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Chertoff Expresses Confidence, but Katrina’s Impact Lingers
By Spencer S. Hsu | Wednesday, May 24, 2006; A01 | The Washington Post

U.S. disaster-preparedness officials declared themselves ready yesterday for the June 1 onset of hurricane season, amid mounting anxiety in Gulf Coast states hit by last year’s devastating storms that recovery efforts and repairs to the nation’s emergency response system remain incomplete.

Federal authorities have stockpiled four times as much food and ice as they had before hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck last year, supplies capable of sustaining 1 million people for at least seven days, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and top U.S. military commanders said at a news conference. The government has also spent $800 million improving National Guard communications and has forged the closest civilian and military disaster response command structure ever, they said.

“We are . . . much more prepared as a nation than we have ever been to confront a major hurricane,” Chertoff said. He called on the nation’s 60 million coastal residents to prepare their families for disasters and to heed any warnings that authorities issue.

But the claims came with hundreds of thousands of displaced victims from last year’s hurricanes still living in more than 100,000 trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi, creating the potential for a new evacuation and housing crisis if another storm strikes. States and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are rushing to overhaul the tracking and movement of disaster supplies, but efforts are uncoordinated, state leaders warn.

FEMA’s hurricane operations plan is unfinished, state officials said, and the agency remains 15 percent understaffed. Repairs to New Orleans’s levee system by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are incomplete, and a state commission recently warned that 40,000 Floridians could face a catastrophic flood if a storm hits weakened flood-control systems near Lake Okeechobee.

“Many of the concerns we had are being [addressed], but it’s being done as we speak,” said W. Craig Fugate, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Four hurricanes hit that state in 2004.

“It’s kind of a race: Can we get all the things people needed before the 2005 hurricane season done before this hurricane season?” Fugate said.

Mindful of Katrina’s toll of more than 1,800 lives, $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded losses and the political standing of President Bush, federal officials have embarked on a campaign to educate residents in hurricane country about preparedness in the days leading up to June 1. They are also trying to mend the image of homeland security agencies and implement hundreds of recommendations from blistering congressional and White House inquiries.

“Last year we didn’t have a clue,” said the acting FEMA director, R. David Paulison. The agency will put satellite tracking devices on trucks leaving its two largest logistics centers — in Denton, Tex., and Atlanta — to avoid a repeat of post-Katrina efforts, when critical supplies such as ice and generators arrived days or weeks late, sometimes after circling the country.

FEMA will test streamlined command procedures with states over the next two weeks, after evacuation drills yesterday in Louisiana and recently in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere, Chertoff said.

“We’re ready for this upcoming hurricane season — assuming that the American public does their part and they get ready as well,” said George W. Foresman, DHS undersecretary for preparedness.

Officials also said that DHS has made major disaster-management changes in response to blunt criticism of how Chertoff, top aides and the White House oversaw the response to Katrina.

Assistant Defense Secretary Paul McHale said military forces “are better prepared than at any point in our nation’s history” to move in assistance, including about 367,000 National Guard troops available for hurricane operations.

Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of active-duty homeland defense forces at the U.S. Northern Command, said the military is preparing in advance to fulfill FEMA requests for communications, damage assessment, transportation and other needs in the event of a major storm.

“There will be no command-and-control issues this year,” said Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.

But plans to assign the Justice Department responsibility for law enforcement and the Housing and Urban Development management of temporary housing are not yet completed. Neither is a new national emergency communications strategy or an infrastructure-protection plan due June 1.

Pending FEMA supply plans are competing with state and local efforts, said Robert Latham, Mississippi’s emergency management director.

“Here we are less than two weeks before hurricane season, and we need to know,” Latham said. “The time to do that is not when stuff arrives in a disaster area but well before landfall.”

In Mississippi, 70,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and 100,000 people are living in 38,000 trailers, so more people are “much more vulnerable” now, Latham said.

Louisiana’s emergency chief, Jeff Smith, said the United States has not fully agreed to state requests for air ambulances, 250 buses and extra shelter space. His Texas counterpart, Steve McCraw, noted an outstanding request by Gov. Rick Perry (R) for access to more than 20 helicopters. Both called overall cooperation good, however.

The Army Corps also said recently that large floodgates designed to protect central New Orleans will not be ready until July. The agency said it has a plan to reinforce levees if a major storm strikes early.

Fugate said Florida has “grave concerns” about housing plans if a storm directly hits a city. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) recently ordered that evacuation plans be drawn up for 40,000 inland residents who could be endangered by a failure of the 140-mile, mostly earthen levee system holding back 730-square-mile Lake Okeechobee.