White House: Agencies remain unprepared for disasters

A White House report released Thursday concluded that federal agencies, and the Homeland Security Department in particular, remain unprepared for catastrophes despite the billions of dollars that have been spent on emergency management since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The 228-page report reviewed the preparations for, and response to, Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. The review noted problems at every level of government and the private sector, and included 125 recommendations for reform. The White House said 11 of the changes need to be made before the start of the next hurricane season on June 1.

"Our current system for homeland security does not provide the necessary framework to manage the challenges posed by 21st-century catastrophic threats," the report said. "While we have built a response system that ably handles the demands of a typical hurricane season, wildfires, and other limited natural and manmade disasters, the system clearly has structural flaws for addressing catastrophic events."

There are critical flaws in command and control structures within the government, knowledge of preparedness plans, and regional planning and coordination, the report stated. Unified management for a national response also is lacking, the review said.

The White House did not assign blame to any specific officials. The report did, however, highlight actions that should have been taken by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in the aftermath of the storm. He failed to designate the hurricane and New Orleans flooding an incident of national significance until the day after Katrina made landfall, the report said.

That designation should have been made before the storm hit, the White House said.

Chertoff, however, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week that he thought an incident of national significance was declared before the storm made landfall.

Some critics have called for Chertoff to resign, but President Bush has not.

"Secretary Chertoff enjoys the confidence of the president," said Frances Townsend, special assistant to Bush for homeland security, during a press conference to release the report. "He's been a tremendous partner."

The report called for a new National Preparedness System to ensure efforts to get ready for and respond to disasters are unified, and said the military may have to take a more aggressive role in responding to catastrophes.

"The departments of Homeland Security and Defense should jointly plan for the Department of Defense's support of federal response activities, as well as those extraordinary circumstances when it is appropriate for the Department of Defense to lead the federal response," the report said.

The White House also is seeking an overhaul of the National Response Plan, which was released by DHS a little more than a year ago to serve as the nation's blueprint for responding to disasters and terrorist attacks.

"In response to Hurricane Katrina, the National Response Plan came up short," Townsend said. "We need to rewrite the NRP so it is workable and so it is clear."

And the report said the federal government should be prepared to take over response operations in an affected state.

"Ultimately, when a catastrophic incident occurs, regardless of whether the catastrophe has been [predicted] or is a surprise event, the federal government should not rely on the traditional layered approach and instead should pro-actively provide, or 'push,' its capabilities and assistance directly to those in need," the report stated. "When the affected state's incident response capability is incapacitated and the situation has reached catastrophic proportions, the federal government alone has the resources and capabilities to respond, restore order and begin the process of recovery."

The White House did not call for a major overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and supported Chertoff's decision to remove all preparedness activities from FEMA and place them in a Preparedness Directorate.

Chertoff said the White House review was "thorough and comprehensive."

"We have already begun to take action to address many of the issues raised in the report, particularly those areas we need to improve before the start of the 2006 hurricane season," he said in a statement.

Some prominent Democrats, however, criticized the White House Thursday.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement the report falls short because it does not assess responsibility for failures in the government's response. The committee is conducting its own investigation and plans to issue its report in March.

"Only a full understanding of what went wrong and who was responsible will enable us to correct our path for the future," Lieberman said. "That is what I expect the Senate report to do."

Lieberman added that he does not think White House recommendations for retooling the Homeland Security Department's preparedness and response capabilities are bold enough, or sufficiently recognize failures by FEMA during and after the hurricane.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the report's recommendations "gloss over" problems at FEMA. She said the undermining of FEMA's authority and resources has left the agency incapable of mounting an adequate federal disaster response.

"I am also concerned that by investigating [itself] while not cooperating with bipartisan congressional investigators, the White House appears unable to have stepped back far enough to see the big picture," Landrieu said.