Hurricanes have little influence on citizen preparedness, report finds

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have had little impact on most people's preparations for disasters, but have hurt confidence in all levels of government, according to a recent study.

More than half of Americans surveyed for the study said they have not taken steps to better prepare themselves for a disaster even though they are aware of the devastation caused by the hurricanes and subsequent flooding of New Orleans, according to a report from New York University's Center for Catastrophic Preparedness and Response. The study compared a survey conducted before the hurricanes hit to one conducted after.

The report also found a "preparedness divide" between rich and poor Americans, with poll respondents who had lower incomes and less education saying they wished they had more money and time to take precautions.

"Reading between the lines of this survey, a significant biological or terrorist attack would make the New Orleans situation look like a calm evacuation," said Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service and author of the report. "The general point here is that the main effect of Katrina was no effect at all. It did not constitute the wake-up call."

The report recommended that Congress give President Bush the power to create a new Citizen Preparedness Directorate within the Homeland Security Department. "Such a directorate would have the authority to develop interagency plans, deploy and redeploy resources and oversee governmentwide activities to better prepare individual citizens and federal, state and local agencies for a wide range of catastrophic events," the report stated.

DHS spokesman Marc Short said the department has several citizen preparedness efforts and programs, but acknowledged they are not organized under one directorate. He said the department is now considering placing all those efforts under the new Preparedness Directorate, which was created as part of a reorganization announced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in July.

"I think there's a lot of momentum for that plan," Short said. "I think the notion of uniting citizen preparedness activities under one directorate has made a lot of apparent sense to a lot of people for a while. But the second stage review provided a vehicle to make that happen."

Short added that the department also has consulted with Israeli officials on how to improve citizen preparedness.

The report recommended that Congress reform the process for approving presidential appointees to ensure that key positions are filled rapidly with qualified personnel, and to reduce the number of lower level positions that require an appointment.

"What the nation needs most right now is a robust response system that can bend and ?ex to the unique circumstances of a given event," the report stated. "Such a system must be alert to impending catastrophe, agile in implementing well-designed plans for response and recovery, adaptive to surprise events such as the collapse of the New Orleans' levees, and aligned so that all responders can pull together from Washington on down to the very first responder who shows up at a site."