Warnings Ignored

While President Bush may finally be accepting responsibility for the federal government's failings in the response to Hurricane Katrina (though both overt and subtle finger-pointing among all levels of government continues), we're still hearing more about how truly awful the planning was inside FEMA for this event.

As I commented earlier, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff either lied or was incredibly poorly informed when he claimed that no one could have predicted what would happen because, clearly, many people actually did predict it. Former FEMA chief Michael Brown seemed to be saying in all his public statements that Katrina magically blossomed into a Category 4 storm off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi in mere moments, giving them no time to prepare.

Now comes a story from National Public Radio that shows some of the information that Chertoff, Brown and other officials were given by the people responsible for informing them of disaster potential. Leo Bosner is an emergency management specialist at FEMA in Washington, D.C. It's his job, along with his crew, to alert officials of impending disasters. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner was warning Chertoff and Brown of the potential devastation Katrina could cause. By Saturday, Bosner was specifically warning of "dire predictions" of what could happen to New Orleans.

In the NPR interview, Bosner said he and his crew were shocked that Saturday's note seemed to get no response from FEMA or Homeland Security. They expected to go into the office and see dozens of people scrambling to position food and water supplies, activate the National Guard and provide transportation to those in New Orleans who would be unable to evacuate. Instead, they found the same 12 or so people there.

By Sunday, Bosner's note had taken on a much more urgent tone, reminding officials of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, which put half of New Orleans under water and killed 74 people. It talked about the 100,000 people in the city with no transportation to evacuate. Still, Bosner said, that urgency did not seem to be felt at FEMA. It wasn't until Tuesday, when it was too late, that the level of mobilization reached what it should have been on Saturday.

Keep in mind that Bosner's job is not to suggest policy, but rather to inform those who do. His missives are the way in which the emergency management chiefs get the information and decide what to do. They're sent by e-mail to the important people, who get them on their Blackberrys. They had this information and they didn't act on it.

There's always enough blame to go around, of course, but it's becoming increasingly clear that if the federal government had simply acted as it should have based on the information it had, it could at least have been able to get more people evacuated and provide food and water to people in the affected area immediately. It would have done its job. Much earlier planning and money would have been needed to prevent the flooding of New Orleans, but at least more people would have been saved, and the government would not have to be ashamed of its failure.

A cynic might look at today's national day of prayer and point out Bush's past unwillingness to place science and information over religion and "gut feelings." That cynic might wonder if this irrational thought process has permeated throughout the administration and other federal agencies. It might, after all, explain the way the facts and warnings were ignored. Maybe officials weren't being lazy or irresponsible, but rather they were just convinced that "everything would be all right." Yes, something that a cynic might bring up...