Report: Major cities not ready for catastrophe

WASHINGTON - New Orleans is still woefully unprepared for catastrophes 10 months after Hurricane Katrina, and the two cities attacked on 9/11 don’t meet all guidelines for responding to major disasters, a federal security analysis concluded Friday.

Ten states were rated in a Homeland Security Department scorecard as having sufficient disaster response plans. But the analysis found the vast majority of America’s states, cities and territories still are far from ready for terror attacks, huge natural disasters or other wide-reaching emergencies.

“Frankly, we just have not in this country put the premium on our level of catastrophe planning that is necessary to be ready for those wide-scale events,” Homeland Security Undersecretary George Foresman told reporters.

City and state plans for emergencies like localized fires, floods and tornadoes “are good, they’re robust,” Foresman said. But plans for catastrophes “are not going to support us as they should.”

HSD not surprised about results
The analysis is based on a complicated scorecard for each state and city, rating their plans for evacuations, medical care, sheltering of victims, public alerts and other emergency priorities.

NBC VIDEO NOLA not ready for a crisis June 16: The Department of Homeland Security said New Orleans is not ready for another disaster. NBC's Ron Mott reports. Nightly News

More than half of New Orleans’ plans — 58 percent — were described as insufficient to respond to catastrophes, and only 4 percent met the minimum federal guidelines.

NBC News reports that Homeland security officials say they're not surprised that the city isn't fully prepared for or focused on handling another catastrophe.

“One, we have a plan. two it’s going to continue to improve, and three it’s our job to convince everybody to get on board and we’ll all survive this hurricane season,” said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans’ homeland security director.

President Bush ordered the review of emergency response plans in a visit to New Orleans last Sept. 15, weeks after Katrina ravaged the city. It is based on a complicated scorecard for each of the 50 states, 75 major cities and six U.S. territories that rates plans for evacuations, medical care, sheltering of victims, public alerts and other emergency priorities.

Opponents call ratings oversimplified
The tepid ratings gave fodder to state and local officials who have hammered Homeland Security for cutting their emergency response funding. And the ratings may oversimplify security gaps that can’t be measured in a one-size-fits-all formula.

“You really have to look at each state individually and how they’re prepared for the emergencies that their experts anticipate,” said Jeff Welsh, spokesman for Maryland’s emergency management agency. “It’s a snapshot of the country as a whole, and to have an honest, realistic assessment of a single state you have to look at that single state.”

Foresman said the results highlight disparate and disconnected emergency plans in the absence of national preparedness standards. “This is not something that is a grand surprise — it has simply put documented numbers on what we intuitively knew in the post-9/11 era,” he said.

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