Katrina's waters were from a man-made disaster, wrought by faulty levees that left houses underwater for weeks. "Let's not make it worse.". A failure of the initiative: Final report of the select . The area around their home is flat and marshy. It was and still is, a public document and was posted on the FEMA web site, accessible to anyone to see. Approximately 12,500 evacuees are being hosted at the Houston Astrodome. It destroyed or damaged more than 850,000 homes. All Rights Reserved. "Our programs have been built on providing equal treatment to survivors, but that's not necessarily equal outcome.". Willis says the homogeneity of FEMA's leadership makes it all but impossible for the agency to develop systems to distribute assistance equitably. It was complicated and hard to understand, something you definitely do not want in a disaster. We will not rest until these needs are met.". For example, if inspectors are predisposed to seeing a neighborhood as less desirable or less valuable, those impressions are baked into how they judge the cause and cost of disaster damage there. FEMA has received more than 10,000 charitable offers though the web link to the National Emergency Resource Registry. I was not going to wake up exhausted rescuers in the middle of the night just to get some numbers for a speechwriter. The only thing was, he had never done this type of work before, so could I please show him the ropes and explain what was needed? St. Bernard Parish and swaths of the North Shore were swamped and flattened. Home inspectors, like anyone, bring all their biases and assumptions to the table when they're on the job. Ironically, it was response units like FEMA's Urban Search & Rescue (US&R) teams the ones I was told to awaken from their sleep for the sake of the DHS speechwriters that actually operated very effectively in the field once they were deployed. FEMA USAR teams go out in boats to help rescue residents stranded due to flooding from Hurricane Katrina, August 31st, 2005. Ryan Kellman/NPR The devastation caused by the storm, and the accompanying failure of the levees, left millions homeless in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, and some 400,000 residents ended up leaving the city permanently. During the past week, the U.S. Coast Guard saved 15,665 people, which is more than three times the number of lives saved in all of 2004. Hurricane Laura damaged a building (left) owned by the church Marks attends. Ryan Kellman/NPR "We have staff that come from communities all across the nation with varying cultural and demographic backgrounds. The city's overwhelmed police force-70 percent of which were themselves victims of the disasterdid not have the capacity to arrest every . A FEMA update e-mail sent 3 days after the storm says, "All assets have ceased operations until National Guard can assist (task forces) with security. Aug 27, 2016 Updated Jul 7, 2021. Two hurricanes hit Lake Charles, La., last year, and the city saw the largest outward migration of any city in the United States. WASHINGTON D.C. - One hundred percent of evacuees housed in the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center have been evacuated and more than 30,000 National Guard troops are on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi to provide help with search, rescue, and security in the disaster-stricken area, Michael D. Brown, Department of Homeland Security's Principal Federal Official for Hurricane Katrina response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced earlier today. Egrets linger in the tall grass. Relief and Emergency Assist ance Act (P.L. Secretary Chertoff made only top-level inquiries into the state of preparations, and accepted Surrounded by waterLake Pontchartrain to the north, and the Mississippi River to the southand bordered by swampland on two sides, New Orleans has long relied on a system of levees to protect it from flooding. Now, the fact is, most of the contract employees with whom I worked were top-notch people who did a wonderful job. The real poor don't have all that.". As a result, the NRP was confusing and almost useless and added to the delays in responding to the storm. "I don't know why it happens like that, but I am learning that is just the way the ball bounces.". Marks says helping such families is "supposed to be the job of FEMA," but that many uninsured homeowners in Lake Charles have received little or no help from the agency. Government: Response to Katrina. FEMA also fails to serve people from marginalized racial groups, the report warns. Florida 1,400 The lessons that could have been learned from . Moms are pushed out of workplaces and subject to stereotypes but with few legal protections, many cases go unreported. The letter also suggested that this was due to FEMA's inadequate coordination of the different agencies' rescue abilities and equipment. FEMA can help stave off that disaster after the disaster. FEMA did not respond to follow-up questions about its plans to track the race of aid applicants or its response to the disasters in Lake Charles. "We are going to continue to evaluate the program holistically and ensure that we are delivering assistance equitably," says Turi, the FEMA assistant administrator. By the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, Louisiana early on the morning of August 29, 2005, the flooding had already begun. But the citys low elevation, and its position within the different levee systems, creates a so-called bowl effect, meaning that when water gets into the city, it is very difficult to get it out. It seemed that an Atlantic storm had crossed south Florida and entered the Gulf of Mexico, where it could endanger Louisiana, Mississippi, and other states along the Gulf. The Transportation Department might activate its center to find out which disaster-damaged roads and bridges were in urgent need of repair. FEMA has existed since 1979. In the twenty-six years before Katrina, it has been charged with providing temporary housing to . That would make disaster assistance more like other public financial assistance such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or Medicaid. Many people are convinced that Hurricane Katrina should be considered as a prime example of government failure. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin over who was in charge. "Previously, you're always pretty much waiting for the governor to ask before you did it, and the problem with that is you're maybe a day or two or three days into something by the time you get asked, and we're not that nimble," he said. Hurricane Katrina remains one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history. Four hurricanes have hit the city in the last 15 years. (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances. Their effects on economic activity and employment in damaged areas varied widely. Hurricane Katrina not only devastated the city of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast of the U.S., it initiated a bitter debate about the leadership or lack . (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune), Homes are being cleaned out in Albany on Saturday, August 20, 2016. Research suggests that implicit bias leads to lower home appraisals for Black homeowners, even when you control for other factors. As Republican leaders announced a joint House-Senate inquiry into failures surrounding the response to Hurricane Katrina, we take a look at why FEMA failed with Salon.com staff writer Farhad . By and large, FEMA did its job. FEMA did not respond to questions about the racial demographics of inspectors or about the disproportionate number of white supervisors at the agency. Unfortunately, their heroic efforts were overshadowed by the delays and errors back in Washington. The National Weather Service writes that Hurricane Katrina is "one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States." Hurricane Katrina caused up to $161 billion worth of damage, largely due to the fact that the breached levees led to flooding in 80% of New Orleans. Just this spring, a thunderstorm dropped upward of 17 inches of rain in an afternoon. For starters, FEMA under DHS had been forced to throw away its clear, workable disaster response plans in favor of a confusing set of plans that no one understood. Fugate carried that fundamental understanding -- that states and local governments are best suited to be the first responders in a disaster -- with him when Obama hired him to run FEMA in May 2009. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security, by C. Cooper and R. Block, Times Books, 2006. Speight's plight is an example of how inadequate FEMA assistance can push low-income families toward displacement. It took everything Donnie had to care for her husband. to "What do people need? The former FEMA chief who became the face of the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina is out of the public sector now but he's not always out of trouble. The letter, written by Interior Assistant Secretary P. Lynn Scarlett, recounted how different agencies in the department prepared and responded to Hurricane Katrina. Once the contract staff had been trained on one job, they could be transferred elsewhere and another novice brought in to help.. The storm that would later become Hurricane Katrina surfaced on August 23, 2005, as a tropical depression over the Bahamas, approximately 350 miles (560 km) east of Miami. By the time Katrina arrived, New Orleans lay at an average of six feet below sea level, with some neighborhoods even lower than that. With a By then FEMA had undergone a dramatic revamp to reconcile its failures during Katrina. In the coming days, the NSR would clearly document what FEMA had done and not done as Katrina approached the Gulf Coast. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune), A worker cleans out the flood damaged home of Frank and Florence Rendine in Albany on Saturday, August 20, 2016. Harvey. The area was hit by two hurricanes last year as abnormally hot water fueled a record number of storms in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Four overarching factors contributed to the failures of Katrina: 1) long-term warnings went unheeded and government officials neglected their duties to prepare for a forewarned catastrophe; 2) government officials took insufficient actions or made poor decisions in the days immediately before and after landfall; 3) . Neighborhoods where lower-income residents live are recovering more slowly than more affluent areas. Up to a month after Hurricane Katrina, over 100 children were still unaccounted for, and it took until November to find everyone. Two documents in particular-- an internal FEMA email sent a few days after Katrina, and a letter from the Department of the Interior-- highlight some of the chaos of the rescue efforts. & Response to Hurricane Katrina. Once the system was activated, once all the disaster specialists from FEMA, Defense, Transportation, the Red Cross, and other sundry agencies got to work, it would be smooth sailing at the NRCC. But Bush's words in early September 2005, spoken from an airplane hangar in Mobile, Ala. -- "And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" -- became a sarcastic catchphrase for FEMA's botched response to the costliest hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast. We had just left the gallery and were discussing possible restaurants for a Friday night dinner when my FEMA pager buzzed. "One of the best hires I made as president.". During disasters, the Federal government provides law enforcement assistance only when those resources are overwhelmed or depleted. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. "We got through Katrina. The Category 4 hurricane knocked out power, destroyed the air conditioning unit and sent a tree through the bedroom ceiling. The federal government had been making preparations for a large scale disaster in New Orleans since 2002. A tree caused a hole (left) in the bedroom ceiling. In response to news that regulators had sold the bank to JPMorgan Chase, Warren said system overhaul is long overdue. East of the city, massive storm surges sent torrents of water over the levees along the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO) and into St. Bernard Parish, located just southeast of New Orleans. For example, FEMA could use government records and census data to pinpoint where vulnerable people live and get them money immediately after a disaster, says Beard, the former Port Arthur City Council member. In June 2006, the Army Corps issued a report of more than 6,000 pages, in which it took at least some responsibility for the flooding that occurred during Katrina, admitting that the levees failed due to flawed and outdated engineering practices used to build them. Should housing vouchers have been used earlier and tailored to the disaster event? When the storm hit, he was staying at a house originally owned by his brother, who had passed away. For example, a 2019 study found that survivors of Hurricane Harvey in Houston were less likely to receive FEMA grants if they lived in neighborhoods with more racial minorities compared with neighborhoods with more white residents and more financial resources. It's in my hands, my arms, my neck, my hips, my knees," Donnie says. The director of FEMA at the time, Joe Allbaugh, ordered an examination of the possibility of a hurricane hitting the city that year (USC Annenberg 2005). The NRCC itself was nothing fancy a couple of large, beige-colored rooms filled with desks, phones, computers and a few TV sets tuned in to various news stations. "The flight is hurting us," he says. Children miss school, adults are unable to work, older adults stop taking lifesaving medication. A few . hurricane striking New Orleans had been long considered, and there was enough warning of the threat of Katrina that declarations of emergency were made days in advance of landfall. Terence Franklin settled in Houston with his family . ", "I'm proud to call these FEMA trailers," Fugate said in an interview Thursday. Rather than stand up a new state homeland security department, Fugate's boss at the time, Florida Gov. FEMA says it is actively looking for feedback from local officials about how to make its disaster response more fair and reviewing its overall approach to disaster aid, including the application process. But as disasters have increased, the whiter, wealthier areas around the city have stayed stable, while Black neighborhoods have declined. Daily and nightly, the NRCC sent out a lot of reports, many of them just short emails to update the bosses on anything ranging from spring flooding in New England to a chemical plant fire in the Midwest. hide caption. hide caption. That can exclude people who didn't have formal rental agreements or were living in houses they didn't own when the disaster happened. It takes less than 30 seconds to give, so if you value a free and independent press, please make a tax-deductible donation today! Leo Bosner , T ruthout. Interestingly, it seems that the contract employees themselves did not actually receive the higher pay that went to the contracting company in the form of profit.. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard, which was rightly praised for the heroism of its pilots and its rescue crews during the Katrina operations, was told to send some of its officers over to FEMA to straighten things out. I've watched it happen after hurricanes. hide caption. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. 11 years after Katrina, FEMA has learned from its failures. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune), Misty Bare and Adam Rives work clearing out their flooded home in St. Amant on Saturday, August 20, 2016. Any attempts to push back and actually fix the agency's problems would either be ignored or punished. "Because no matter what you say you're doing, the end result is that the poor are being displaced. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that resulted in 1,392 fatalities and caused damage estimated between $97.4 billion to $145.5 . Should FEMA have pursued expanded authorities at the start of the disaster? Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. LockA locked padlock The NSR was not classified as secret. "You know, I've heard the term climate refugees," says Craig Fugate, who led FEMA between 2009 and 2017. FEMA has not analyzed whether there are racial disparities in who receives money after disasters despite a growing body of research showing that people of color are also less likely to receive adequate disaster assistance. Lesley Watts grew up in Port Arthur and narrowly escaped the flooding from Hurricane Harvey with her grandmother and two daughters. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Then the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 changed the world. Every federal responder in the field knew that and understood that the FCO was calling the shots. Its leaders bickered with Gov. Presidents learned the importance of placing experienced emergency managers in charge of FEMA. The letter continued, "Although the (Interior) Department possesses significant resources that could have improved initial and ongoing responses, many of these resources were not effectively incorporated into the federal response.". Without critical FEMA help right after a hurricane hits, the damage can reverberate through people's lives for years and decimate once-sturdy communities. Poor emergency planning led to the massive destruction . The two cavernous rooms that normally saw a skeleton staff of three now saw all of its chairs filled and desktop computers running as upwards of 100 staff began working day and night shifts at the NRCC.While many of these staff worked for FEMA, about half of them worked for other federal agencies or for the American Red Cross, in a simple but effective system that had come to fruition under Witt in the '90s. "Because you ain't got the proper paperwork. The local environmental and health activist says many Black people in the city were denied FEMA assistance to repair their homes, which he attributes to systemic racism in how the agency allocates money. The Defense Department would certainly activate its center to be prepared to respond to requests for military aircraft to bring needed supplies into a disaster-stricken area. No plan is perfect, but the FRP had served us well in numerous disasters. Within four days of Katrina's landfall on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, then-President George W. Bush signed a $10.4 billion aid package and ordered 7,200 National Guard troops to the region. Goliath was especially comforting to Stephen Speight in the final year of his life. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), Jerry Grayson/Helifilms Australia PTY Ltd/Getty Images, Cities of the Underworld: Hurricane Katrina, according to a report by the United States Government Accountability Office, claimed the massive storm had overwhelmed the levee system, Over the decade following Hurricane Katrina, https://www.history.com/news/hurricane-katrina-levee-failures, How Levee Failures Made Hurricane Katrina a Bigger Disaster. As Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma successively lashed the gulf coast starting in late August 2005, nature's fury exposed serious weaknesses in the United States' emergency response capabilities. "So we're fortunate that President Obama has made it very clear that he'd rather err on getting there and not being needed than not being there at all. Brown and others were hauled before Congress in the days and weeks after Katrina. The NSR was prepared overnight and sent out by email at 5:30 each morning to top officials at FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Defense Department, and other agencies throughout the government as well as to key organizations like the American Red Cross. Paulison's deputy was Harvey Johnson, a Coast Guard officer who became famous in 2007 for his phony press conference in which FEMA employees posed as reporters asking Johnson questions in what was purported to be a news conference. It was given more autonomy within DHS to manage a response to a disaster. But they couldn't afford to fix most of the damage to their home in DeQuincy, La. Estimated relocations: The incident made headlines nationwide, further damaging FEMA's reputation. By Elizabeth Chuck. No problem. Photo. Overall, what I have heard so far from many of my former FEMA colleagues has been along the lines of, well, it seems to be getting better but pretty slowly. These were still my pre-cell phone days, so I borrowed my wife's phone to call in to the NRCC and see what was up. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune), Ben Davis helps gut A Place of Hope Ministries in Killian on Saturday, August 20, 2016. Now that he had been trained, his company had shifted Phil to another work site. Ryan Kellman/NPR Sunday morning, August 28, we issued another NSR at 5:30 AM this one showing that New Orleans was directly in the path of the storm and advising our bosses that at least 100,000 people lacked transportation to escape the city. Katrina became FEMA's crucible, one that it did not quickly rise to meet. The shriek of Katrina's 140 mph winds and rat-a-tat-tat of its driving, torrential rain left in its tumultuous wake a coast silenced by vast devastation. That was pretty obvious," said Kevin Davis, former St. Tammany Parish President and director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness under Gov. Undercover Salting Isnt Just a Labor Strategy. It was given more autonomy within DHS to manage a response to a disaster. The exact death toll is still uncertain, but its estimated that more than 1,500 people in Louisiana lost their lives due to Hurricane Katrina, many of them due to drowning. If registering by phone, owners of commercial properties and residents with only minor losses are urged to wait a few days before calling so those whose homes were destroyed or heavily damaged can be served first. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune). At 5 a.m., an hour before the . It affects the church. Timothy Dominique, 62, lives in a donated RV parked next door to the family home where he was staying when Hurricane Laura hit Lake Charles last year. We need journalists who can investigate, report, and analyze complex issues with honesty and integrity. "What we're seeing is people being displaced when their homes are damaged and they can't repair them. The money Donnie Speight received from FEMA was not enough to cover the cost of repairs to her home after Hurricane Laura. "I don't know how I was doing it. So maybe we should means-test [FEMA] Individual Assistance and put more emphasis on those who can't pay their way.". Learn More. The once-thriving Black neighborhoods of Port Arthur, Texas, show what happens when a large number of homeowners are unable to repair their houses after climate-driven disasters. He will work to coordinate recovery and rebuilding efforts. Ten months after Hurricane Laura, Donnie Speight is trying to hold together the pieces of her life. Fears about flooding go all the way back to the founding of New Orleans on land in 1717, by the French-Canadian explorer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. "It appears that the rich are getting more," Marks says. Moving away from a property-centered approach to broader disaster assistance would fix some disparities in who gets FEMA aid, Howell says. All you needed then would be top federal officials who knew how to make informed and unified decisions in a disaster. He says many Black homeowners have struggled to get the federal help they need to repair homes after hurricanes and floods. The deed was never formally transferred to Dominique's name, and he didn't have a lease, so he was ineligible for repair and rental assistance. With a death toll of more than 1,800, Katrina was the third-deadliest hurricane in US history after Galveston in 1900 (which killed 8,000 to . More than 30,000 National Guard are on the ground to provide response, rescue, recovery and law enforcement, and are working around the clock to bring critical aid and support to hurricane victims. The agency's National Advisory Council, a federal panel established after Hurricane Katrina, published a report that slammed FEMA for persistent income-based aid disparities and for not helping those in greatest need. ", Page 15 of the Department of the Interior (DOI) letter notes that "the Fish and Wildlife Service was requested by FEMA to assist with search and rescue operations throughout the affected area, but was never formally tasked through a FEMA assignment. The agency initially withheld its internal analyses from NPR and academic researchers. Fugate seems sincere and knowledgeable and if he does not have the close-to-the-president kind of power that Witt had, I nonetheless believe he is clearly capable of leading the agency.