[Mb-civic] CBC News - KATRINA RESPONSE A 'NATIONAL FAILURE': REPORT

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KATRINA RESPONSE A 'NATIONAL FAILURE': REPORT
WebPosted Mon Feb 13 13:49:05 2006

---The U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina was a "national
failure" marked by "fecklessness, flailing and organizational paralysis,"
a House of Representatives inquiry has concluded.

The natural disaster killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana and
Mississippi in late August of 2005.

"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure,
an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the
common welfare," said a summary of the report, according to the
Associated Press.

"At every level – individual, corporate, philanthropic, and
governmental – we failed to meet the challenge that was
Katrina," concludes the 600-page report by a special Republican-
dominated House inquiry.

The report, which will officially be released Wednesday, claims officials
were ill prepared for the Aug. 29 storm that hit a section of the Gulf
Coast including the city of New Orleans.

It said the Federal Emergency Management Agency suffered from a shortage
of trained and experienced personnel.

U.S. President George W. Bush apparently escapes major criticism in the
report. Instead, the report says he received poor and incomplete
information during the crisis, and the White House had trouble sorting
out conflicting reports about levee breaches.

But New Orleans Mayor Ray Naglin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Bianco are
singled out and criticized for delaying their decisions to issue
evacuation orders, saying it led to deaths and suffering.

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is also slammed for not
effectively carrying out his overall responsibilities for the federal
disaster relief during Katrina.

The report says he should have declared the hurricane an "incident of
national significance," which would have triggered a faster federal
response two days before the storm hit, instead of the day after.

It also faulted Chertoff for not following a response plan specifically
for catastrophic disasters.

Meanwhile, two government reports released Monday on Katrina disaster aid
reveal that FEMA wasted millions of dollars and overpaid for hotel rooms.

Up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid were
based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false
addresses and names.

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