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Editor's Note: Government Executive reporter Chris Strohm is in New Orleans. This is one of several dispatches he will file this week on recovery efforts. Read the first installment here.

NEW ORLEANS--Federal agencies took their own initiative to save lives and help local law enforcement in the hours and days immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast region, according to officials in this stricken city.

Some federal buildings were destroyed or rendered unusable, but agencies were able to move their personnel and mobile assets -- such as helicopters, boats and vehicles -- out of the area before the storm hit. Agencies immediately came back into the affected areas and began to do whatever they could to assist in the response and recovery.

"We were inventing missions as necessary to save people's lives, save property and take care of our own," said William Renton, the Drug Enforcement Agency's special agent in charge of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.

Agencies established 24-hour operations centers where emergency responders and support personnel worked extended shifts and slept on mattresses or cots in their offices or imported trailers. Although local power and communications networks were wiped out, agencies moved generators and satellite phones into the region. Customs and Border Protection also scrambled P-3AEW aircraft to have emergency communications between agencies.

CBP began to contact parishes outside of New Orleans to offer help, said William Heffelfinger, the agency's deputy assistant commissioner for field operations, who was put in charge of all operations in the affected hurricane region.

CBP and DEA said they offered parishes and sheriff's offices force protection, transportation, supplies and law enforcement support.

Officials said the emergency response to Katrina has been the most difficult environment they ever worked.

"The first five days was a battlefield," said Coast Guard Cpt. Bruce Jones, commanding officer for Air Station New Orleans. "We look back on that week, and a lot of it is a blur."

The Coast Guard followed the tail of the storm as it made landfall, and immediately began to conduct search and rescue operations, or SAR. The Coast Guard is calling the experience "the Super Bowl of SAR." Indeed, SAR operations out of Air Station New Orleans rescued 6,471 people in the first seven days. Before that, the station had saved 3,689 lives in its entire 50-year existence.

Renton, however, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should have been more proactive in telling agencies what they should prioritize and how best to use their assets.

"There was no clear direction," he said. "FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By definition, somebody from FEMA should have been telling us what we needed to do."

COMMENTS

• I'm still confused after two and a half years. Does ICE have a mission yet, or are we still to be considered "jacks of all trades, masters of none"? If I hear any more spin from the likes of Clark and Forman, about how we should be excited about being part of this agency, or how we should embrace our new "authority", I think I'll barf. Spraying perfume on a dead skunk won't make it smell any better! Now a new leader for ICE is up for confirmation by the Senate. Julie Myers, from Kansas, was a former assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who then worked for Main Treasury. She followed that with a stint as Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the Commerce Dept. (after Michael Garcia had that job. Is that the new ICE career path?). She then worked as Chief of Staff for Michael Chertoff at the Justice Dept., before a stint with the White House, vetting people for jobs with the administration. Does this qualify her to lead an agency with 20,000 or so employees, especially at the tender age of 34? It appears that some senators have reservations about her qualifications, especially after the recent FEMA experience with political appointees. Stay tuned. GovExec.com reader Posted September 19, 2005 12:08 PM
• Thank God that the DEA found something to do because they sure have not stemmed the flow of illegal drugs in this country. hopefully high Posted September 15, 2005 6:34 AM
• This may be new for some agencies with a defined mission, but DHS has been making up and changing missions since our inception. ICE/DHS has been on a path to nowhere for sometime trying to find our way in someone's pipe dream. GovExec.com reader Posted September 14, 2005 3:49 PM