Funding shortfalls cited for setbacks in storm response drill
Key officials, including the FEMA director, the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, failed to participate in the training exercise, senator says.
A Senate panel examined on Tuesday why a hurricane-planning exercise involving a mock storm did not leave officials better prepared for when an actual storm hit.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, described a series of planning setbacks and funding shortfalls that caused the simulation -- first envisioned in 1999 -- to be put off until July 2004.
"Delay followed delay," Collins said. "Then FEMA reduced the funding allocation so the scope of the exercise had to be scaled back."
She said that states had planned an exercise that would simulate an evacuation from a storm that breached the levees. With cutbacks, they did not plan an evacuation and simulated a less severe storm.
Collins also noted that a follow-up session was postponed and not rescheduled until July of 2005, just a month before Hurricane Katrina hit. The result was that "no additional planning documents were generated before they were so urgently needed," she said.
Still, state and local officials argued that, despite widespread criticism of the response to Katrina, ideas generated during the exercise, called Hurricane Pam, were implemented, mitigating damage and loss of life.
Collins also noted that officials responsible for responding to storms, including the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, did not participate in the Hurricane Pam simulation. She said the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut were on hand when those states conducted an exercise simulating a terrorist attack.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., argued that the Hurricane Pam planning documents refuted Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff's assertions that the department could not have anticipated the damage caused by Katrina.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said the Justice Department as well as the HHS were still not cooperating in the panel's Katrina investigation. Those departments "have produced much less than half the information we asked for," Lieberman said.