What went wrong in hurricane crisis?

Just days after the city flooded, New Orleans had deteriorated into chaos. Thousands were stranded in their homes by high water, with only a small band of Coast Guard rescuers and local first responders going house to house to try to save them.

The Superdome and convention center were ground zero for the hell that had become New Orleans. People there were angry and desperate.

NBC Cameraman Tony Zumbado was on TV showing pictures of angry citizens at the Convention Center. “I can’t put into words the amount of destruction that is in this city and how these people are coping they are just left behind there is nothing offered to them.”

They were also afraid. Fear and lawlessness seemed to rule the streets, overwhelming the police. Hundreds of officers didn’t show up for work, many possibly choosing to stay with their families to help them survive — two officers committed suicide.

Just who was in charge?
There were some Louisiana National Guardsmen in New Orleans—but not enough to restore order or to distribute supplies to a starving city.

Walter Maestri: All of the destruction that’s the result of civil disorder could have been avoided if we would have had the resources would have been available to feed hungry people, to give hungry people food and water and formula for the infants.

Walter Maestri, Emergency Management Director of for Jefferson Parish, says federal help of any kind was late in coming.

Phillips: When did the first federal presence really show up?

Maestri: For approximately six days we sat here waiting.

Phillips:  Nearly a week?

Maestri: Nearly a week.

Phillips: Were you prepared?

Maestri: We had done what FEMA told us to be prepared for. We were ready to sustain ourselves for 48 to 60 hours. And we did that, we did that. We were basically told to hang on by our fingernails for those 60 hours or so and we’ll be there, we’ll come and get you. It didn’t happen.

Phillips: Did the federal government fail this city?

Maestri: They certainly weren’t here, let me put it that way. What happened was the cavalry didn't show up.

That wasn’t true everywhere. The cavalry did arrive in St. Bernard Parish, but it wasn’t the U.S. Cavalry, according to the sheriff there.

Pohlman: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent a large contingent.

As it turns out, the Canadians Pohlman met weren't the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They were actually a search and rescue team that had traveled all the way from Vancouver, British Columbia, some 2,800 miles away, and they got there first.

Pohlman: I don't know how they got here. It may have been on their horses, but they got here.

FEMA crosses wires with local officials
FEMA teams eventually did arrive in stricken areas. But at least initially, in their efforts to organize an effective relief effort, the FEMA workers sometimes crossed wires with local officials. Maestri told us FEMA workers seized diesel fuel needed to run generators for emergency response.

Maestri: When we went to get the fuel, fuel that we had ordered and paid for, bought by Jefferson Parish, that fuel was seized. And we were told that FEMA had taken control of all fuel. And they were seizing that. And we would have to justify— go through a bureaucratic process to get that fuel released to the parish.

Phillips: So your people were turned around?

Maestri: Well, we were turned around and we came to realize that if that’s the kind of game that’s being played, when I sent the fuel truck back and I sent it back with armed sheriff’s deputies, because not on my watch.  I was gonna try to make sure that nobody died.

Phillips: A

nd they get the fuel?

Maestri: We got the fuel that time.

Phillips: So you were saying that FEMA actually became an obstruction—

Maestri: That’s correct.

And when his radio communications system was crippled Maestri says he was stunned to learn FEMA was responsible.

Maestri: My technicians reported back to me, “Hey, I know why you’re not communicating. Somebody took down your all antenna.” When we got him up there and he looked he said, “My God.” He said, “This is a FEMA antenna.  Somebody disconnected your antenna and put theirs up.”

The federal response drew criticism throughout the Gulf region, not just in Louisiana. Four days after the storm, we spoke with these Mississippi fire and rescue officers who said the federal government was missing in action. Their neighbors were a lot more helpful then FEMA.

One said: “The state of Florida and Alabama just the cities themselves that have come together, Pensacola, Pensacola, have come together to send us, everything you see back here, all this food, all donated by cities.”

Where was FEMA when the people of the Gulf needed it?

Reorganizing FEMA with Homeland Security
Jane Bullock spent 21 years at FEMA, and she says there are reasons the agency didn’t perform better. After 9/11, FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. That, she says, was a big mistake with serious consequences.

Bullock: FEMA consistently lost resources to other parts of the Department of Homeland Security that were higher priorities. At the State and local level they were told 75 percent of their time had to be spent on terrorism. I think the results are what we’re seeing. 

Maestri: The emphasis now is on Homeland Security. And we certainly understand that. You know the money is going to prepare us for an attack against terrorists. But Max Mayfield, the Director of the National Hurricane Center, I think put it most succinctly in an address he gave recently when he said, “You know we can’t be sure when and if a terrorist attack is going to come. But we do know that land falling hurricanes are going to come every year.”

Bullock says something else contributed to what many describe as the agency’s poor performance. The changes at FEMA in recent years, she says, have resulted in hundreds of experienced disaster relief professionals leaving the agency.

Phillips: What went wrong?

Maestri: I don’t know. As I told you earlier, I'm dismayed at what happened. When the delivery doesn’t happen, when the promises aren’t kept, that’s when a catastrophe becomes even greater. It’s compounded.

'Everyone failed'
The federal government isn’t alone in taking heat for what happened after Katrina hit. 

Phillips: How would you rate the state’s performance?

Maestri: I think the state’s, you know the state’s performance would be rated as a C plus.

Bullock: The National Guard is traditionally an asset that the governor uses.  I was surprised that the guard in Louisiana wasn’t activated earlier. I think that things would have been dramatically different if the Guard had been mobilized earlier.

And what of the New Orleans mayor who was quick to blame the federal authorities?

Phillips: Who failed these people?

Nagin: Everybody, everybody.

Phillips: Yourself included?

Nagin: I could have done things better.

Phillips: What would you have done differently?

Nagin: Scream louder ... I should have screamed louder.

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