA director says agency was gutted

The former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress Tuesday that the agency was beleaguered and beaten up by budget cuts and personnel losses during the past three years, and overwhelmed by the events of Hurricane Katrina.

Michael Brown resigned as FEMA's director on Sept. 12 under intense pressure from lawmakers and the public in the aftermath of the emergency response to the hurricane. The embattled Brown -- who still is on contract as a consultant to DHS and is being paid his full salary of $148,000 - testified Tuesday before a special House committee investigating the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina.

Brown said FEMA's budget and personnel have been decimated since he took over the agency in January 2003. He said his budget requests never made it past the Homeland Security Department, which meant Congress never saw them. He said, for example, that the agency did not receive the necessary funding to implement lessons learned from an exercise last year called Hurricane Pam, which predicted flooding in New Orleans and massive communications and coordination problems among local, state and federal officials.

He said he wrote letters to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and former secretary Tom Ridge about the problems, but the agency still had budget cuts each year and lost critical personnel. FEMA, he said, lost out in priority battles when it came to the war on terrorism, the creation of DHS and the second-stage review of the department done by Chertoff earlier this year.

"I have predicted privately for several years that we would reach this point because of a lack of resources and a lack of attention being paid to what was … a very robust organization," Brown said. It was extremely difficult to "keep that place together," he said, and added he probably should have resigned earlier so he could have made public the problems he was experiencing.

Some lawmakers heavily criticized Brown for not coming forward sooner to talk about the problems, and for the agency's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, said the House Homeland Security Committee and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security never heard of the serious problems Brown described on Tuesday.

"I don't know how you can sleep at night," she said "You lost the battle."

Brown defended the actions of FEMA in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, saying it did everything it could but was overwhelmed and stretched beyond its capabilities. He also defended the White House, saying it was doing all it could behind the scenes.

He pinned most of the blame for the problems in Louisiana on state and local officials. According to Brown, the state emergency management center established before the storm hit was dysfunctional and could not process requests for assistance.

Brown said victims should not expect the federal government to provide food and water immediately after a disaster, adding that the federal government should not be in the business of providing fuel and ice to people, either. He said those responsibilities fall on state and local governments as well as charities and faith-based organizations.

Under direct questioning from lawmakers, however, Brown conceded problems with FEMA's response and overall federal coordination.

Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., noted that Brown was not just serving as the head of FEMA but as the official in charge of coordinating all federal resources.

"You can't then just point to FEMA and say FEMA didn't have this," Davis said. "The assets of the federal government are huge, so we could have had enough of everything had we understood what was happening. Isn't that correct?"

"That's correct, Mr. Chairman," Brown said. "And I think that it's great to sit here and Monday-morning quarterback. But when you're going through that kind of a catastrophic disaster that comes in stages … it takes time to respond and do those things. And I think one of the lessons that we need to learn from this catastrophic event is that we do need to get better about marshaling those assets and moving them around."

He added that FEMA experienced major logistics problems, specifically when it came to knowing where supplies were and how much supplies were at each location.

Exchanges between Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose district lies in the hurricane zone, and Brown were particularly testy.

"You folks fell on your face. You get an F- in my book," Taylor said. "Maybe the president made a very good move when he asked you to leave your job."