FEMA official: Agency didn’t heed warnings

‘Complete disconnect’
In an Aug. 29 phone call to Brown informing him that the first levee had failed, Bahamonde said he asked for guidance but did not get a response.

“He just said, ‘Thank you,’ and that he was going to call the White House,” Bahamonde said.

Senators on the committee were dismayed.

“We will examine further why critical information provided by Mr. Bahamonde was either discounted, misunderstood, or simply not acted upon,” said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who heads the committee. She decried the “complete disconnect between senior officials and the reality of the situation.”

Lieberman cites ‘serious questions’
Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the committee’s top Democrat, said Bahamonde’s story is “ultimately infuriating and raises serious questions which our committee’s investigation must answer.”

In e-mails, Bahamonde described to his bosses a chaotic situation at the Superdome. Bahamonde noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.

“Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen,” Bahamonde wrote regional director David Passey on Aug. 28.

Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by continuing to send truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome for two more days even though they knew supplies were in short supply.

$32 billion aid request weighed
“I thought it amazing,” he said. “I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans.”

At a separate congressional hearing, lawmakers considering Louisiana’s request for $32 billion for Gulf Coast rebuilding were told that Mississippi would need tens of billions of dollars of its own to restore its coastline.

Gulf Coast lawmakers and state officials have been pushing for vast infusions of federal aid since Katrina hit.

“It will be in the billions, with a ‘b,’ level, it may be in the tens of billions; it won’t be in the hundreds of billions,” William W. Walker, head of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, told a House transportation panel.

But Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., chairman of that panel, earlier had said flatly that Congress cannot afford Louisiana’s request. “This is just not going to happen,” he said.

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