Federal emphasis on terrorist threat frustrates local disaster response officials

The distance between the Homeland Security Department, where the nation's national disaster-preparedness plans are crafted, and America's cities and counties, where the plans are put to the test, can be measured many ways.

It's about 2,800 miles, for example, from the department's Office for Domestic Preparedness in Northwest Washington to the King County Office of Emergency Management in Renton, Wash., a suburb of Seattle. On a map of the lower 48 states, the feds and the Washington state emergency planners couldn't be much farther apart. And that's fitting, because King County is also philosophically miles apart from Uncle Sam on how to protect its citizens from the gravest threats, and on what those threats actually are.

Federal and local officials ask a simple question: What should we worry about more? Federal officials say that it's the terrorists, who strike without warning and can wreak large-scale physical, economic, and political damage on the country, and even on America's standing in the world. The locals say that it's natural disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes, which can cause the same level of harm and are bound to occur on a somewhat regular basis.

For Eric Holdeman, the director of emergency management in King County, the answer is obvious. His region sits near a seismic fault line and an active volcano, and it's prone to crippling ice storms and ravaging wildfires. Yet when he talks about natural-disaster readiness with Homeland Security officials, who control Holdeman's access to millions of dollars in grants that he needs to protect King County, he says he hears the same response: He's worrying about the wrong threats. In the post-9/11 world, he -- and everyone else -- should be ready for terrorism.

"It's terrorism only," complains Holdeman, a former Army infantry officer with almost 15 years of experience in disaster management. Homeland Security officials have "an obsession with terrorism that has caused them to operate the department and direction for the nation with blinkers on."

Federal officials are fed up with hearing that refrain, and nowhere do they hear it more than at the Office for Domestic Preparedness. ODP has one of the least enviable jobs in the federal government -- ensuring that every state, local, tribal, and territorial government within the United States can defend itself against a major disaster.

The office pumps out billions of dollars in grants for emergency equipment, such as chemical-protection suits and radios. It trains first responders in mock-disaster drills, testing their mettle against imaginary hurricanes or subway bombers. It writes national preparedness standards that states and localities are supposed to meet.

ODP, in short, is the instrument with which the Bush administration implements its national homeland-security strategy, town by town, county by county. If the office fails, then, by extension, the Homeland Security Department fails. Four years after 9/11, ODP relentlessly delivers a mantra that has become a refrain of its own: The world has changed, and we have to change with it.

"People have faced catastrophic hurricanes since the beginning of time.... But 9/11 changed our world," says ODP spokesman Marc Short, a political appointee who joined the office last year after graduating from business school. "The federal government has devoted a lot of resources to preparing for natural disasters" that affect local areas, Short says. But 9/11 was a "seminal event" that made it the federal government's job to plan a national response to a national problem.

That's a fundamentally new role for the federal government. Historically, it has deferred to states and localities on disaster preparedness. But Hurricane Katrina reminded the nation that a natural catastrophe can become a national problem, with far-reaching consequences for many layers of society. "People are looking at this as 9/11 without the terrorists," says David Heyman, the director of the homeland-security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And they're [asking] fundamental questions about our preparedness and our ability to respond in a crisis."

The bickering and finger-pointing that has followed the convoluted governmental response to the hurricane finds all sides -- federal, state, and local -- questioning their own and each other's readiness to handle all kinds of calamities. This is not a new argument. The fight over how to prepare, and for what, has been playing out ever since the Homeland Security Department opened its doors nearly three years ago. The federal government's insistence that terrorism poses the greatest threat to national security, and most state and local officials' belief that terrorism concerns should not completely overshadow other preparations have fueled the flames ever since.

Strings Attached

ODP, a relatively tiny agency staffed by about 250 people, is the central player in this drama. In 2003, it moved to Homeland Security from the Justice Department, where it had administered terrorism-preparedness grants. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which also moved to Homeland Security, had managed natural-disaster planning. But the Bush administration has shifted many preparedness tasks to ODP and left FEMA as a response agency, the one that leads the rescue and cleanup.

ODP is the one place in the federal government that pays attention exclusively to state and local first responders -- police officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel. Since 2003, the agency has distributed more than $9.5 billion in preparedness grants and trained tens of thousands of first responders.

Communities desperately need ODP's grant money to carry out the administration's aggressive homeland-security strategy, which calls upon local jurisdictions to have in place as many as three dozen "target capabilities." These capabilities include detection of chemical or biological agents in public areas; trained urban search-and-rescue teams; and standing economic-recovery plans. State and local disaster-management officials don't want to turn the grants away. But, they say, the ODP money comes with a catch: Most of it can be used only for terrorism preparedness.

Most ODP grants and first-responder training programs are indeed designated for terrorism preparedness. "Almost three of every four grant dollars appropriated ... for first responders in fiscal year 2005 were for three primary grant programs that had an explicit focus on terrorism," the Government Accountability Office reported in July. The funding levels, which Congress sets, are also skewed toward terrorism preparedness. Those three primary grants received $2.4 billion this fiscal year. By contrast, ODP awarded $180 million this fiscal year under the Emergency Management Performance Grant, the program that local governments have historically used for natural-disaster preparedness.

Locals tell of frustrated attempts to use ODP grants for "all-hazards" purposes, only to be turned down because their plans weren't exclusively earmarked for terrorism. Holdeman, for one, says he can use grants to buy chemical-protection suits but not equipment to fight wildfires, which have so far proven far more devastating to Washington state than Al Qaeda.

Other local officials tell similar stories. In Shelby County, Ala., managers reported that they could purchase chemical suits, but not interoperable communications systems that would let personnel from different agencies talk to each other in an emergency.

State and local officials would also like to build modern emergency operations centers with their grants, says Ken Murphy, the director of emergency management in Oregon and the chair of the Preparedness Committee for the National Emergency Management Association, the national body of state emergency directors. But grant money for physical structures, Murphy says, is limited to security measures like blast-resistant walls or fences.

State and local officials want more choice in how they spend their grants. The federal government, however, has to approve their purchases once they identify the equipment they want to buy, Scott Behunin, the director of Utah's emergency services and homeland-security division, explained to the House Select Committee on Homeland Security in 2003. He urged the federal government to allow "greater autonomy in the process," so that states could "better meet unique needs in their communities."

Repeating a message that local officials have long sent to Washington, D.C., Holdeman says: "Our message is, 'Give us block grants ... and then audit the hell out of us.' " But the funds "are wrapped in concertina wire," he says. So Holdeman has had to get creative.

Outside the Box

Last year, Holdeman got the idea to air a series of public service announcements telling King County residents to construct "car kits" -- small packages of survival staples, such as flashlights, first-aid equipment, and food and water -- that would serve in any kind of emergency, and could be easily carried or thrown into a car. Holdeman figured that one more prepared citizen was one fewer he had to worry about.

Holdeman played to his audience. "I said, 'We've got a lot of skiers. If they're afraid of getting stuck in the snow, they'll be motivated to have a car kit.' " Those kits would come in handy during a terrorist attack, he reasoned. "When Osama comes knocking, who cares if you're motivated [by the fear of terrorism]? You still have a car kit." Holdeman wanted to use the ODP money to create a series of televised ads, but he says that the agency turned him down because the messages weren't raising awareness of terrorism. In the end, Holdeman found a local solution to his national problem. He took a two-track approach. King County used ODP money to produce two ads featuring first responders who told citizens to be "ready for anything." "Have a plan," they say. Stock up enough food and water for three days, appoint an out-of-state contact to call in an emergency. The ads mention terrorism only twice.

Working with a local television station, Holdeman also created a second set of ads -- without federal grants. These ads were more specific and targeted threats that King County residents understand. One reminds viewers that, with winter storm season approaching, they should make their car kits. Another advises homeowners to prune their shrubs and to relocate wood piles before fire season arrives. The ads don't mention terrorism.

ODP officials are particularly sensitive to the charge that they've blocked grant spending on projects like King County's, or that they've stopped state and local governments from purchasing equipment that's not exclusively suited to terrorism preparedness. "That's completely false," says Suzanne Mencer, the former director of ODP, who served as the chief of public safety for Colorado and was a longtime FBI agent. She resigned in January, and ODP is now between permanent directors.

"What has to be said, and what I said almost every time I gave a speech, is, 'Think about two words: dual use,' " Mencer says. The grants don't prohibit a city from buying equipment for use in a natural disaster if it can also be used in a terrorist attack.

Tim Beres is the director of ODP's Preparedness Programs Division, and he managed grants when the agency was in the Justice Department. Asked about Holdeman's complaints, and those from state and local officials in Alabama and elsewhere, he responds, "If someone actually said that, that's absurd." In fiscal 2004, grants paid for more than $1 billion worth of dual-use equipment, he says, including $925 million for interoperable communications equipment and $140 million in chemical-protection suits.

"Some of these people cannot think outside the box," Mencer says of grant recipients. They read the requirements too narrowly, she says. For instance, one ODP grant allocates funds for preventing, responding to, and recovering from terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction.

Mencer says that some locals see that wording and think it prohibits items, such as radios, that could also be used in a natural disaster. "They can still meet their needs in almost all instances if they look at the broader picture and not [just] the wording in the grant." She added in exasperation: "Some people would complain if you hung them with a new rope."

Marc Short, the ODP spokesman, concedes that some officials may not understand how to use the grants, but he believes they are exceptions. Instead, he says that critics' complaints are "a straw-man argument," set up for political convenience by people who oppose the Bush administration's tight control of the national strategy. The strategy, by design, takes away much of the states' and localities' authority to enact their own disaster plans, so that they don't overlap or become deficient.

A number of state and local emergency managers -- including Holdeman and others who've spoken publicly on behalf of the National Emergency Management Association -- disagree and say that the problem isn't a matter of turf or of local officials misreading the grant guidelines. It's that the Bush administration gave so much of FEMA's preparedness duties to ODP.

Before DHS was created, disaster planners widely admired FEMA for drawing national attention to preparedness and for working more as a cheerleader for local efforts than a controller. Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, a Clinton appointee who'd been an emergency director in Arkansas, was a superstar in the disaster-management field. ODP, on the other hand, consisted of Justice Department counter-terrorism specialists who had stronger ties to law enforcement circles than to disaster managers. The cultural differences mirror the split over how to prepare. ODP is "focusing on prevention and protection, which is really a law enforcement function," says Oregon's Murphy.

Hearing that complaint, Short replies, "There's a fondness for the way that it was done before. People are uncomfortable with change."

Back to the Drawing Board?

It shouldn't surprise anyone that ODP pays so much attention to terrorism preparedness. Short points out that this, after all, has always been ODP's mission, stretching back to its Justice Department days. And, as Mencer stresses, "DHS was set up because of 9/11, not a hurricane." Although ODP officials don't deny that planning for natural disasters is partly a federal responsibility, they contend that the attacks of 9/11, that "seminal event," require the government to put terrorism preparedness first.

But in the wake of Katrina, ODP and the senior Homeland Security leadership will have to defend that philosophy. ODP's portfolio is already large -- it manages more than 23 grant programs -- and it has now taken on port-security grants, a program for which Homeland Security receives criticism from several quarters. In January, the department's own inspector general said that the program's "strategic impact" wasn't clear, and that "its purpose and goals require refinement to support national priorities effectively."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has proposed more changes to the department's preparedness operations, following a sweeping review earlier this year. Most significantly, he said in July that, in order to "increase preparedness with a particular focus on catastrophic events," he wants Congress to create a new position: an undersecretary for preparedness.

In those public remarks, Chertoff seemed to give a nod to those who have pressed the department to remember the natural-disaster front. DHS "has sometimes been viewed as a terrorist-fighting entity, but of course, we're an all-hazards department," he said. "Our responsibilities certainly include not only fighting the forces of terrorism, but also fighting the forces of natural disasters."

Chertoff made those remarks three days after Hurricane Dennis had hit the Gulf Coast. Dennis, Chertoff said, "was a reminder ... of how potent those forces can be."

Chertoff's preparedness proposals pass muster among some homeland-security experts. Last December, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation released a joint study called "DHS 2.0," in which the authors suggested adding a new undersecretary for preparedness with direct access to the secretary.

Such a move, they said, would speed preparedness decisions past some layers of bureaucracy. Today, both ODP and FEMA are buried in the chain of command, reporting up to the secretary through middle layers of management. "A 'flatter' structure is preferable here and will better enable the secretary to exercise leadership," they wrote.

But "flatness" has never been part of the department's vocabulary. "Centralization" and "hierarchy" have been the operative terms. A "flat" structure is what FEMA embodied when it was running the full gamut of disaster-management efforts, including preparedness. The agency had Cabinet-level status during the Clinton years, so the director had a clear line to the president.

FEMA's national strategy was a classic study in devolution and private-public partnership. It supported and emboldened first responders by lobbying Congress and creating flexible grant programs. But it left the real work up to the local communities and their first responders.

"I'd love to see that emphasis again," with localities taking the lead, says Ann Patton, who is an emergency planner in Tulsa, Okla. "I call this stuff 'grassroots homeland security.' "

To learn lessons from Katrina, President Bush wants to examine those grassroots efforts and find out whether they're working. He has ordered a review of the disaster plans of all major U.S. cities. In his speech from New Orleans on September 15, Bush blended the natural and man-made calamities with a new twist: "In a time of terror threats and weapons of mass destruction, the danger to our citizens reaches much wider than a fault line or a floodplain. I consider detailed emergency planning to be a national security priority."

" 'How safe is America?' this review is supposed to ask," says Oregon's Murphy, who says he has discussed it with senior Homeland Security officials, including Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson. "I find that a very hard question to ask.... Just because you have a plan and it looks complete doesn't mean it's going to work."

With their confidence weakened and their frustrations already running high, the local front-liners in the national-preparedness army may feel abandoned. If ODP becomes a hindrance to their efforts, rather than a helper, they've shown they can take matters into their own hands, as Holdeman has done in King County. Perhaps the lesson from Katrina was that the disaster business is still a local affair. As Patton of Tulsa sees it, the distance between the federal and local planners now is wider than ever. "If New Orleans didn't teach us anything else, then it taught us that we better be able to take care of ourselves."