<DOC>
[109 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:26744.wais]
S. Hrg. 109-591
HURRICANE KATRINA: PERSPECTIVES OF FEMA'S OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 8, 2005
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David T. Flanagan, General Counsel
Jonathan T. Nass, Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel
Mary Beth Schultz, Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 2
Senator Stevens.............................................. 4
WITNESSES
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Scott Wells, Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA Joint Field
Office, Baton Rouge, Louisiana................................. 7
Philip E. Parr, Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA Joint
Field Office, Austin, Texas.................................... 9
William L. Carwile III, Former Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA
Joint Field Office, Biloxi, Mississippi........................ 13
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Carwile, William L. III:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 61
Parr, Philip E.:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 52
Wells Scott:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Appendix
Exhibit 1........................................................ 71
Exhibit 8........................................................ 83
Exhibit 9........................................................ 90
Exhibit F........................................................ 94
Exhibit G........................................................ 99
Exhibit H........................................................ 102
Exhibit I........................................................ 104
HURRICANE KATRINA: PERSPECTIVES OF FEMA'S OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2005
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Stevens, and Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. Today,
the Committee continues its investigation into the preparation
for and response to Hurricane Katrina.
This morning, at our eighth hearing, we will hear from
three witnesses who are among the Federal Emergency Management
Agency's most experienced emergency managers and operations
professionals. Each of our witnesses--Scott Wells, Philip Parr,
and William Carwile--was directly involved in Katrina
preparation and response. They will give us a more complete
understanding of FEMA's role, share their observations about
the State and local response, and provide their insights and
recommendations for reforms.
One of our witnesses today has described the national
emergency response as a ``bottom-up system,'' with local and
State authorities leading the way and Federal authorities
coordinating operations and the deployment of resources. In
Katrina, this system broke down, and the result was the very
deprivation and suffering the structure was designed to avoid.
This system must be fixed from the bottom to the very top.
One of the most glaring breakdowns was in communications.
This powerful storm devastated the land-based communications
infrastructure throughout the Gulf region. This, however, was
an utterly foreseeable result of howling winds and surging
water that apparently was not adequately anticipated, nor
compensated for.
At our last hearing on November 16, we heard testimony from
private sector witnesses who stressed the critical importance
of maintaining communications in disaster management. They
emphasized that good communications are the life blood of
emergency operations, allowing for the effective movement of
personnel and other assets as well as real-time assessments.
In each of these companies, developing and maintaining
robust systems, importing extra communications gear, and re-
establishing contact with the outside world were of the utmost
priority and a key component of their preparedness plans. Their
outstanding performance, unfortunately, stands in stark
contrast to the inability of government at all levels to plan
and execute backup communications systems.
FEMA has mobile communications vehicles. But by the time
anyone thought to bring one to the Superdome, the building was
already surrounded by water, and FEMA was apparently unable to
figure out a way to get its equipment into the building.
FEMA also has communications equipment that could be
airlifted in. But despite Mr. Parr's urgent request for such
equipment, none arrived. In his interview with the staff, Mr.
Parr estimated that the lack of communications equipment
reduced his team's effectiveness by an astounding 90 percent.
Much of the post-Katrina criticism has been justifiably
focused on FEMA. But today's witnesses will explain that
Katrina also exposed serious flaws at the local and State level
that contributed to the suffering experienced by so many in the
Gulf region.
For example, according to the staff interview of Mr. Wells,
Louisiana's emergency operations officials failed to follow--
perhaps even to comprehend--the National Response Plan, which
is an integrated system designed to coordinate the Federal,
State, and local responses to a disaster. Indeed, Mr. Wells
noted that Louisiana's emergency managers were getting training
on the critical Incident Command System 2 days after the storm
hit.
Today's witnesses will also help us determine how FEMA,
State, and local officials can do better. They are all current
or former Federal Coordinating Officers (FCOs) and possess a
wealth of emergency management experience. The FCOs play a
critical role in FEMA.
In June of 2004, the FCO cadre urged Under Secretary
Michael Brown to undertake reforms to remove obstacles to
command, control, and core mission accomplishment and to
reconfigure and enhance the national emergency response teams.
The memorandum strongly advised that these reforms be
implemented to help prepare for ``the next big one.''
But we will hear today that disturbingly little was done in
response to these recommendations, far too little to prepare
for the big one when, indeed, it hit 14 months later.
I very much appreciate the testimony of our witnesses today
so that we can be better prepared for the catastrophic events
yet to come.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman, for
calling this hearing and for your continued leadership of our
investigation.
We have already held several important and informative
hearings about Hurricane Katrina on subjects that range from
the fate of the levees to the actions of the private sector in
the wake of the storm, to the testimony of FEMA employee Marty
Bahamonde during those dangerous days when he tried to get help
to the thousands stranded in the Superdome.
This morning's witnesses, FEMA's operations professionals
who were on the scene in the Gulf Coast, will, I am confident,
move the Committee's investigation forward toward finding out
what went wrong before and after Hurricane Katrina so that we
can achieve the purpose that Congress and all of us have in
mind, which is to make sure that it never happens again.
I want to thank our witnesses for the testimony they are
about to give. I want to thank them for their distinguished
careers of public service that each of them has. And those
careers should not, in any sense, be diminished by the
criticism that FEMA is receiving and may well receive today.
I will say that, having reviewed your testimony prepared
for this morning and the interviews that you had with our
Committee staff and having now gone over other testimony and
documents gathered by the Committee so far, it certainly seems
to me that FEMA is a troubled agency that failed at its prime
mission, the mission it draws its name from, which is emergency
management.
The fact is that the whole world watched on television as
Hurricane Katrina, a disaster waiting to happen, developed in
the Gulf of Mexico. The whole world listened to the experts who
said that this was the long-dreaded ``big one'' that could take
out the levees and flood the Big Easy. Yet FEMA seemed to
underestimate the gravity of the storm coming and/or failed to
realize that doing business as usual was unacceptable and would
compound the disaster.
Katrina obviously was not a typical hurricane in response
to which FEMA or anyone else--Federal, State, or local--could
work off of a typical playbook. Katrina required a more urgent,
comprehensive, and aggressive governmental response.
Katrina was a catastrophe. It knocked out many of the State
and local communications, as Senator Collins has said, and
response capabilities and overwhelmed those that remained. But
FEMA seemed to expect a severely damaged State and local
response network, itself the victim of the catastrophe, to
operate as if it was at full and normal capacity.
Like Senator Collins, I have been very surprised and upset
to learn in the course of our Committee's investigation that
America's battle plan for catastrophes, the National Response
Plan's Catastrophic Incident Annex, was never activated in
response to Katrina. And FEMA apparently still believes that it
should not have been activated.
As we will hear today, FEMA deployed too few people to
respond to Katrina and deployed them too slowly. Many of those
that did deploy apparently failed to appreciate what the
breaking of the levees around New Orleans meant, and that
failure had disastrous consequences, as we all know, for the
people of New Orleans.
As we learned at our previous hearings, New Orleans
industrial canal levees were leveled by the storm surge early
Monday morning, August 29. That led to almost immediate
flooding in the eastern part of the city, including the lower
9th Ward. By mid day, the Lake Pontchartrain levees were also
breaking, and that led to a much slower flooding of downtown
New Orleans, what we so often heard referred to as New Orleans
``filling up like a bowl.''
Mr. Bahamonde, previously referred to as FEMA's first man
on the ground in New Orleans, told us that he communicated
these facts by mid day Monday to FEMA and had a conference call
with FEMA officials at the emergency operations center, among
others, that night. We now know that other sources were
providing the same information throughout the day to the Baton
Rouge emergency operations center, where FEMA's top regional
operators were stationed. Yet, as we will hear today, the FEMA
emergency response team did not depart Baton Rouge for New
Orleans until noon on Tuesday, significant hours later, almost
a full day after the hurricane had hit and already passed.
By that time, Lake Pontchartrain had been dumping its
waters into downtown New Orleans for hours, making it
impossible for the FEMA team to bring its vital communications
tractor-trailer, so-called ``Red October,'' into the city. This
left the team without any reliable means of communications and
reduced its effectiveness in New Orleans, as Senator Collins
said, by some 90 percent. That is according to Mr. Parr's
testimony that we will hear this morning.
But that wasn't the only costly delay. Unfortunately, we
have learned from other witnesses that the Coast Guard was
performing rescue missions as soon as hurricane-force winds
abated on Monday afternoon. The State itself sent out rescue
boats later Monday afternoon. But FEMA's search and rescue
teams didn't arrive in New Orleans until Tuesday morning, and
we want to ask why.
Given the catastrophic nature of Katrina's damage, we must
understand why FEMA wasn't prepared to move sooner. And of
course, the most vexing part of it all is not just that this
was all foreseeable, but that, in fact, it had been foreseen.
This precise disaster scenario was used in the Hurricane Pam
planning exercise conducted in June 2004. It also had been the
topic of numerous stories in the media and hurricane
conferences over the years.
This was not a failure of imagination, as some might want
to label it. It was a failure of realization. Realization that
the catastrophe, about which we had all long been warned, was
about to occur and that FEMA and everybody else, State and
local, had to move quickly to address it.
Yes, a disaster like Hurricane Katrina is an act of God.
Yes, there will be confusion in such extraordinary natural
disasters. Yes, mistakes will be made by people who are well
intentioned. But adequately preparing for and responding to a
disaster of this magnitude required a well-led, well-trained,
well-drilled, and well-manned FEMA that had a plan in place and
a sense of mission to guide its actions.
Regrettably, it appears to me, at this point in our
investigation, that all of these things were lacking as
disaster swept across the Gulf Coast region last August. This
morning, we want to ask why. And I am confident that these
three witnesses can help us answer that question.
Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Stevens.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS
Senator Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator
Lieberman.
I regret to disagree with the Senator from Connecticut. Our
Committee took a trip to New Orleans. As a result of that trip,
we became convinced that what happened in New Orleans was that
Katrina went through New Orleans. We saw the buses in line that
were ready to deal with the evacuation. The people of New
Orleans were prepared for Hurricane Katrina. They were not
prepared for the failure of the man-made systems of levees and
gates and the enormous impact of that canal from New Orleans to
the sea, which should never have been there.
It is like saying that in terms of our earthquake, which we
had in the Anchorage area, that someone was at fault because
they didn't notify Kodiak and Seward that a tsunami might hit
them--which did happen. What happened here is in the aftermath
of Katrina going through, because of the subsequent series of
events that caused the failure of the levees, the failure of
the system, it was impossible to execute the plan.
Now the plan for New Orleans was caused by a provision in
the 1998 appropriations bill, which the last administration
failed to make. But finally, in 1999, we mandated that plan. It
was prepared. It was actually exercised after the start of
2001. It was there, and I think the people of New Orleans
started to follow that plan, and they started to move their
people to the dome and to the various places which should have
been safe.
But with the failure of the man-made systems and the
failure of having the ability to shut off the surge that came
across Lake Pontchartrain, this became a man-made disaster. And
I do not agree that we can fault FEMA or the City of New
Orleans or the State of Louisiana for failing to anticipate the
complete failure of the systems that were prepared in the past.
As a matter of fact, I think you can go back to President
Johnson's time and find that he tried to build even better
systems at the time, and the funding was turned down.
But as a practical matter, this damage, as sad as it is--it
is a sad thing--it is not a failure of the warning system. The
warning was there. It was a failure of systems that were put in
over the last 30 years to prevent the surges that happened in a
way and the combination of them was by the time that surge came
in from the ocean, it came up that canal, it was like a tsunami
coming up that canal. Had the canal not been there, those
levees might not have failed.
So this is not some time to critique the failure of the
people involved to predict that the basic systems for
protection that had been designed over a period of years would
simultaneously all collapse. And that is what happened. Every
single one of them collapsed.
Now those were man-made. This isn't an act of God. This is
a failure of our basic engineering systems, our basic concepts
of protection, and we have to do better in the future. I am not
going to join in criticizing those who tried to do the best in
the most extraordinary circumstance I have ever seen.
Now this Senator has seen war. I have seen cities in China
totally destroyed. I never saw destruction like I saw in New
Orleans. No person on Earth could have predicted that. It had
to be a combination of circumstances caused by Katrina going
through, and then the surge and all the collapse that came
afterward.
So I hope we look at FEMA and the rest of these people and
ask them what can we do to prevent this in the future? Let us
quit looking backwards and trying to assess blame. Let us find
out what can we do to assure that this won't happen not only in
New Orleans, but anywhere else where we are relying on levees
and man-made protections to prevent disasters.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. I would now like to welcome our panel of
witnesses before us today.
Our first witness, Scott Wells, joined FEMA as a Federal
Coordinating Officer in 1999. Since that time, he has been
deployed by FEMA to more than 20 disasters. For Hurricane
Katrina, he was the second in command, serving as the deputy
FCO.
Mr. Wells arrived at the emergency operations center in
Baton Rouge on Saturday, August 27. Mr. Wells previously served
as an Army officer for more than 20 years, and he was the DOD
liaison to FEMA before retiring from the Army in 1999.
Next we will hear from Philip Parr. For more than 20 years,
Mr. Parr served as a firefighter for New York City, ultimately
rising to the rank of battalion chief. In January 2004, Mr.
Parr left the New York City Fire Department and joined FEMA as
a Federal Coordinating Officer.
During Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Parr led the emergency
response advance team and was deployed to New Orleans. Mr. Parr
and members of his team arrived in the Superdome on the morning
of Tuesday, August 30. He later led FEMA teams into the
hardest-hit parishes of southern Louisiana.
William Carwile joined FEMA in 1996 as director of Region
10, headquartered in the Pacific, and was a Federal
Coordinating Officer for five tropical storms in the Pacific.
His emergency management experiences on the mainland include
New York City following September 11, the 2003 California
wildfires, and four hurricanes that struck Florida last year.
During Hurricane Katrina, he served as the Federal
Coordinating Officer for Mississippi. He is a retired U.S. Army
colonel with a 30-year military career.
I want to thank each of you for your testimony today and
for your public service. Because this is part of an ongoing
investigation, I would ask that you each stand so that I can
swear you in. Please raise your right hand.
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to
the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
The Witnesses. I do.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Wells, if you would go first and proceed with your
statement?
TESTIMONY OF SCOTT WELLS,\1\ FEDERAL COORDINATING OFFICER, FEMA
JOINT FIELD OFFICE, BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
Mr. Wells. Good morning, Chairman Collins and Members of
the Committee.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wells appears in the Appendix on
page 43.
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My name is Scott Wells, and I am honored to appear before
you today. My current position with FEMA is Federal
Coordinating Officer in Louisiana for Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita.
I would like to start this morning by thanking you for the
invitation to testify before this Committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to share my perspectives on FEMA operations before,
during, and after our Nation's costliest disaster, Hurricane
Katrina.
It is my intention today to speak candidly with you about
my experiences in Louisiana, both leading up to and following
Katrina, as well as my perspectives on emergency management. I
will begin my testimony today with a brief overview of my
professional career in emergency management.
For almost 2 decades, I served in various positions of
emergency management. Beginning in 1985, for 2 years as a first
responder MEDEVAC pilot. During my 24-year military career, I
also spent 10 years in the Pentagon providing military support
to civilian authorities. My last military assignment in the
Pentagon was as a military liaison officer to FEMA.
In these assignments, I was involved in numerous disasters
and emergencies such as Hurricane Andrew, the Northridge
earthquake, the Midwest floods of 1993, the Oklahoma City
bombing, the Haitian/Cuban immigration emergency, the Waco
siege, and the Ruby Ridge incident.
I retired in 1999 from the Army and have been working for
the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an FCO for the past
6 years and served on several disasters and emergencies to
include Tropical Storm Allison in Texas and the Columbia
Shuttle recovery operation.
On August 27, I was assigned to Louisiana as the Deputy
Federal Coordinating Officer to Bill Lokey for Hurricane
Katrina. I served in that capacity until September 19. At that
time, I was reassigned to Texas as the Federal Coordinating
Officer for Hurricane Rita, as she made her way through the
Gulf of Mexico. As the FCO for Rita, I remained in Texas until
the first week of October, at which time I returned to
Louisiana to replace Bill Lokey for Hurricane Katrina.
Detailed preparation for a Katrina landfall in Louisiana
started in earnest on Friday, August 26, when the National
Weather Service quickly changed the projected zone for landfall
to include Louisiana. Much work had been done earlier in the
week, but the focus of those efforts--given the projected path
of the storm--was on Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Field deployments to Louisiana began on Saturday, August
27, with the emergency response team's advance elements
deploying to the Louisiana emergency operations center here in
Baton Rouge. The Federal regional and national staffs
consolidated that night and started conducting field operations
in preparation for landfall.
In addition to the command and control element being set up
in Baton Rouge, we concurrently were setting up an operational
staging area in Alexandria, Louisiana, that served as a Federal
logistics base for Katrina operations.
The first actual employment of Federal resources--that is,
where we provided--FEMA provided response assets to the State--
occurred on Sunday, the day before landfall, when we shipped
six truckloads of water and three truckloads of MREs to the
Superdome. Two of the truckloads, one each of water and MRE,
did not complete delivery. They were denied entry by the
Louisiana State Police before reaching the Superdome.
That was the beginning of response operations and was soon
followed by many other response resources, such as medical
teams, search and rescue teams, and other critical commodities,
such as water, food, and ice.
There has been much said about the slow Federal response to
Katrina. From my perspective, with all due respect to Senator
Lieberman, I want to say nothing could be further from the
truth. We had a fully operational logistics base, a fully
operational command cell, and response teams in place, all
before landfall. We even moved some supplies in before landfall
and attempted to move in a medical team.
On the day of landfall, we moved search and rescue teams,
medical teams, and critical supplies into the affected area. It
may not have been enough for an event of this magnitude, but it
was fast.
I think the real issue is that the response was not robust.
It was not enough for the catastrophe at hand. And as you
look--as we all look--to make it better next time, I think it
is an important distinction to make. ``Slow'' means one thing.
``Not enough'' means something else. More importantly, the
corrective actions between fixing ``slow'' and ``not enough''
could be significant.
Emergency management is unlike any other system in the
government. It is a bottoms-up approach. The people on the
ground are in charge. The first responders are supported, as
required, by local government, then State government, and as a
last resort, the Federal Government. Ultimately, authority for
disaster response operations rests at the local level. The
State and Federal Governments are not in charge, but are
responsible for assisting local governments.
And that is how it should be, as all disasters are local.
Disasters start at the local level, and disasters end at the
local level. This system works for small to medium disasters.
It does not work so well for large disasters, and it falls
apart for a catastrophic disaster. I think that is a
fundamental problem with the response to Katrina.
Following are some of the other major problems and proposed
changes I believe could improve our national readiness posture
to respond to future disasters. And I will list them, but in
the interest of time, I won't go through all of my statement,
but you will have it.
(1) We need to strengthen the emergency management
capability at the State and local level.
(2) We need to review the emergency management architecture
for response and recovery operations. There are problems
associated with the implementation of the Stafford Act as it is
executed through the National Response Plan and the Incident
Command System.
(3) We need a trained, staffed, and equipped Federal
response team.
(4) We need to change the financial management of
disasters.
(5) We need to simplify the public assistance process.
(6) We need to simplify individual assistance process.
(7) We need a greater investment in the leadership and
management within FEMA.
Emergency management is not a simple system. Accordingly,
there are no simple solutions. To have an effective national
disaster response structure, we must have a viable local,
State, and Federal capability. If any of these links in the
emergency management chain breaks, the system itself begins to
break down. If we cannot have viability at all three levels,
then we should change the system.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a field
perspective of Hurricane Katrina.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Wells. Mr. Parr.
TESTIMONY OF PHILIP E. PARR,\1\ DEPUTY FEDERAL COORDINATING
OFFICER, FEMA JOINT FIELD OFFICE, AUSTIN, TEXAS
Mr. Parr. First, I want to say good morning to this august
Committee. Good morning, Chairman Collins.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Parr appears in the Appendix on
page 52.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Phil Parr, and I want to thank you for the
opportunity of testifying before you about my experiences and
the response to Hurricane Katrina. The views expressed in my
testimony are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the Department of Homeland Security.
Presently, my position with FEMA is that of Federal
Coordinating Officer. I have been involved with response and
emergency management for the past 26 years. I was sworn in as a
member of the New York City Fire Department in 1979 and rose
through the ranks to attain the level of chief officer in 1999.
During my tenure with the FDNY, and particularly during my
tenure as a chief officer, I served in many capacities,
including, but not limited to, fire and emergency ground
commander, operations, planning for Y2K scenarios, and as a
deputy director in the New York City Office of Emergency
Management. I have played an active role in countless disasters
and crisis situations to include the September 11 attack at the
World Trade Center, where I was on scene prior to the towers
collapse.
Since January 2004, I have been a member of the Federal
Coordinating Officer program, assigned to FEMA Region 1, New
England. In this role, I have served in various capacities,
including FCO for three presidentially declared disasters.
Before I continue with my testimony, I think it is
important to mention that I have always taken great pride in my
years of service as a member of the New York City Fire
Department. At one time, I would not imagine serving in any
other position in which I would serve with the same feeling and
pride.
However, during my tenure with FEMA, the dedication to
service as displayed by its members and their care for disaster
victims has allowed me to serve with the same pride and
satisfaction that I experienced during my previous 25 years of
public service. So it is with that passion that I speak before
this Committee, and I thank you again for the opportunity to do
so.
On Saturday, August 27, I was informed that I would be the
emergency response team advance element team leader for the
State of Texas. My team was composed of personnel from FEMA
Region 1, New England, and we were instructed to rendezvous in
the Region 6 Regional Response Coordination Center in Denton,
Texas, on Sunday, August 28. Soon it became clear that Texas
was not in the path of Hurricane Katrina and that members of my
team and I would be assigned as the lead element in New
Orleans, Louisiana.
I flew to Louisiana immediately following the hurricane
passing, Monday, August 29, with a contingent of my team. And
Tuesday morning, August 30, we helicoptered into the Superdome.
Our mission was threefold. One, form a unified command with the
State, as represented by the Louisiana National Guard, and the
City of New Orleans. Two, maintain visibility of commodities
ordered. And three, build out a base from which FEMA teams
could be formed to locate and assist in the hardest-hit
parishes.
To accomplish these goals, we were to meet a mobile
emergency operations and communications vehicle and use that as
a base of operations and communication. Due to extensive
flooding in the city, our communications vehicle was unable to
enter the Superdome, and this severely hampered our operations.
Despite this, and while working under the most difficult of
circumstances, we were able to assist the National Guard in
maintaining a supply of food and water to Superdome evacuees--
all were fed and provided water--and, even with limited
communications, facilitate the arrival of what was to become
over the next 4 days a thousand-bus convoy to evacuate the City
of New Orleans to start the day after our arrival.
The FEMA disaster medical assistance team treated hundreds
and identified seriously injured and special needs patients who
were evacuated via air and ground assets throughout the
operation. In addition, several meetings were held with the
mayor and his staff, ranking National Guard officers on the
scene, and other Federal officials to include DOD and the Coast
Guard. This facilitated the initiation of a unified command
structure.
Due to the enormity of the event, not all of our initial
goals were met. A delay ensued in placing teams into other
hard-hit parishes, which I believe took place that Friday and
Saturday.
I have been asked whether FEMA was overwhelmed, or could
our response be considered slow? To consider the latter first,
I must say, in my opinion, no. FEMA teams--response,
management, medical, and urban search and rescue--were in
position in four States pre-landfall. Commodities were staged
close to the impacted areas, and in some cases, the hand-off to
the State had already taken place.
In addition, and as previously mentioned, FEMA mission
assigned Emergency Support Function 1, the Department of
Transportation, and they verified that, by September 3, 990
buses were in service performing evacuations. It is estimated
that over 66,000 persons were transported by that date. The
number of buses grew to over 1,100 in the next 2 days.
Were we overwhelmed? The simple answer is yes. But what
needs to be understood is that, at any disaster, the initial
response always feels overwhelmed. I must draw on my experience
as a local responder to give you an example on a small scale of
what I mean, and then a larger one.
The police officer who pulls up to a 2-car accident with
severe injuries while he operates alone, waiting for help, is
overwhelmed. The fire officer who pulls up to a burning
structure with people trapped inside is overwhelmed. But the
true professional, while responding and operating, knows that
he is constantly sizing up the situation, gaining intelligence,
shifting strategies, modifying plans, and calling for
assistance where needed to meet unfulfilled needs, whether
expected or unexpected.
I would like to refer back to the disaster of September 11
and its effect on the emergency personnel operating at the
World Trade Center. First, it must be remembered that within
the 369 square miles of New York City are the resources of a
State with a strong central government. There are over 35,000
New York City police officers, about 13,000 firefighters and
emergency medical personnel. These numbers only begin to
enumerate the assets available to the city. No other city in
the country can begin to come close to the responders that are
contained within New York City.
The response to the attacks on the towers was immediate.
The enormity of the task at hand was overwhelming. Then with
the collapse of the towers, it was chaos. Emergency services
within New York regrouped almost immediately and restarted
operations, but a full, coordinated plan took days.
The World Trade Center complex was 13 acres. The landfall
of Hurricane Katrina affected four States and covered an area
of 90,000 square miles, an area the size of Great Britain. It
affected millions.
Effectively, Louisiana was hit by two disasters. First, a
devastating hurricane along with its associated blast damage
and, second, a catastrophic flooding event caused by levee
failures. Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating disaster
to hit our country. We were all overwhelmed--the city, the
State, the affected parishes, and the Federal Government.
What can FEMA, individuals, local governments, and States
do to be more prepared? First, it must be realized that the
response to any crisis or disaster is the responsibility of
every individual and form of government in this country.
Emergency management is more than just coordination. It is
about partnership with all entities previously mentioned.
Each of us plays a vital part, and any one of us who fails
in our part fails in that partnership. That failed
responsibility must be picked up by one of their partners, and
that causes delay, confusion, and lack of coordination.
For FEMA's part, it is my belief we have not done what is
needed to get that message across to individuals, locals, and
States. We have worked to create an image that Uncle Sam will
be on your doorstep with MREs, food, water, and ice before the
hurricane-force winds subside. We have created an expectation
that in a large or no-notice event, such as a terrorist attack
or an earthquake, we can never hope to meet.
As an agency, we must help our partners understand their
role in the emergency management cycle, as many States and
locals do now. To this end, I believe we can do much with
conditional and competitive grants to State and local
governments to achieve this.
Generally because response is immediate and local, FEMA's
primary role in disaster is recovery. With some notable
exceptions, what is described at the Federal level as response
in actuality is ``response support''--that is, supplying life-
saving commodities--with local and State responders performing
what we traditionally call response.
But as an agency, we can do better in the response role.
Primarily, I believe this can be accomplished by a shift in
attitude and training by some in management and decisionmaking
roles in our agency.
In another area of improvement, FEMA has initiated a total
asset visibility system whereby truckloads of commodities can
be located via satellite transponder and tracked more closely.
This system must be fully put online before our next hurricane
season.
We should recognize that FEMA is a small agency, especially
when compared with other Federal agencies. But its strength
lies in the fact that the National Response Plan identifies it
as the coordinating agency for the entire Federal response.
I believe more drills, familiarization and otherwise, are
necessary between FEMA and other Federal agencies to help
clarify roles and responsibilities under the NRP and in their
critical emergency support functions. Understanding their
contribution and role in the emergency response team structure
is essential for effective response. These crucial elements
must be established and become routine to help ensure that a
better-coordinated Federal package can be delivered to States
to assist them in their response.
Additional standardized and practical training must be
provided to personnel who may be asked to serve on response
teams at the county or local level. Training programs and
expectations that build on practical experience from this and
previous operations, with input from States, must be provided
to FEMA staff, who may be needed to assist at the local level
in response operations.
As with any operation, I hope that, as an agency, we can
make these changes based on lessons learned. I would also hope
that State and local officials will review their emergency
management procedures and also adopt necessary changes.
Finally, each citizen has a responsibility to plan, heed
warnings, and do whatever is within their means to prepare and
respond to disaster.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this subject.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Carwile.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM L. CARWILE III,\1\ FORMER FEDERAL
COORDINATING OFFICER, FEMA JOINT FIELD OFFICE, BILOXI,
MISSISSIPPI
Mr. Carwile. Good morning, Chairman Collins and
distinguished Members of the Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Carwile appears in the Appendix
on page 61.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am Bill Carwile. Thank you for inviting me today to
testify about operations in Mississippi during Hurricane
Katrina.
Between August 29 and October 15, I was initially the
Federal Coordinating Officer and later the Deputy Federal
Coordinating Officer. I recently retired from FEMA and am
currently affiliated with the Center for Homeland Defense and
Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California. I am testifying today as a private citizen.
There are many lessons to be learned from the responses to
Hurricane Katrina. I applaud your efforts to gather information
critical to charting a future for disaster operations in our
country. I hope my testimony will, in some way, make a
contribution to that undertaking.
My perspective is from one who has been in the field, on
the ground in large-scale disasters during much of the last 9
years. My recent experiences include serving as operations
section chief for the World Trade Center operations in New
York, serving as Federal Coordinating Officer for the 2003
wildfires in California, and FCO for each of the four
hurricanes last year in Florida.
I joined FEMA in 1996 as the director of the Pacific area
office in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I reside today. In 1999, I
became one of the first members of the Federal Coordinating
Officer program created to provide a pool of trained
professionals to manage the Federal side of disasters.
In 2003, I was appointed as one of the first predesignated
principal Federal officials by former Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge. Prior to my service with FEMA, I retired
as an Army colonel, having served almost 3 decades as a special
forces and infantry officer in the regular Army. My assignments
included two tours in Vietnam.
I would like to address three major points in my oral
testimony. First, there were three separate presidential
disaster declarations as Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf
Coast--Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These were three
different disasters in the type and extent of destruction, the
number of people affected, and each State's constitutional
relationships with its local jurisdictions.
While each disaster was different, they were similar in
that in each disaster the governor of the State was in charge.
As FCO, I was appointed by the President as his representative
to support the governor using the authorities provided for in
the Stafford Act. While there were three distinct disasters,
today my comments will cover only operations in Mississippi,
where I was.
Second, in my view, this was the first time we fully
implemented appropriate portions of the National Incident
Management System, the National Response Plan, and the Incident
Command System in a major disaster response. During the summer
of 2005, following the distribution of the National Response
Plan, many Federal and State emergency managers underwent
training on the plan and ICS.
Fortunately, I and key members of our emergency response
team in Mississippi, which is mostly comprised of personnel
with whom I have worked for years, had participated in
extensive ICS training. Similarly, Mississippi Emergency
Management Agency Director Robert Latham and his staff and most
county emergency managers had recently undergone NIMS and ICS
training.
One of the key members of my team, operations section chief
Bob Fenton, has long been involved in the doctrine on training
development, is an expert on how to adapt ICS for large-scale
operations.
Using this training and our experience in prior disasters,
Robert Latham and I and our teams established a unified command
to a degree beyond which I believe is envisioned by the
National Response Plan and began the joint incident action
planning process, which set our priorities for each of the
operational periods, which is a 24-hour period at first,
following the ICS concepts. Governor Barbour attended and
participated in many of our meetings and provided leadership
and important strategic guidance.
During the response, we found that some aspects of the
National Response Plan did not fit our organizational needs for
a joint State/Federal response to a catastrophic disaster. We
found it necessary to modify some important aspects of the
plan. These changes are detailed in my written testimony.
While it is my belief that ICS works well for fires and
smaller disasters, some substantial modifications are required
for large-scale events. Mostly, these modifications revolve
around the need for unified command up and down the
organization and in order to address political and operational
realities.
I would recommend that an effort be made to capture the
experiences of the individual geographic and branch directors
and division supervisors. They were down in the communities and
provided us a manageable span of control. This might be
accomplished through interviews, similar to the Army's oral
history program, to find out what really worked down there,
where the rubber meets the road.
This effort will provide a more detailed view of what
changes to the NRP should be made to accommodate the realities
of joint State/Federal response to a catastrophic disaster.
Third, there have been questions raised about the
competence of FEMA personnel in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In my career in FEMA, I worked with many dedicated and highly
competent individuals who were committed to serving both our
country and the victims of disasters. Many routinely give up
holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, and normal family lives to
help others. I am proud to have been part of FEMA and
especially proud of the many individuals whose heroic efforts
helped the people of Mississippi and other States in which I
have served. They deserve our thanks.
A disaster can bring out the best in people. There are
thousands of stories of individual acts of heroism and
kindnesses during Katrina. Mississippians helped their
neighbors. Hundreds of local officials, who had just lost
everything, reported for duty. And all around the country,
volunteers left their lives behind and headed for the Gulf
Coast to help.
We should not forget, however, that in a catastrophic
disaster, the government and those wonderful voluntary agencies
can never provide adequate aid in the immediate aftermath of
the disaster. We all need to better prepare ourselves and our
families and be ready to help our neighbors.
In my written testimony, I provide comments about what I
think went well and what didn't go well in the response and
initial recovery for Katrina in Mississippi. Two main points.
The State/Federal unified command worked well in Mississippi.
But this success was obscured by the fact that requested
resources did not arrive quickly enough. Better, more effective
methods must be adopted to quickly deliver resources in a
catastrophic event.
In Mississippi, while temporary housing has been provided
in numbers far exceeding any previous effort, this success is
obscured by the overwhelming need and an exceptionally long
period of time that people remain in shelters. New
methodologies must be examined and implemented to take care of
Americans in need of humane housing while in a catastrophic
event.
These are but two of the many challenges the Nation faces
if it is to really prepare for the next catastrophic disaster.
We must do all we can to capture the lessons learned, both good
and bad, from Katrina in Mississippi in order to make real
changes so that the next time, elected and appointed officials
will be able to better support the needs of victims.
I thank the Committee for undertaking this important work
for the Nation. I will be glad to try to answer any questions
you may have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you for your testimony.
I want to start my questioning today to get your judgment,
your assessment of preparedness and response at the State and
local level. As Mr. Wells pointed out in his testimony, our
Nation's emergency management structure is often referred to as
a bottom-up structure. It has key roles for local, State, and
Federal Governments to play.
I thought that Mr. Wells made an important point when he
said that there is some misconception on the part of the public
about who plays what role in our emergency response system. So
starting with you, Mr. Wells, if FEMA and the Federal
Government are at the top of the structure, how did the bottom
part work, in your judgment, for Hurricane Katrina? How would
you assess the State and local response in Louisiana?
Mr. Wells. Well, a lot of it is situational. Each parish in
Louisiana has different capability. The important thing in
emergency management is you have to have a foundation
established for the Federal departments to build on.
When we go into a disaster, the locals are in charge. The
locals ask for assistance from the State, who, in turn, asks
for assistance from FEMA. If there is no structure, if there is
no organization, if there is no capability at the local or the
State level, there is no foundation from which we can build.
I will give you one example to compare between Katrina in
Louisiana and Rita in Texas to try to demonstrate what I mean
by that. In Texas, for Rita, I was there for the preparation
phase, and we are just going to talk about prior to landfall
because it is equivalent to Katrina in that no disaster struck.
It wasn't catastrophic in Texas for Rita. So, post landfall, it
was different. So let us just talk about pre-landfall.
In the State of Texas, they had plans. They had plans at
the local level. They had plans at the State level that
leveraged the Federal capability. One example, evacuation. In
Texas, we were asked--the Federal Government--to provide
evacuation support prior to landfall. The State of Texas had a
plan to build on, and so we worked with the State of Texas and
the areas of Beaumont to Houston to evacuate special needs
patients, elderly, and the disabled. One person had an iron
lung.
This is a very difficult mission. Just getting one patient
onboard an airplane is very difficult, and they did somewhere
between 11,000 and 13,000. And we were able to have an
effective national response structure--national is local,
State, and Federal--because the Federal Government had
something to build on. We did not have that in Louisiana.
Chairman Collins. Senator Stevens informs me that he has to
leave, and he has one question that he would like to ask before
he does so.
Senator Stevens. Thank you very much. I am going to the
reconciliation meeting.
One of the problems we are having is that there seems to be
a congressional feeling about the extent of our responsibility
to the people in New Orleans, who really suffered damage from
what I call really man-made disasters. I wonder if the two of
you would join me in sending a letter from this Committee
asking the Department of Justice if there is a different
standard of liability for the Federal Government to those areas
that were not harmed by Katrina, but were harmed by the failure
of the levee and other systems that were man-made?
Chairman Collins. Well, as the distinguished Senator may be
aware, we have had one hearing looking at why the levees have
failed. We have a second hearing scheduled for next week, which
is going to look at all the roles of the various players--the
local levee district, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the
State of Louisiana, and the Commonwealth of Louisiana's
Transportation Department.
There is a lot of confusion, our investigation has found,
over who was responsible for the maintenance and the inspection
of the levees. I would like to wait until we complete that
hearing before proceeding. But I hope you will be able to
attend that hearing. I think it is going to be a very
interesting one, based on what our extensive investigation has
found.
Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Yes, thanks, Madam Chairman.
Senator Stevens, obviously, I would be glad to look at any
letter you put together. But I agree with the Chairman, it is
probably best for us to wait until after the hearing next week.
I will just say very briefly, because I know you have to
go, where I think we agree is that the immediate cause of most
of the damage in New Orleans was the failure of the levees. And
there is some reason to believe--I can't conclude at this
point--from what we have heard that there was a failure of
construction, design, and other issues.
Where I think we disagree is that, unfortunately, I believe
that was foreseeable. In other words, the levees may have
failed more quickly and in some different ways than people
expected. But we have a lot of history that we put together
here that shows that the experts were all saying if a category
3 or higher hurricane hit New Orleans, those levees would not
hold.
Maybe more of them broke than we thought. Maybe they broke
sooner. But there is a lot of communication indicating they
might fail. In fact, the Hurricane Pam exercise that was
carried out in June 2004 was based on the levees failing and
what would we do as a result. And that is where, I think, we
have a reason to ask FEMA why it wasn't ready to deal with it.
Senator Stevens. Well, I think my question goes to who is
going to be responsible? There is a lot of damage out there now
that was not covered by insurance, either flood or otherwise.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Senator Stevens. And attempts to try and use Federal funds
to meet some of that damage is being met with resistance. I
think the duty of this Committee is to demonstrate that there
is an extra added level of responsibility in the areas where
those levees failed.
And it is true that there were predictions. When we did our
thing in appropriations in 1998 and 1999, we had the feeling
that there were severe problems. We had people that told us
there were problems there.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Senator Stevens. But notwithstanding that, we got a plan.
But no one really fixed the levees, and no one fixed the gates,
and people have suffered enormous loss. Now we have to have a
greater feeling in Congress about our responsibility to those
people who are in that one area where it was not just Katrina,
a natural disaster, but damage from man-made disaster.
I think there has been a failure in Congress to recognize
that difference. But I appreciate and I hope I can attend the
hearing. Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I am going to resume my questioning with Mr. Wells to try
to get us back on track a little bit.
It was helpful to hear your different experience dealing
with Louisiana versus Texas. In general, were the Louisiana
officials that you dealt with familiar with their
responsibilities under the National Response Plan? And did they
understand how the Incident Command System worked, in your
view?
Mr. Wells. No. Short answer.
The Incident Command System is very important. You cannot
do anything without command and control. If I may take a minute
to read something from an emergency services person who is on a
workgroup for the search and rescue mission, which was a
combined effort of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the state police for Louisiana,
DOTD, and FEMA, to show you what it is like when you don't have
an effective Incident Command System? And I am just going to
read this verbatim. It is unvarnished.
``Establishing a State/Federal search and rescue workgroup
on August 28 was a great concept. However, there were some
shortfalls. The workgroup was a joint effort in name only. We
had a great initial meeting and established solid operational
concepts, but had no decision-makers present with the authority
to obligate their agency's resources.
``The State appointed a workgroup leader who was to oversee
the State assets. However, this workgroup leader flew to
Jackson barracks the afternoon after the initial meeting and
was not heard from for 9 days. For 3 weeks, I sponsored''--this
was the FEMA person--``the workgroup's twice-a-day meetings
that were attended by FEMA, who had resources and authority to
direct search efforts.
``The U.S. Coast Guard, who had junior officer
representation but no authority to direct search and rescue air
operation, all operations were directed by senior Coast Guard
officers from another location. These officers refused to meet
and conduct joint search and rescue operations with FEMA and
State agencies.
``State wildlife and fisheries had representation but no
authority to make management decisions on search and rescue
operations. That authority remained with senior officers who
conducted solo operations.
``State police, who had an interest in following up on 911
calls, but had no State search and rescue authorities or
resources to assist.
``Civil air patrol attended and had air resources to
support search and rescue, but had no State taskings to engage
their resources.
``The DOTD, the State Department of Transportation, had
resources to support joint search and rescue missions, but
refused to attend any of the meetings or plan joint efforts.''
This is a failure of the Incident Command System. It is all
about having people that can make decisions on the spot and get
on down the road. This is just but one example of why things
were slow and why things didn't work out as fast, as efficient,
or as effective as they should. If people don't understand ICS,
we can't do ICS. And if we can't do ICS, we cannot manage
disasters.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, what is your assessment of how
the Incident Command System worked in Louisiana?
Mr. Parr. I want to echo Mr. Wells's sentiments. It is
extremely important, in my experience, at a local level, as
something that is near and dear to my heart. I think, and as I
said before--and this is not necessarily to point fingers, but
hopefully, for us to critique ourselves and learn how we can do
better next time--I cannot begin to explain the dedication that
the police officers and firefighters in the City of New
Orleans, how they acted, how they responded.
The same thing with the National Guard. I was working with
people every second of every day who literally lost everything.
But they were there doing their jobs, working as hard as they
could.
I think one place where we need vast improvement is in
their preparation. It is the responsibility of local
authorities to evacuate their people. It is the responsibility
of local authorities to set up shelters that are properly
protected from flood waters, that are properly protected from
hurricanes because not all are going to be able to be
evacuated. It would be unreasonable for us to expect 100
percent evacuation of a city the size of New Orleans.
I found that there was very little preparation. No
information on shelters other than the Superdome. There was no
assets or commodities at the Superdome, other than what FEMA
gave to the State, which they did distribute at the Superdome.
There were no sanitation facilities before the levees
broke. You can imagine the difficulty of moving sanitation
facilities into a city with 4, 5, 6, and, in some areas of the
city, 14 feet of water once that happened. That is the job of
local and State governments. And simply, that just did not
happen.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Carwile, how did the Incident Command
System work in Mississippi?
Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, I think it worked very well at
the top. There had been training previous to Hurricane Katrina
by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency on down to the
county emergency managers. So it worked well.
We quickly were able to form a unified command with both
myself and Robert Latham, my counterpart from the State. And we
included at the top of the unified command the Adjutant General
for the State of Mississippi, Major General Cross, as well as
the commissioner of public safety, George Phillips, because
each one of those brought so much to the table in terms of
resources to manage.
I think where the difficulty becomes--and I believe Senator
Lieberman talked about this in his opening remarks--in a
situation, a catastrophic disaster, it is very difficult to
build from the bottom up if there is no bottom. Mayor Tommy
Longo of Waveland and over in Hancock County, Mississippi, I
mean, he lost every fire truck, and the fire station. Every
police officer lost their home. There was no city hall. There
was nothing left for Mayor Longo to build on.
Similarly, in Hancock County, the emergency operations
center in the county had to be evacuated, and we moved our
folks over to Stennis in order to have a communications and a
coherent system. So I think it is true that it builds from the
bottom up. But in a catastrophic, we have got to be able to
reach down and to supplement the absence of a coherent system
down below.
And to get around that, we predeployed division supervisors
with communications from both the Federal and the State teams
to the three what we believed would be, most impacted counties
with available resources to prop up, if you will, those great
first responders and emergency managers and mayors down in the
local areas.
We did not do that to the degree we would have liked to
have done it because, frankly, there was a paucity of trained
personnel to do that. But I think overall, and I believe in
ICS. I think that we need to make some modifications as we look
at a catastrophic, however, because, to me, the unified command
as it is outlined in the National Response Plan calls for
unified command only at the top, a few people.
I believe that unified command has to go all the way down
the structure, and we have to be able to use State and Federal
personnel to prop up local communities that have been totally
destroyed by something like Katrina.
Chairman Collins. I think that is an excellent point that
perhaps we should take a look at whether the system is
scalable, whether it makes sense to expect the State and local
governments to play the role that is envisioned when the
magnitude of the catastrophe may wipe out all of the capability
at the State and local level.
Mr. Carwile.
Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. And I think we can do that without
in any way encumbering or impeding the constitutional
authorities within the State constitutions of the local elected
and appointed officials.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, under the current system, FEMA
is besieged with requests from State and local governments for
various commodities or forms of assistance. I would like to
refer your attention to certain exhibits that are in the book
that is by you, specifically Exhibits 8, 9, G, H, and I. They
all reflect requests made by State and local government
entities in Louisiana to FEMA for assistance.
And I am just going to go through what those are. Exhibit
8\1\ is from the New Orleans police department asking FEMA for,
among other things, 400 M-4 weapons, 25,000 rounds of
ammunition, 1,500 pairs of black military boots in various
sizes, and 200 Crown Victoria police cruisers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit 8 appears in the Appendix on page 83.
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Exhibit 9\2\ is from New Orleans parish, and it asks for 10
gas-powered golf carts to transport firefighters around Zephyr
Field.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Exhibit 9 appears in the Appendix on page 90.
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Exhibit G\3\ is from Mayor Nagin's office. It seeks a bus
to Shreveport. Exhibit H\4\ is also from the mayor's office. It
seeks portable air conditioning units to cool offices. And
Exhibit I\5\ is from the Louisiana Department of Social
Services, asking for a taxi to take one person from a hospital
to a shelter.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Exhibit G appears in the Appendix on page 99.
\4\ Exhibit H appears in the Appendix on page 102.
\5\ Exhibit I appears in the Appendix on page 104.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I was reading through these requests, they struck me as
not the typical requests that State and local governments would
make to FEMA during a natural disaster. But obviously, I don't
have your experience.
First, let me ask you, are these typical of the requests
that you would expect to get from State and local governments
to FEMA in the aftermath of a disaster?
Mr. Wells. The problem with these is we got literally
hundreds and hundreds of requests like this intermingled with
valid requests. And when you get that volume that are not
screened, it clogs down the system for legitimate requests that
we need to process.
I think this is an indication of just a lack of
understanding--this came from the local level--the lack of
understanding of what FEMA is there for, what we can do, and
probably more importantly, what they can do themselves.
Also, we normally with most disaster operations, when the
request comes to the State emergency ops center, they will
screen out all of those requests prior to us even getting them.
So this is not typical. No, ma'am.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks to you
three gentlemen.
Having heard your opening statements and the questioning
thus far, I go back to what I said at the beginning. You are
three extraordinary professionals. I admire the work that you
have done. We are lucky to have had you working and to have you
still working, at least in two cases, for FEMA.
And what strikes me as particularly significant is that you
have something to add from the ground about what we could do to
perform better in the next catastrophic natural disaster. That
you are proud of your service in FEMA, but you are not
defensive about everything that happened. And I think that is
the spirit of this Committee. We are not out to get or protect
anybody in this. We are out to figure out what happened.
In response to what Senator Stevens said, just beyond what
I have said when he was here, there is no question that New
Orleans suffered a lot because the levees failed. It was a
hurricane that would have had one level of damage. But the
levees failing compounded it enormously. The failure of the
levees was not only foreseeable, but was foreseen for years if
the hurricane was above category 3.
In fact, there is some reason now to believe that maybe the
levees failed even earlier with a lower category impact of the
hurricane because of some kind of negligence in design or
construction. That is a very important question we have to
answer.
But having said all of that doesn't mean that FEMA was
ready or did everything it should have done. And that is why,
in a nondefensive way, we want to get at it. I will say and ask
my first questions to you, Mr. Wells, that just a few of the
things you have said so far suggest to me changes that ought to
be implemented.
For instance, as you said, and in some sense was expanded
upon by Mr. Parr and Mr. Carwile in response to Senator
Collins' questions, the bottoms-up approach makes a lot of
sense in many disasters or emergencies. I wrote it down
quickly, so I may have missed it. But when you get to a large
disaster, it doesn't work so well. And when you get to a
catastrophe, the bottoms-up falls apart.
And part of what I think, therefore, we probably want to do
as a government going forward is, as you all said, to put in
place for FEMA and the rest of the Federal apparatus some plans
in those more significant disaster situations when the bottoms-
up won't work, and the Federal Government really has to assume
a significant amount of responsibility.
Second very instructive thing I thought you said, you
compared the preparation of Texas for Hurricane Rita to the
prepareatin of New Orleans and Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina.
Texas had an evacuation plan that was adequate to the
circumstances. We all understand that Rita didn't hit at the
level of catastrophe that Katrina did. But you saw a plan
there, which you didn't see in the case of Louisiana.
So this suggests to me that part of what we may want to do
as a matter of law or regulation, probably law, is to have some
more aggressive Federal oversight of the emergency planning of
State and local authorities to the point of having to certify
and make sure not just that we look at it, but that they
actually have as comprehensive a plan ready for emergencies as
possible.
Mr. Wells, let me, in that spirit, go on. Because as I read
the statements that you made to our staff in the interviews, I
am struck by one quote after another in which you are willing,
from the ground, in a very professional and confident way to
say this just didn't go as it should have gone. And I am going
to quote a little bit.
You talk about FEMA's ability to respond, ``But FEMA is not
trained. FEMA is not equipped. FEMA is not organized to do very
large response operations.''
You talk about inadequate communications, ``What we had was
a communications kind of vacuum here in Baton Rouge.''
You speak of FEMA's difficulties in staffing positions.
``Just about every position we have, this is a secondary job
for people. I think everybody fails to recognize this. Very
important.''
``Our system is based on--this is whole interagency--who is
available at this time, put them in there, get them out the
door.''
You acknowledge difficulties in planning. ``Now we did do
some different things here that would need a lot of study like
the continuity of government. We didn't work continuity of
government at all. In New Orleans, they melted down. Their
whole government was just melted down. We didn't have a plan
for continuity of government.''
And I was struck also by your views of the Stafford Act,
``You need different laws. The Stafford Act is not--the
Stafford Act is like bringing a donkey to the Kentucky Derby.''
Have you heard him say that before? ``It is not designed for a
disaster this big.''
So what I am saying is that your candor is very important
and very appreciated and very necessary as we work together to
try to fix this. And bottom line, it would appear from your
statements that FEMA was lacking a plan, communications,
appropriate personnel, and various other assets to deal with a
catastrophic disaster of this kind.
I want to give you a chance now to comment broadly on those
points that you made in the staff interviews.
Mr. Wells. I don't know if I can remember all that you
said, sir. Let us talk about the FEMA part----
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Wells [continuing]. And the Stafford Act and all that.
We are not, we do not have the capability versus equipment,
people, expertise, training to do large catastrophic disasters.
We do not have teams. We do not work as teams. The people you
get, and it is not just FEMA--this was a National Response
Plan.
And people talk ``FEMA this and FEMA that.'' But you know
what? FEMA, once you get out in the field, we are a very small
percentage of what is out there. And at the height of Katrina,
I think we had, if you include the military, maybe 70,000
people?
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Wells. And FEMA was maybe 1,500 or 2,000 of that. And
even when the military went down, it was still a small part.
Senator Lieberman. Am I right that full-time FEMA personnel
are numbered at about 2,000? This is all around the country,
not in that crisis.
Mr. Wells. Right. There are only 2,500.
Senator Lieberman. And so, what you are drawing on when you
say 1,500 to 2,000 personnel for Katrina was redeployment of
FEMA full-time personnel from elsewhere, but also a lot of
part-time people or people just brought in for the crisis?
Mr. Wells. Right.
Senator Lieberman. I want to get to that later.
Mr. Wells. Anyway, we do not have enough people. We rob
Peter to pay Paul in disasters. Even in medium disasters, we
are doing that. We have 10 regions we have to man. A regional
office has to do three things. They have to do two things. They
need to do three things, but they have to do two things.
They have to set up a regional response coordination
center. It is an emergency ops center. And they have to staff a
team that goes forward to Louisiana like we did. Now you only
have about 90 people in a region. That is woefully inadequate
to do both. You cannot do both. Pick one.
When you get to a field, when we got to Louisiana, we had
enough staff for our advance team to do maybe half of what we
needed to do for a day shift. We had to do a day and night
shift. So we had to prioritize.
We did not have the people. We did not have the expertise.
We did not have the operational training folks that we needed
to do our mission. And it has been this way for years, sir.
Years after years, you are working on the margins. You are
getting people from other agencies with no experience or no
experience in response operations. They are just filling a
billet. We have never trained together.
We need to really train together as a team. We need to work
as a team. What you have with this National Response Plan in
the field is we have no unity of command.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Wells. FEMA has more of a coordination role. We need to
have a command role, where we can direct the sub-elements
assigned to us to do things. And it doesn't play out that way,
despite what the National Response Plan indicates.
Senator Lieberman. That is a very important point. In some
sense, as I read your testimony, as I hear you today, it is as
if you are the generals, and you are first rate. But we haven't
really given you an adequate trained force to go into battle
with you.
I want to ask a few questions similar to Mr. Carwile. I
know you also expressed some concern about FEMA's staffing
levels and problems. In your opening statement, you talked of
how FEMA needs many more trained people.
I know that you had a chance to look at these problems. I
wonder if you would describe the impact of funding decisions on
FEMA's effectiveness, particularly the ERT-N team. And let me
refer you in particular to a memorandum that I believe you
contributed to, dated June 30, 2004, which is Exhibit 1.\1\
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\1\ Exhibit 1 appears in the Appendix on page 72.
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In it, you refer ``to the unpreparedness of national
emergency response teams.'' You say the teams are unprepared
because of ``zero funding for training exercises or
equipment.'' So I ask you to comment on that in light of what
you found in the response to Katrina.
Mr. Carwile. Yes, Senator Lieberman. This has long been a
concern of mine, as well as Mr. Wells.
After September 11, I was asked by Director Allbaugh at the
time to reconstitute a national team, an emergency response
team national, and to write an operations plan and be prepared
to respond to the next terrorist event. It was an all-hazards
plan, but the focus, obviously, at the time was on terrorism.
I took a small group from New York City, our joint field
office there, went down to Atlanta and put together a team of
very seasoned emergency managers and with members of other
Federal agencies, including the military, and wrote what was
known then as an ERT-N op plan. We were then able to build a
team to about 125 individuals, hand picked, from around the
country, and we were able to routinely exercise that team
because we had the funding in place to do so on the plan
against several scenarios.
Senator Lieberman. Were these full-time FEMA employees?
Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. For the most part. We did have some
reservists, which we called disaster assistance employees, on
the team. But the intent was to use them only in certain areas
where we have almost no full-time employees to do certain
functions within FEMA. We rely solely on our reservists for
things like administration and that sort of thing.
We were asked to take the team to the Winter Olympics in
Salt Lake City, and we exercised and exercised. And as well as
buying satellite communications and being able to, we felt we
had a robust plan, a well-trained team, and communications.
It wasn't long after that, and the longer we got away from
September 11, the less funding we had. Funding, it appeared to
us--and I am just a field guy, not a headquarters person. The
small amount of money we did have was being diverted, and we
got no money in the out-years. So there was no money.
Then we morphed that team into another team. The red team
morphed, and we split it up and formed a blue team. And
subsequently, a white team, which was a hollow team. But there
was never any money. In former years, prior to September 11,
when I was on a national team, we at least had money to do one
training event a year and one meeting for the leadership of the
teams. That money also went away.
Senator Lieberman. So in that period of years that you have
described post-September 11, there was no money for training
exercises?
Mr. Carwile. Except for that first year, sir.
Senator Lieberman. That first year.
Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. And after that, the money went away,
and the emphasis on the readiness of those teams, as I said in
my opening comments, I came from 30 years in the military. We
had a very rigorous reporting system and the red/amber/green to
report unit status. We had nothing like that in FEMA, although
those things were being--anyway, I think there was a great
problem in resourcing those teams.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. So this was not only a natural
disaster waiting to happen, this was a personnel, kind of a
FEMA disaster waiting to happen because we weren't giving you
the resources to get ready for this.
If I may, Madam Chairman, I just want to ask one follow-up
question because I think it is important. It is something I
have come to learn myself, in the course of this investigation,
which speaks to the fact that FEMA has relatively few full-time
personnel.
And this is the response teams and the so-called
reservists, which in the interview you did with our staff, it
seemed to me you were saying that these teams are mostly names
on rosters. They are not really teams because they don't train
together, they don't work together, and they don't really have
a budget.
And I wonder if you could just give, for the record, a
little background on what does it mean to be a reservist for
FEMA in this regard? Who are these people, typically? And
obviously, I assume you believe, based on what you said before,
that if they are there as reservists that we ought to be
spending more money training them?
Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. I will specifically speak to the
fine Americans that form the reserve cadre, which we call the
disaster assistance employees, which we rely on almost to a
great extent to our ability to surge personnel capacity to
respond to any large disasters. In other words, in Florida last
year, probably 90 percent of the workforce were disaster
assistance employees.
Those employees have traditionally, if you look at the
demographics, many of them are retired from all sorts of walks
of life. They are people you would be very proud to be
associated with. They bring skill sets from decades of
experience in various parts of the civil sector and some from
the military.
They are inadequately recompensed for the time they spend
on active duty. They have absolutely no benefits. None, no
benefits whatsoever, even when they are on active duty, we call
them up. So, for example, if there is a holiday, and you happen
to be on a big disaster, and there is no benefit. If you want
to let a few people off, you can't even pay them for being off
on the holiday.
Senator Lieberman. Am I right? They don't really train as
units?
Mr. Carwile. Sir, was that the individual part of your
question?
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Carwile. The collective part of your question and the
teams, there is no training money and very little. Now the
regions, as Mr. Wells indicated, they have a responsibility to
field an emergency response team for a small to a mid-level
disaster. They may, because they are all pretty much co-
located, have an opportunity to do some, what we used to call
in the Army, collective training as opposed to individual. But
there is no money to do team training.
So if you go out on a disaster, to me--and I was very
fortunate in Mississippi because I had a team from my home
region that I have worked with for years--you need to know how
that other person is going to respond in a crisis. You need to
have gone through.
In the military, of course, we have a very rigorous
exercise program that is evaluated. And I have long advocated,
and it was included in a white paper that I wrote last year,
that we should have a similar system and have emergency
deployment readiness exercises for these teams, and go out and
do a rigorous evaluation and give feedback to the team members,
much like we do in the military. But that is not done, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. That is a real big gap that we have
to figure out how to fill. I assume that there were a lot of
people on the reserve rosters who were called up to respond to
Hurricane Katrina?
Mr. Carwile. Sir, one of the national teams was deployed to
Louisiana, that is the blue team--the blue team went down. In
Mississippi, we had a lot of members that were on the national
teams, but we did not deploy a national team, per se. There are
only two remaining. Those two teams were reconfigured probably
in the last month or so before Katrina.
They were brand-new teams. New members were put in there,
some of whom have been on other teams in the past. And they
were pared down to, I think, around 25 persons per team, and
they, to my knowledge, never had an opportunity to train
together beforehand.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Carwile. Thanks, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Carwile, I want to follow
up with some additional questions on this June 2004 memo that
Senator Lieberman just questioned you about.
First of all, this memo was an extensive memo. It includes
many significant recommendations, and it also sounds the alarm.
There is the heading on page 3 that says ``unpreparedness of
national emergency response teams.'' It says ``unprepared
teams, zero funding for training exercises and team
equipment.''
It talks about the need for a single division for response
and recovery. It mentions that there had been four different
budget proposals submitted over an 18-month period.
And just so we understand, this is from highly trained and
important professionals within FEMA. It is the Federal
Coordinating Officers. Did you get any response to this memo
from Michael Brown or anyone else in his office?
Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, first of all, I wasn't the
author of the entire document. But these two----
Chairman Collins. You were the author of part of it?
Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. These two issues were--and I am
guilty as charged on that. Ma'am, we put this together, and
probably Scott may have had input as well. I am pretty sure he
did.
Former Director Brown had asked the Federal Coordinating
Officers for their input on things we thought were critical.
And my former colleague Mike Hall was elected by the rest of us
to put this together, each of us having some input. These were
mine.
Mike related to me that this had been submitted to the
eighth floor, being kind of the command group in FEMA. And as
far as I know, there was never any feedback on any of these
issues.
Chairman Collins. So, as far as you know, there were no
actions taken in response to this detailed set of
recommendations that the FCOs sent to Secretary Brown?
Mr. Carwile. That is correct, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. If the recommendations in this June 2004
memo had been implemented, do you believe that the response to
Katrina would have been improved? I realize that is
speculative. But what is your best judgment?
Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. I can't help but believe that
having trained and effective teams that are well equipped and
have had opportunities to work together through training and
rigorous exercises would not have made a difference.
Again, I felt very fortunate because many of my colleagues
with me in Mississippi had been with me on a national team in
years past. It was kind of coincidental.
But I can't help but believe that trained and ready teams,
people who have worked together, would not have made some
difference in a positive way.
Chairman Collins. Could you explain to us why you think
that a single division for response and recovery would help
improve the response to future disasters?
Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. And first of all, that is not a
novel idea. That was formerly that way. My former colleague is
sitting right back here, who was formerly the associate
director for FEMA for response and recovery. It was only with
the formation of the Department of Homeland Security that the
two efforts, that is response and recovery, were bifurcated.
Formerly, there was a greater among equals division within
FEMA was response recovery. Because when you go to the field,
you don't do response, and then all of a sudden, one day you
say, ``Well, we are going to quit doing response. Now, guys, we
are going to start doing recovery.'' It is a continuous effort.
I was looking at our timeline in Mississippi. On September
2, we were putting disaster recovery centers out to meet the
needs of the people to be able to communicate with us and the
Federal and the State officials.
So, to me, and it is also from a person in the field, it is
a little bit difficult to know who the heck you work for at
headquarters. You know, on some issues, you go to one person.
Other issues, you go to another.
When they first bifurcated them, I was in the field, and we
would talk to what is now called the National Resource
Coordination Center, then known as the Emergency Support Team,
and you really didn't know who you were reporting to. Because
was it the response guys or was it recovery guys?
So, to me, it is a natural fit. It was an unnatural thing
to break it up in the first place.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I would now like to turn to the issue of evacuation. One of
the problems that New Orleans had was evacuating citizens
before the storm. Mr. Wells, are you aware of any requests from
the City of New Orleans for assistance with evacuation? Any
request to FEMA?
Mr. Wells. No. We would get the request from the State. The
city would come to the State, and the State would come to us.
And for any pre-landfall evacuation requests, we got none,
zero. And as I mentioned earlier, that was totally unlike what
we did in Texas, where we were actively involved.
Chairman Collins. Now I understand that you were involved
in the Hurricane Pam exercise. Did that include a segment on
the evacuation of New Orleans and the vicinity? Was that part
of the exercise?
Mr. Wells. No, ma'am. Evacuation was not part of it. When
we set up the Pam exercises, we were developing it, we worked
with the officials in Louisiana. And they determined I think it
was five to eight functions that they wanted us to work as
Federal/State partners in it.
And I think we had talked about evacuation, and they said
let us leave that off the table because the city and the State,
we have been working evacuation issues. And we will park that
over there, and we will just work on these other issues. So
that was not one of the issues we addressed in the Pam
exercise.
Chairman Collins. And whose decision, just for clarity, was
it to not include evacuation as part of the Hurricane Pam
exercise?
Mr. Wells. Well, it would have been the deputy director of
emergency management at the time in Louisiana.
Chairman Collins. So it was a State official?
Mr. Wells. The State. Yes, they determined the issues that
we were going to be looking at for Pam.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Parr, another issue of evacuation arose after the
storm, and that was the evacuation of the Superdome. You have
previously told the Committee that you worked with the National
Guard at the Superdome throughout Tuesday night and that you
had a plan that was actually approved by your supervisors at
FEMA and was in coordination with the National Guard to
evacuate the victims at the Superdome, beginning Wednesday
morning. Is that correct?
Mr. Parr. That is correct.
Chairman Collins. Could you explain what that plan was?
Mr. Parr. Sure. As the population of the Superdome started
growing almost exponentially on Tuesday and with the waters
rising, the breach wasn't able to be closed, we realized we had
to get the people out of the Superdome. We felt, the Guard felt
that there would be mass confusion, violence once the lights
went out in the Superdome. That was the only thing that was
keeping people together.
We came up with a plan in conjunction with the Guard. It
was the chief of staff or the adjutant general, the ops
officer, the commanding general that was there for the Guard.
What we were going to do was use Chinook helicopters because
they are the largest in the U.S. inventory. The Guard had
availability of three.
We came up with a plan to move anywhere from 300 to 500
people an hour out of the Superdome by landing helicopters
every 15 to 20 minutes. At the time, we estimated about 15,000
people in the Superdome. We figured we could clear them out
within about a day, about 30 hours or less, once we started the
evacuation with an additional 9 helicopters.
In addition to that plan, I should say it would be short
haul trips. The airport was dry. I believe Belle Chase, which
is a base, was also dry. We would have buses meet them there
and then take them to shelters after that.
Chairman Collins. That sounds to me like a very good plan
that would have helped to evacuate people from a situation that
was becoming increasingly unsanitary and dangerous. Why wasn't
it implemented? In fact, the evacuation did not occur the next
day, despite your having what sounds like a very good plan.
Mr. Parr. That is correct. At least the evacuation for the
general population didn't begin the next morning, as we had
hoped. At some point during the early morning hours--this was a
plan we worked on in the overnight hours. None of us slept at
all as we developed this and had constant conference calls with
Washington, DC.
We couldn't reach our command group at the EOC in Baton
Rouge because of communications, but we were able to reach our
response and coordination center in Denton, Texas. So we would
have conference calls with those two groups.
We were notified at some time around 5 a.m. that General
Honore had taken charge or was in charge of the evacuation of
New Orleans and that all plans were to be put on hold, that he
would be directing the evacuation. And that was the direction I
got from the command group of the National Guard that they
would be awaiting his orders.
Chairman Collins. So, as far as you know, General Honore
canceled the plan?
Mr. Parr. Well, I can't speak to specifically what
happened, but I will tell you that the Guard told me I got a
call from General Landreneau at some point probably between 5
and 6 a.m. in the morning, thanking me and thanking us for our
hard work. But they were awaiting orders of General Honore.
Chairman Collins. So instead of the evacuation from the
Superdome starting on Wednesday morning as it would have under
your plan, the plan worked out with the National Guard, when
were people actually evacuated from the Superdome?
Mr. Parr. The start for the general population was about
Thursday morning, about 24 hours later.
Chairman Collins. So the result of the delay of that
evacuation plan, which you had worked all night to put
together, was that thousands of people in the general
population in the Superdome had to spend another very
unpleasant, hot, dangerous night in the Superdome. Is that
correct?
Mr. Parr. That is correct.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, I noted in your bio that you
had been the liaison from DOD to FEMA back when you were
working for the Department of Defense. DOD has an unusual
relationship with FEMA. As I understand it, FEMA can assign
other agencies certain missions. But with DOD, it is my
understanding the Department has to agree to accept the
missions from FEMA, and it is a much longer process. Is that
correct? Is my understanding correct?
Mr. Wells. Yes. When all of the agencies come into the
joint field office and we give what we call mission assignments
or taskings out to these agencies to do specific things, the
approval authority generally rests with the person in the joint
field office, and it gets done immediately.
But the Department of Defense, their approval authority
rests with the Secretary of Defense. And so, it has to go
through a long process of validation and through their chain of
command to get it approved. And that is more than awkward. It
is more than cumbersome. It just takes a long time to execute.
I need to say, parenthetically, that in Katrina we did not
see that lag that we normally see in most disasters, and they
were fairly responsive.
Chairman Collins. But from your perspective, since you have
seen it both as a DOD employee as well as a FEMA employee,
should the Department be treated differently?
Mr. Wells. No. Having DOD is sort of like somebody giving
you an 800-pound gorilla. You are supposed to take care of that
gorilla and be responsible for that gorilla. But that 800-pound
gorilla is going to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do
it, and how he wants to do it. So you lose some of that control
in your organization with the Department of Defense structure.
What they have is, when General Honore came in, for
example, he had really two organizations. He had a defense
coordinating officer, who was in that joint field office. And
he had a brigadier general, Mark Graham, with the staff, who
worked directly with us out of the joint field office. And that
fell within the architecture of the National Response Plan, and
it was more organized.
General Honore had a joint task force that went and did
things separate and beyond that. He did great things. Him and
his joint task force did great things, but it wasn't
coordinated, and it led to some problems.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Carwile, did you have something you
would like to add to that?
Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, in a previous life, I served
as a defense coordinating officer, as Mr. Wells talked about,
and I have had discussions with Secretary McHale on this very
subject. And we spoke earlier about a unity of command and a
unified command, and what Mr. Wells just described is outside
of unity of command, unity of effort, and a unified command.
In other words, you can't have two Federal agencies, even
if one is an 800-pound gorilla, operating independently of
other Federal agencies. And there is a difference of opinion of
my personal opinion as a private citizen between what I read in
the Stafford Act and the way that the current secretary and
assistant secretary for homeland defense read their
authorities.
And as Mr. Wells indicated, we mission assign other Federal
agencies. DOD, I personally know--Secretary McHale and I have
discussed this--takes exception with even the term ``mission
assignment'' from FEMA to the Department of Defense.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, do you have anything to add to
that debate?
Mr. Parr. I can tell you on a local level. After leaving
New Orleans, I worked in St. Bernard Parish for about 30 days.
I think Mr. Wells' description of the 800-pound gorilla,
because we had a major significant military DOD presence there,
was true.
They did some great things. The men and women that were
there were truly phenomenal. But keeping them--and I will use
this term, but it is not pejorative--reined in to keep them
in--remember, when they were there on the ground, it wasn't me
that was directing operations in the parish. It was the parish
leadership. It was the parish president. It was the sheriff. It
was the parish emergency manager.
And keeping them from running over that was my job because
I was supposed to be the lead Federal person there. And it is
difficult. But they do bring a lot to the table, and they are a
necessary part of the National Response Plan.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks again, Madam Chairman.
The more we go on, the more I keep coming back to military
terms because, in some sense, you are in a real crisis, almost
a battlefield situation. And one I want to talk about is
situational awareness.
Obviously, in military matters, we are, through technology,
dramatically improving the situational awareness of our forces.
And that is not a bad ideal to set up for emergency response
here as well. But it was, really in this case, lacking, again
beginning with the fact that this was an extraordinary
disaster. But part of what I want to get at is the details of
that.
Mr. Parr, I am going to ask you the first questions. We
have seen photographs and video showing the absolutely
devastating situation at the convention center. I know that
most of the accounts have focused on what went on at the
Superdome. But I want to ask you to talk a little bit about
what was unfolding a mile down the road at the convention
center, where thousands of recently homeless people sought
refuge from the storm.
I have taken a look at your notes from August 30, which is
Exhibit F, and they mention that you had a briefing with Bill
Lokey and Scott Wells. And your notes mention the convention
center. But we don't see anything in your e-mails or any other
documents from yourself or the FEMA team regarding the
circumstances in the convention center on Tuesday, Wednesday,
or Thursday.
So I wanted to ask you during the briefing with Mr. Wells
and Mr. Lokey, first, what did you discuss, to the best of your
recollection, regarding the Superdome?
Mr. Parr. OK. You have an advantage over me, Senator,
because since this was kind of a last-minute request for me to
appear before you, I left my notes in Texas, where I am
assigned right now. So I am not able to look and see exactly
what you are referring to.
Senator Lieberman. I am glad to try to get our staff to
give it to you.
Mr. Parr. I think it is Exhibit F?
Senator Lieberman. Yes, it is Exhibit F\1\ in that exhibit
book.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit F appears in the Appendix on page 94.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Parr. Just one second. I am sorry.
Senator Lieberman. You went to the same handwriting course
that I did.
Mr. Parr. You noticed that, sir.
Senator Lieberman. It is on page 8, noted at the bottom,
0008.
Mr. Parr. Let me address, I believe, the phone call you are
speaking about because this was probably the only time we were
able to get a hold of the EOC, where Scott Wells, the deputy,
and Bill Lokey were.
Senator Lieberman. So they were in Baton Rouge?
Mr. Parr. Baton Rouge. Correct. And this was probably the
only time we had any conversation, certainly any extended
conversation with them.
Senator Lieberman. And at that point, you were----
Mr. Parr. I was? This was Tuesday. I would guess early
afternoon?
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Parr. Or mid afternoon?
Senator Lieberman. And you had arrived a little earlier
that day.
Mr. Parr. We had arrived at some point Tuesday morning or
late morning.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Parr. This is when we went from the Superdome to the
city EOC, which was across the street. At that point, we had
called back to the State EOC. The primary purpose of that call
was to give the city's list of priorities to the EOC there up
at the State, for FEMA and the State to start working on those
priorities.
If the call was an hour, the biggest part of that call,
probably 45 or 50 minutes, was getting visibility on what was
being done to close I believe it was the 17th Street Canal
breach.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Parr. That is what was filling up the city, and there
was a whole domino effect of things that happen if that breach
was not closed as quickly as possible. Just to mention two of
those things. The power plant, once that went under water, and
it is my understanding that it was within inches--2 or 3 inches
of going under water--the city would take about 6 months, it
would probably still be under water right now----
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Parr [continuing]. If that was submerged. The emergency
power at the Superdome was literally within 1 inch of
overflowing the sandbags that were protecting the emergency
generator there. We would have lost power there. It would have
caused chaos there.
So gaining visibility on that. Talking about it was the
city--I am not sure of his exact title. I believe he was either
the emergency manager or the homeland security person.
Senator Lieberman. Let me interrupt you. By ``gaining
visibility,'' you mean trying to get attention from the EOC
onto those two significant problems you have just talked about?
Mr. Parr. I was informed by Colonel Terry Ebert, who is the
city's, I think, homeland security director, that the breach--
--
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Parr [continuing]. That the Army Corps had stopped
attempting to close the breach, and we weren't sure why. And
there were some significant issues with them trying to close
the breach, and they were unable to do it, and they were
working the problem. We did not know that at the time, which is
one thing that prompted the call.
So getting that back up on the table and letting them know
back up at the State why it was so important to get that
closed. Which that did not happen, at least not at that point,
was the primary purpose of that call, and in addition, the
other priorities that the city had, the Colonel, Terry Ebert,
gave it to them on that call.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. Did you become aware in that
conversation of the problem of the growing crowds at the
convention center?
Mr. Parr. Let me say that we were helicoptered into the
Superdome and had no movement, no visibility of the city. The
only thing we had was what the National Guard had given us. I
don't quite see my note on the convention center. I am sure I
was told by the Guard that there were issues at the convention
center.
Like I said, I don't have my notes. But because we were, in
effect, literally on an island or stranded at the Superdome, if
I have a note here about the convention center--OK, yes. I
don't think, that was not a note about conditions at the
convention center. I see it now. I am not even sure I was aware
of conditions at the convention center at this time.
What that was, if you notice it says ``convention center,
EOV or com suite,'' that was mentioned as another place that we
can carry out operations because of the difficulty of carrying
out operations at the Superdome because of the situation there.
I was trying to identify another place in the city where we can
operate from, and that was a place that was mentioned.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. So, obviously, you were at the
Superdome. So you had an awareness of what the conditions were
there?
Mr. Parr. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. But you did not know at that point what
the situation was at the convention center?
Mr. Parr. Correct. There would be snippets from certain
Guardsmen who were patrolling the city saying that the
convention center was filling up. I am not sure when or how
that was brought out to me. We had no personal knowledge of
what was going on at the convention center.
As a matter of fact, I learned more about what was going on
at the convention center when I left and went back up to Baton
Rouge. Then I had visibility on it.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. So during that period of days
before you went back to Baton Rouge, which, if I recall
correctly, was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that week?
Mr. Parr. Correct.
Senator Lieberman. The FEMA teams that you were involved
with did not do anything with regard to the convention center?
Mr. Parr. No, sir, and I think this is an important point
that we need to remember, and I alluded to this earlier in one
of the answers to one of the questions that were given. There
were no, to my knowledge, identified shelters in the City of
New Orleans.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Parr. That is a very important thing. What was used as
a shelter was any place that was dry. Any overpass, any high
piece of ground. It is important that the city had identified
shelters and areas of refuge, and they did not.
So I think that was an ad hoc--since it was largely dry, it
is my understanding--an ad hoc shelter that people flowed to
simply because it was out of the pool of water in the city.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Parr.
Mr. Wells, you were a senior Federal official at the
emergency operating center in Baton Rouge. When did you become
aware of the crowds and the problems at the convention center
in New Orleans?
Mr. Wells. To be candid, I am not exactly sure. It was
probably around I would say Wednesday or Thursday, we got calls
from here in Washington, DC. ``What is going on at the
convention center?'' And I think they were getting reports from
the media.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Wells. And as I recall, we tried to get communications
up with Phil and his folks. We couldn't get communications with
him to have them go check it out. And so, we went to the State
and asked them what they knew, and they used their National
Guard and State police assets to give us some visibility. And
the big issue was how many people were there? And what is going
on, and how many people were there?
And we did not get a clear picture. It probably took 24 to
48 hours from the time we started asking the question to get a
picture of just what was going on in the convention center.
Senator Lieberman. So your answers, I think, illustrate the
real problems there were in communications under the
circumstances there and the inability to have anything
approaching the kind of situational awareness that you would
want to have or we would want you to have.
I want to go back to something you said in your interview
with our staff, Mr. Wells, that there was ``a big
communications void,'' which created a black hole in
communication abilities from the emergency operating center in
Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And if I asked you why, I know it
may be an obvious question. But for the record, since obviously
FEMA is supposed to be prepared for emergencies of this kind,
why did that black hole of communications occur?
Mr. Wells. I don't know. I was told all of the lines were
saturated. The big vacuum was in Baton Rouge. No one could get
in to us, and we couldn't get out to anybody. The people in New
Orleans could talk to our regional office in Texas in a
degraded way, and they could talk to the national office here
in Washington, DC. But nobody could call us in Baton Rouge, and
we couldn't call out. So that was the biggest vacuum in Baton
Rouge.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Parr, I know that at some point in
your testimony or work with the staff, you described FEMA's Red
October, the mobile command post 12 feet longer than a tractor-
trailer with the most elaborate state-of-the-art capabilities
for communications, which would have served as the base for
communications in New Orleans.
As the vehicle was in transport to the Superdome, I would
just say for the record, it was determined that you could not
get it into the area, and you were left with no communications
at the Superdome. Am I right about that?
Mr. Parr. That is largely correct, sir. That was the
original intention to either move that vehicle or a similar
vehicle into the Superdome, but because of the water around the
stadium, we could not get it in.
Senator Lieberman. And there was no backup plan for
anything else in that kind of circumstance?
Mr. Parr. Well, sir, initially the backup plan was to have
a smaller vehicle, a vehicle that was a little bit more
maneuverable get into the stadium. I don't believe that the
situational awareness allowed us to know. I don't believe that
it was common knowledge. It certainly was not my knowledge that
water would prevent us from getting those vehicles into the
Superdome.
Senator Lieberman. Right. And this is the final question
because my time is up. You did previously state, as I mentioned
and Senator Collins did, that your access to communications was
``extremely, extremely limited'' and affected your operations
effectiveness, what you were able to do in the circumstance by,
in your opinion, about 90 percent. Is that right?
Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. And just to expand on that a little
bit, as I look back on the events that happened, we were able
to achieve a lot. At the time, it was extremely frustrating. It
might take 2 or 3 hours to get through to the people we were
calling, but we did get through and we did get things done as
far as the evacuation of the Superdome. We made sure that we
kept some eye on visibility of commodities so people ate.
But I believe we could have accomplished a lot more if we
had the proper communications.
Senator Lieberman. Sure. And when you did get through on
the calls, what were you using?
Mr. Parr. The National Guard had two communications
vehicles, one with one phone and one with I think three or four
phones. So it was kind of like waiting in line. When they
finished their business, then we got to go.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Just a couple of concluding questions. First, I realize all
of you were deployed to the Gulf region in your roles as FCOs.
But are any of you living in the Gulf region? Mr. Wells.
Mr. Wells. I am staying there.
Chairman Collins. Pardon me?
Mr. Wells. Yes, I will be in Baton Rouge.
Chairman Collins. You are now. But prior to being deployed
there, where were you living?
Mr. Wells. I was living in Texas.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Parr.
Mr. Parr. I have only been living in the Gulf since August
28. But my home now or at least where I rent an apartment is in
Boston, Massachusetts.
Chairman Collins. I noticed you were Region 1, Senator
Lieberman's and my region.
Mr. Carwile.
Mr. Carwile. Ma'am, my family is from Gulf Shores, Alabama.
It is in Baldwin County, Alabama, on the coast. They have
evacuated probably six times in the last 2 years, with my
mother, who turned 89 last month. I personally reside in the
State of Hawaii, though.
Chairman Collins. I was surprised, when I looked at where
FEMA officials were deployed from, that they weren't
individuals already assigned to the Gulf region. Would it
increase the effectiveness of FEMA officials if they were from
the region to which they are deployed, or does it not make any
difference?
The reason I ask is there have been some indications that
FEMA officials were just not very familiar with New Orleans or
the areas to which they were assigned. And I am wondering if it
would be better to have the FCOs come from the area or whether
it doesn't matter. Mr. Carwile.
Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, the Congress authorized FEMA
25 Federal Coordinating Officer positions back in 1999.
Chairman Collins. Right.
Mr. Carwile. And those positions were sprinkled throughout
the country. And ideally, the Federal Coordinating Officer
would come from the home region impacted. For example, if the
State of Maine were impacted, hopefully, Mr. Parr would be the
person, as he would be.
What happens in a very large disaster like Katrina, the
resources are quickly stripped down in terms of personnel who
are familiar to the area. So over in Alabama, Mike Bolch, who
was the Federal Coordinating Officer, did come from Atlanta in
the home region. But FEMA can get very quickly overwhelmed in
terms of having people with regional experience.
And Mississippi, fortunately, the team from Region 9, which
was California and the West, that we brought in had been with
Mississippi during Hurricane Dennis and also with a short
exercise we had prior to the hurricane season in Washington.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, do you have anything to add to
that?
Mr. Parr. I will say all of us are national assets, and
traveling is very demanding on all of us. I know in the 2 years
I have been in the Federal Coordinating Officer program, I have
traveled about 300 days.
Chairman Collins. Wow.
Mr. Parr. I don't know. I think it is important that we
have significant representation from the region that is
experiencing the disaster. So, for instance, Scott Wells is a
resident and member of Region 6, which is a large part of the
Gulf Coast.
The fact that I come from Region 1 and have a lot of
experience in Region 2, which would be the New York area, I
don't know is significant. I think all of us are kind of, to a
large extent, plug and play. You bring us to where we need to
go, and the actions that we have to do are pretty much the
same.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, are you from the region?
Mr. Wells. Yes. And I think there is value added. You get
your value in the peacetime planning. For example, with
Katrina, prior to Katrina, in July, just a month before,
Hurricane Dennis was threatening Louisiana, and we deployed our
response team to Louisiana and did some training with them. So
we had built up some experience with the State and did some
hasty planning and things like that. And that was a benefit
when we went back for Katrina.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Carwile, my final question is for you. Both Senator
Lieberman and I have been to the Gulf region since the
hurricane struck. The damage in New Orleans and Louisiana is
incomprehensible. But what really astonished me was the
devastation in Mississippi. It is just extraordinary.
Do you think Mississippi has gotten the attention that it
needs compared to Louisiana? I am not trying to play off one
State against another. That is not my purpose. But the
devastation from wind damage in Mississippi matches in many
ways the horrendous devastation from water that we saw in New
Orleans.
Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, I have been on, I think, every
major disaster in the last 9 years with FEMA to include four
hurricanes last year in Florida and a number of super typhoons
in the Pacific, and I have never seen--and I had two combat
tours in Vietnam, special forces. I have never seen the damage
that I saw and you saw in Hancock County and Harrison County.
Total devastation of entire communities.
We talk about communications. I have never been in a
situation where we had such a shortfall in communications. Last
year in Florida, fundamentally, we could use cell phones.
Practically, just most of the time, we had to rely on sat
phones. But I am talking about no communications.
Senator Lieberman talked about situational awareness. Very
difficult to have down there other than overflights. I know
that Governor Barbour and his staff in the State of Mississippi
have done an extraordinary job of leadership. I do think that
there has been an awful lot of focus on the visual on New
Orleans, and obviously, there was a great deal of suffering
there that needed to be tended to.
I do think that there could be more attention paid to the
restoration of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, especially. I say
``Gulf Coast,'' but I was in Jackson when a storm--we had a
category 1 hurricane go over Jackson. We were without power in
Jackson for days and days, all the way up to the northern part
of Mississippi.
So the visuals are on the Gulf Coast, and obviously, that
is terrible. In addition to wind damage, the 30-foot surge just
cleared off whole counties practically. It was total
devastation. But I would concur if someone were to suggest that
Mississippi probably deserves more attention than it has been
getting, ma'am.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman, do you have
any questions?
Senator Lieberman. I do, a couple. I will try to do them
quickly. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
I want to come back to the discussion about the
communications and situational awareness, and I am struck that
the National Guard had those two communications vehicles in the
Superdome. And I understand this is always a question of
hindsight is clearer than foresight.
The understanding was growing in the preceding week that
this was going to be a hurricane category 4 or a category 5. I
was going to read this to Senator Stevens, but I didn't.
There was a communication from William Lundy of FEMA to
you, Mr. Carwile, and to Robert Fenton and others, e-mailed on
Saturday, August 27, at 11:41 p.m.
``Recent recon flight reports category 4 now, maybe a weak
category 5 by Monday morning. Landfall around noon. Storm is
carrying a lot of moisture. Experts predict that the levees
protecting New Orleans will be breached late Sunday night,
thereby flooding the city to a depth of 6 to 12 feet. Storm
surge 13 feet, with 20-foot waves on top of that.''
Unfortunately, that e-mail was pretty much correct, except
it estimated a little bit earlier than the levees actually
broke. So here is my question. Again, hindsight clearer. And
this is why some people say FEMA moved slowly. You have got
this Red October, a fantastically equipped communications
vehicle--why not move it into New Orleans in advance of
landfall so you are there with a communications apparatus
before, what was being talked about and predicted, the levees
broke and the city was flooded?
Yes, Mr. Parr?
Mr. Parr. This was something that I discussed with the
staffers that were down beforehand. One thing that you never
want to do, especially when you are a response--we are not a
rescue organization--but a response organization or an
emergency organization, is put equipment or people into harm's
way.
If we had brought those vehicles into the Superdome, they
would have been exposed. They probably, almost certainly with
the high winds of a hurricane hitting, would have been damaged
and rendered useless. There are other things that we could have
done. And in hindsight, if we had been fully aware of the
situation, we could have helicoptered communications suites in.
Senator Lieberman. Beforehand, you mean?
Mr. Parr. No. Afterwards.
Senator Lieberman. Afterwards.
Mr. Parr. But in my opinion, and there is no response
organization that I am aware of that puts people or equipment
in harm's way prior to landfall of a hurricane, unless it is a
rated hurricane shelter beforehand, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Yes, I have learned this as we have gone
on, and I am not prepared to argue against it. But I am
prepared, not now, to question it as we go along.
Because, obviously, the people on the ground there, the
local fire, police, emergency personnel are there. And if you
see something this big coming, it is tough. I don't have an
easy answer to this one. But it seems to me that there is an
argument to be made that you would want to try to the best of
your ability to get some people in, maybe equipment in there
beforehand. But I want to come back to that.
Mr. Parr, I do want to give you, while you are here, an
opportunity to answer questions that were raised in Mr.
Bahamonde's testimony and then in other testimony before the
Committee about the fact that you and your teams left the
Superdome on Thursday. You were there Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, and then left on Thursday, which left, obviously, the
Superdome without any FEMA presence, including the medical team
that you had.
So, obviously, we ask why. And I want to give you the
chance while you are here to answer that.
Mr. Parr. Certainly. I could give you the long answer or
the short answer. So I will try to give you something in the
middle ground that would give you the situation.
Senator Lieberman. OK. You have got two centrists up here.
So---- [Laughter.]
Chairman Collins. The middle position is always a good one.
Mr. Parr. I think that we have described the situation in
the city as a whole. The situation in the Superdome was always
a powder keg. The Guard first made the suggestion, one of the
generals of the Guard first made the suggestion that I consider
leaving Tuesday night.
Senator Lieberman. Do you remember which one that was?
Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. It was General Veillon.
Senator Lieberman. General Veillon.
Mr. Parr. And that was when the city was filling, and they
felt that once the lights went out that there would be
pandemonium there.
Senator Lieberman. So was he suggesting that your safety
might be in danger?
Mr. Parr. Well, I believe the school of thought was
everyone, including the Guard--because, remember, not everyone
in the Guard was armed. Most of the Guard was involved with
getting food, commodities in, running and helping with medical
missions. As I said before, they did a phenomenal job in search
and rescue, in everything, and assisting the New Orleans PD as
much as they possibly could. So I think it was everyone's
safety.
To skip many things, Thursday morning at first light,
General Jones, who was the commanding general in place, said to
me--I don't remember his exact words, but there are certain
phrases that he said that stick out in my mind very clearly.
``I don't believe I can protect you or your people any longer.
We are going to be making our last stand,'' and he pointed to a
portion of the parking lot over there. He says, ``Get behind
us, and we will do what we can.''
That is when we started making plans to leave. I spoke,
since it was my responsibility to take care of the Federal
forces on hand, I spoke to the NDMS teams, told them to
continue to operate. I wanted to have helicopters standing by
if the situation degenerated. We were unable to get helicopters
in immediately.
To make a long story short, I was informed by the DMAT
team, the medical assistance team that was in the basketball
stadium, that the Guard, in shortening their lines, had pulled
all security from them. They told me that they did not feel
safe and that they were evacuating. And they had high-water
vehicles that they used to resupply and that they were pulling
out in their vehicles.
It was only at that time that I made the decision to leave
since if conditions did degenerate, we would have no other way
out.
Senator Lieberman. I want you to know that some of the
other folks who were there say that, in fact, there was not any
behavior that would lead them to think that there was a riot or
that there was a safety problem. I guess my final question to
you is the following--to what extent did you see any behavior
that would lead you to think that your personnel would be in
danger, or was it derived from what the National Guard folks
told you?
Mr. Parr. There are many things that I left out in not
giving the answer in total. The intelligence that we had all
came from the Guard. That is the first thing.
The second thing is is that--I just lost my train of
thought. But one of the things to remember, when I did make the
decision to leave, is not only did the Guard say that. You
could see from some of the memos that the city asked for with
400 rifles, etc., the Guard--and this was what I wanted to say.
The Guard had intelligence that there would be riot. That
people would move in force against the Guard at some point that
late morning.
Senator Lieberman. And they told you that?
Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. And one of the things to remember is
that I have worked in riot situations in my time as a
firefighter and fire officer in New York City. I have worked in
near-riot situations. The time for unarmed people, that is
specifically a security and law enforcement issue, and the time
for unarmed people to leave is before a situation starts, not
after. And that is when I made the decision to leave when I
did.
Senator Lieberman. OK. I appreciate your answer.
We are running out of time. I am going to mention something
else. Maybe I will send a letter to each of you and ask for
your response.
This goes also to pre-storm, and the question is the
following--in a circumstance like the one we saw coming here, a
category 4 or 5 hurricane, with potential talked about widely
that the levees were going to break. And what seemed to you,
Mr. Wells, to be an inadequate evacuation plan in Louisiana as
compared to what you saw in Texas, should we in the future have
the Federal Government, perhaps through the military, be
prepared to do pre-storm evacuation?
Let me state it in a dramatic metaphor. If we had
intelligence that led us to believe that a bomb was going to
explode in one of our major cities within 3 days, and if we
thought it was accurate intelligence, but we hadn't found a
bomb, I presume we would use whatever Federal resources we had
to get in and evacuate as many people as we could.
And in some ways, though not quite the same, if you put all
the facts together, we were in a somewhat similar situation
with Katrina. And my question is should the Federal Government
try to develop a kind of standby capacity, particularly using
the military, and have the ability to assist in that kind of
massive evacuation?
Anybody really want to give a quick answer? Sorry.
Mr. Wells. The answer is yes. And Katrina clearly showed
that. But it needs to be expanded. I mean, the continuity of
government. We need to have that capability. But this bottoms-
up approach only works to a certain point, and we need to have
a Federal capability that once you get beyond that point that
can make up the difference. And it may mean a totally different
architecture.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Wells. If that is the way it is, so be it. But this
evacuation is a very important thing. And if we would have
gotten those people out in time, we wouldn't have lost close to
1,100 lives in Louisiana.
Senator Lieberman. Absolutely right.
Mr. Wells. So those are things that I think we need to look
at to make it better next time so we don't have this happen
again.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Carwile.
Mr. Carwile. Senator Lieberman, if I might? I agree with my
colleague, Mr. Wells, on this point in terms of capacity. I get
in a little trouble, I think that the governors of the States
have constitutional authorities that we can bring Federal
capacity, whether it is military or other, to bear in support
of them to whatever degree they are comfortable with. But I
just throw that small caveat out.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Mr. Parr, do you want to
answer?
Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. I also agree. I would defer a little
bit. I think the military, the DOD is a support group in every
emergency support function we have because they have so many
talents and bring so many expertise to bear. In my opinion, I
do not think they should be the lead in an evacuation, but
certainly their assets could be used to help an evacuation.
It might actually mean changes in statute. Until there is a
disaster, the Federal Government has limited involvement, at
least until there is some sort of declaration. I would like to
see, personally, and I believe Mr. Wells in his writings has
talked about expanding FEMA's role pre-disaster declaration. So
that we can, even if it is just technical assistance, provide
some assistance to States and locals from the Federal
perspective in helping for evacuations.
Senator Lieberman. Very helpful responses. Thank you. You
have been very helpful witnesses overall in assisting the
Committee in fulfilling its responsibility.
Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I, too, want to thank each of you for appearing today, for
your candid and insightful testimony. It has been very helpful
for us to hear from those who were involved directly in the
operations.
We are going to be continuing our investigation and
ultimately drafting some legislation for reforming the system,
as well as recommending administrative reforms. And I would
invite you to keep in touch with the Committee, and I hope you
will be willing to react to proposals as we go along because
you do have so much experience that I think is very helpful to
this Committee as we attempt to determine what went wrong and
what reforms are needed. So I thank you very much for your
testimony and your cooperation.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days. We will
include your complete written statements in the record, as well
as any other materials that you wish to submit.
This hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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