Leaders in a crisis have only two options; either they can try to control events or have events control them. Judging by the remarks made by former FEMA head Michael Brown in this interview with the New York Times, it appears that leaders at all levels – local, state, and federal – not only became captive to events surrounding the aftermath of the hurricane, but also failed to work together to get on top of the situation, wasting precious hours dithering about a “unified command structure” while the situation in the city spiraled out of control.
If it was Mr. Brown’s purpose to defend his actions during the disaster, he did a horrible job. Brown is revealed to be clueless, an absolutely disasterous choice to lead an agency where a hard nosed “can do” attitude is absolutely essential. Instead, he appeared in New Orleans believing himself to be a glorified waiter – someone whose job it was to write down the state’s order for hurricane relief rather than act as an executive who should have anticipated what was needed and behaved accordingly. This quote from Governor Blanco’s communication director is revealing:
Governor Blanco’s communications director, Mr. Mann, said that she was frustrated that Mr. Brown and others at FEMA wanted itemized requests before acting. “It was like walking into an emergency room bleeding profusely and being expected to instruct the doctors how to treat you,” he said.
It’s clear that Brown believed his job was to stay in the background and act as a facilitator of federal help:
When he arrived in Baton Rouge on Sunday evening, Mr. Brown said, he was concerned about the lack of coordinated response from Governor Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard.“What do you need? Help me help you,” Mr. Brown said he asked them. “The response was like, ‘Let us find out,’ and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing.”
Of course, the scope of the disaster made “specific requests” moot. New Orleans needed everything and they needed it yesterday. Once this became clear – certainly by Tuesday morning- Brown should have been screaming for every available federal resource to be put into the pipeline and sent towards the beleagured city. Instead, like a good little waiter, he sent a list of what the city needed to Baton Rouge!
The next morning [Tuesday], Mr. Brown said, he and Governor Blanco decided to take a helicopter into New Orleans to see the mayor and assess the situation. But before the helicopter took off, his field coordinating officer, or F.C.O., called from the city on a satellite phone. “It is getting out of control down here; the levee has broken,” the staff member told him, he said.The crowd in the Superdome, the city’s shelter of last resort, was already larger than expected. But Mr. Brown said he was relieved to see that the mayor had a detailed list of priorities, starting with help to evacuate the Superdome.
Mr. Brown passed the list on to the state emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, but when he returned that evening he was surprised to find that nothing had been done.
“I am just screaming at my F.C.O., ‘Where are the helicopters?’ ” he recalled. ” ‘Where is the National Guard? Where is all the stuff that the mayor wanted?’ “
This is simply unfathomable. Officials in Baton Rouge were already overwhelmed and Brown wonders why his little “to do” list wasn’t acted on?
This was a man in clearly over his head. This should have been apparent to the White House when Mr. Brown called to complain that he couldn’t get a “unified command structure” going with the state of Louisiana:
On Monday night, Mr. Brown said, he reported his growing worries to Mr. Chertoff and the White House. He said he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed because he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could. Instead, he said, he repeated a dozen times, “I cannot get a unified command established.”
Here’s where Governor Blanco proved herself to be an empty suit. It’s apparent that this lack of “unified command” applied not just to coordination between state and federal authorities, but also between the governor’s office and the Louisiana National Guard. This becomes clear when General Honoré shows up and someone finally takes charge of the situation:
By Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown said, he learned that General Honoré was on his way. While the general did not have responsibility for the entire relief effort and the Guard, his commanding manner helped mobilize the state’s efforts.“Honoré shows up and he and I have a phone conversation,” Mr. Brown said. “He gets the message, and, boom, it starts happening.”
There is no more damning piece of evidence that proves that officials at all levels of government simply froze up in the face of the daunting challenges posed by the aftermath of the hurricane.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the New York Times unless they tried to place the blame squarely on the White House. This piece of editorializing shows that the Times has a knack for not letting relevant facts get in the way of some good old fashioned Bush bashing:
But Mr. Brown’s account, in which he described making “a blur of calls” all week to Mr. Chertoff, Mr. Card and Mr. Hagin, suggested that Mr. Bush, or at least his top aides, were informed early and repeatedly by the top federal official at the scene that state and local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly.Mr. Brown’s version of events raises questions about whether the White House and Mr. Chertoff acted aggressively enough in the response. New Orleans convulsed in looting and violence after the hurricane, and troops did not arrive in force to restore order until five days later.
New Orleans “convulsed in looting and violence” less than 24 hours after the hurricane hit because of the absence of local police (a third of whom simply deserted their posts) and the necessity of using the National Guard in the effort to rescue the thousands of citizens trapped on rooftops and in crawl spaces by the flooding.
And the reason that the troops didn’t arrive until “five days later” (there were 7,000 National Guardsmen on the ground in less than 3 days) was because Governor Empty Suit didn’t ask for the troops until Wednesday – two days after the hurricane struck.
It would have been an interesting New York Times article to read if the President had sent in troops on his own. I daresay the Times would be calling for the President’s impeachment following Mr. Bush’s declaration that the state of Louisiana was in rebellion – the only way the President would have been able to send regular army troops into Louisiana to help in law enforcement activities.
The interview with Michael Brown shows that President Bush made an error in judgement when he named this political hack to head up FEMA. But it also shows what happens when events outstrip the ability of leaders to manage them. The monumental nature of this disaster was clearly beyond the competence of governmental institutions to handle. It was made worse by the failure of those in leadership positions to act decisively.
8:01 am
While there’s been very little mention of it from what I’ve been able to gather the U.S. Coast Guard are the unsung heros of this whole disaster. They were rescuing people as soon after the storm as they could get helicopters in the air.
8:15 am
Leonard Cohen had a question for those who witnessed 9/11 that seems appropriate for those involved in the Katrina fiasco:
“Did you go crazy or did you report, on the day they wounded New York?”
8:52 am
Rick,
I’m still not convinced. You are making an argument, that judges should legislate from the bench.
9:24 am
I still don’t understand. What is FEMA’s mission. Why is it only in LA that FEMA was so incompentant. All I see is critisims that Brown didn’t read his crystal ball and figure out everything in advance. Everything I have seen says that FEMA so far out performed any other reactions from any other Hurricanes in the past. FEMA has ALWAYS been the waiter in these situations. It still is the order taker in MS and Fl. The fact that New Orelans has an incompentant mayor and LA has an incompentant Govener is the problem. They let situation get so far out of control, then blamed the whole thing on FEMA. I for one do not want a bunch of SUPER FEDS who come in and stomp all over the locals. LA and NO voted those idiots in and are now trying to blame FEMA for their home grown idiots. Of course Brown was asking them what they needed, they were supposed to know what was happening on the ground, and what was happening in their cities. If they didn’t know how could the FEDS be expected to know. It seems everything I read every one expected FEMA to be first responders, when the first responders didn’t do the job. There is no way we can afford this kind of SUPER AGENCY, and I for one do not WANT one. It is every citizens responsibility to see that local government has a plan and that it is compelete. New Orleans had a plan but it had no practical down to earth way to implement it.
9:30 am
Steve:
One of the advantages of having one’s own site is that they can ban whomever they damn well please.
Surprise!
12:24 pm
I see your point, in that with a patient bleeding profusely you want the ER doc to run over to put pressure and stop the bleeding, then start barking out instructions getting the resources mobilized to provide definitive care.
This still doesn’t explain how FEMA was seen to work well in Florida repeatedly last year, and without as much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Mississippi and Alabama this year. Perhaps Brown wasn’t, and shouldn’t have been, seen as the ER doctor for this patient. Maybe Dr. Blanco (like Dr. Jeb Bush last year) was really on duty.
That is, do we really want the big nanny Feds responsible for everything? Top down management? That may be a recipe for sluggishness.
1:04 pm
Linda:
Your analysis is spot on. People fail to realize
the role of FEMA is largely to talk to the locals, see what they need and mostly just write checks and fill out forms. Also Mr. Brown was confirmed overwhelmingly in 2001 when the Senate was controlled by the Democrats, if he was so incompentent then why did nobody raise these questions then.
1:13 pm
Excellent post. You have done a great job of spelling out, in a nice summary how all levels of government screwed up. While it clearly does seem the Federal government did make some major errors here, the problem with many in the media trying to pin all the blame on Bush and the Federal Government is it obscures what did happen.
Linda and Giacomo make great points. The bottom line seems to me to be, if we expect the Federal Government to take over for what local and state officials should be doing, we will need a much bigger federal government. As a conservative, I’m not sure I like that idea. I actually think this was part of the problem. The government, as it is, it TOO BIG. This helped to lead to a sluggish response. If we are to respond better in the future, I think making the government smaller would be a good idea. It should be able to move faster, if it is smaller.
1:17 pm
Radical Centerist
I had much the same idea as you did. It seems to me the President makes nominees and the Senate confirms them or does not confirm them. The Senate failed their duties here. They are supposed to be engaging in oversight. How likely do you think it is that the main stream media will report on this? I say it is not very likely that they will.
1:26 pm
At the end of the day, blame will probably be assigned—to FEMA, to Nagin, to Blanco and/or to Bush. I think the one group that deserves no blame is the military (including the Coast Guard). Unlike me, others (particularly in the MSM) like to characterize our troops as “screw ups.” See the cartoon referenced in the first post here:
http://newjerseyblog.blogspot.com/
1:40 pm
The thing about Brown is, how did he manage to manage four hurricanes before this one if he was so incompetent? Barbara Mikulski actually praised his efforts following Isabel.
3:15 pm
Linda:
Excellent post
The MMSM (Mendacious MainStream Media), having a well-developed herd mentality, saw FEMA as a way to bash Bush. The MMSM ran with the bashing with very few “journalists” taking the time to analyze the facts. Since the MMSM is duplicitous and have an overt liberal agenda, I don’t mean to imply that they analyze facts on other occasions.
3:37 pm
Michael Brown Speaks Out
The NY Times tries to spin an interview with Michael Brown, formally Director of FEMA, as a negative hit on Bush for not taking control of the situation from the local screw ups sooner.
Mr. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management A…
3:45 pm
I have seen elsewhere, but not mentioned here lately the amount of damage that had to be removed before anyone could respond. Yes Nagin failed to use the 500 (+/-) buses currently rotting from water damage, yes they failed to load up an empty AMTRAC train, but no one anticipated the near total unusability of the land lines of communication. Absolutely the only federal forces who could react were the Navy and the Marines off of Amphib and attack carriers. Even so, it would have required more carries than were available to evac the survivors efficiently and immediately following the storm. This is not intended as an apology for the incompetent city/state leadership. Recriminations need to go back at least 50 years and also address the the corruption in La that makes the Daley machine in Chicago look like cub scouts.
Jim
3:55 pm
MICHAEL BROWN SPEAKS
Some of my good friends on the right side of the blogosphere say that ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown has been unfairly maligned for Katrina-related problems caused by state and local officials in Louisiana. John Hawkins of Right Wing News says…
4:30 pm
HURRICANE SPIN
The New York Times is nothing if not reflexively leftist. It’s trotting out a new anti-Bush line, made up out of thin air, to breathe a little new life into the left’s latest media jihad against the Bush administration. And…
7:56 pm
For the Next Katrina
Not much to add to what has already said. Brown had to go. Reading the interview, there was no other option.
8:08 pm
“Once this became clear – certainly by Tuesday morning- Brown should have been screaming for every available federal resource to be put into the pipeline and sent towards the beleagured city.”
I’m sorry, but this is pure rubbish. Large areas of several staes were far more devastaed then New Orleans was. There was no pressing demand for “every available federal resource” in the city. What was needed was for the local officials to maintain law and order.
Just because New Orleans was swamped with television crews does not mean it had any special needs which FEMA could help it with. It did need leadership of course. But it is not FEMA’s job to provide it, and it has no authority to provide it.
8:19 pm
I’ve been taken to task by many of my conservative friends on this post. Many of you have made excellent points about FEMA’s role and the incompetence of local officials – especially in the area of security in the city.
But in the minds of many old FEMA hands – people who were with the agency for years and have no political ax to grind – Brown blew it. I think I could have made it clearer that first and formost, the major reason for the problem was the hurricane itself. That and the unforseen break in the levee made getting aid to the city a huge problem. It’s inexplicable that only 7 of FEMA’s 29 search and rescue teams and 9 of their 21 crisis medical teams were dispatched to New Orleans. It’s also a mystery why after touring the city with Nagin, Borwn passed the mayor’s list of necessities on to Baton Rouge where he himself had told Chertoff that they were overwhelmed already.
Couple that with his statements which showed that at the very least he was not on top of the situation and you have a bad situation turning worse because of him. I think the most telling aspect of Brown’s incompetence occured when General Honore came on the scene and things started to happen for the better.
Watch this site tomorrow as I show that not all political appointments are necessarily a disaster.
8:42 pm
FEMA had 39 medical teams to cover an area of 90,000 square miles. If the location of every person needing medical attention in that area were known it would still not be easy to decide how to allocate the teams to provide the most good to the most people. Every team sent to New Orleans is one less team available to be used in Miss, Ala, or the remainder of La. My understanding of the request from Gov Blanco was she wanted everything they had. Is it a failure of FEMA and of Michael Brown that all the teams were not immediately sent to New Orleans?
8:44 pm
Another Today
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … It’s Stop the ACLU Thursday
9:42 pm
“The monumental nature of this disaster was clearly beyond the competence of governmental institutions to handle. It was made worse by the failure of those in leadership positions to act decisively:.
There is no federal bureaucrat alive (outside the military) that will react the way you want them to react. It might put their lifetime employment in jeopardy. They keep their jobs by obeying the rules and saying no.
That is why anybody who relies on the government is a fool.
10:12 pm
The obsessive focus on New Orleans is mistaken, IMO. All discussion seem to hinge on the idea that NO should have been the primary targey for FEMA, and everyone else. I don’t think that is clear, even in hindsight.
Simply because the media had multiple TV crews camped out there does not make it deserving of 99% of attention. I see no reason whatsoever why FEMA should allocate one third of its resources to a place which, at the end of the day, was not the hardest hit.
Are people who die out of sight of television cameras less worthy of FEMA help? It would seem so.
In future, should FEMA deploy its resources based on the media concentration, and dispense with details like trying to help people?
10:14 pm
“target”
11:28 pm
To the small govt types:
The problem isnt big govt, its bad govt.
The locals are the orchestra, FEMA is the conductor. The experts who help direct and coordinate support, funding etc.
A good example is the OKC bombing coordination. A job well done.
And you miss another point. The locals were decimated and could not do the job alone.
Hope your not on a coast or fault line or in tornado alley!
6:21 am
Breakfast: 9/16/2005
California Conservative looks at the President’s speech.
Confederate Yankee looks beyond the speech.
WuzzaDem looks at ABC’s post-speech interviews.
The Therapist looks at ABC’s post-speech interviews.
Right Wing Nut House says they all fro…
8:23 am
Gleeful Media Damage
It is well known that sometimes drug dealers will give out free samples (or perhaps offer “loss leaders”) in order to generate future dependency. Is the government doing this? As the MSM continually blast out the Big Lie of sole Federal responsibilit…
4:49 am
Most of the blame here should be placed with the mayor and the govenor. A mayor that sends his people to a shelter with no food and water, no police protection, does not even try to evacuate his folks on hundred of buses that he claims he has no drivers, the list goes on and all. Hell, a young kid stole an bus and drove alot out of the place. This govenor froze and did not know how or when to ask for help as she was new to the office, I guess thats her excuse.
Nancy Grace went nuts on her show the other night claiming that there were multiple rapes and murders in the dome and our Nat’l Guard were locked in a room and refused to help. This is bullcrap and all the flaring nostrils of Nancy Grace will not make it so.
Others have said there were no bodies found in the dome yet this loon goes on TV defaming our Military and making outrageous claims. God, this had gotten way out of hand, but hey, I forgot, its all Bush’s fault.