GAO says Katrina efforts lacked leadership

From combined dispatches

Failure to designate a single person in charge of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina led to confusion and a lack of decisive action in the aftermath of the devastating storm, congressional investigators told a House panel yesterday.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog agency, said neither Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff nor former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael D. Brown filled a leadership role in the response to the hurricane.

Asked by reporters whether Mr. Chertoff should have been the federal point man leading the response, GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker said: “That’s up to the president of the United States.”

Meanwhile, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said at a separate Senate hearing that the city was updating its evacuation plans and eventually will be ready to handle the next hurricane season.

Mr. Nagin said that the city needs 45,000 to 60,000 temporary homes and that about 2,000 have been delivered. He also said the coastal wetland destroyed by the hurricane needs to be restored to fully protect the city.

The GAO report faulted Mr. Chertoff for waiting until a day after the storm hit and much of the Gulf Coast region was devastated before he declared the area an event of national significance. That designation frees up federal funding and personnel to assist local officials.

Investigators said Mr. Chertoff should have designated the storm a catastrophic event, which would have triggered a broader federal response.

“As a result, the federal posture generally was to wait for the affected states to request assistance,” the report said.

Until now, Mr. Chertoff has largely escaped widespread criticism of the government’s sluggish response to Katrina. By contrast, Mr. Brown, the principal federal official at the disaster site, quit his job after becoming the public face of the failures.

The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency and issued the National Response Plan last year.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the GAO’s findings were riddled with errors, particularly in its criticism about whether declaring Katrina a catastrophic disaster would have speeded up relief efforts.

He said that federal officials and supplies were in the Gulf Coast before Katrina hit, and that an index in the response plan that deals with catastrophes is used only for unexpected disasters.

The report, Mr. Knocke said, “is premature and unprofessional.”

“Apart from its obvious errors, it displays a significant misunderstanding of core aspects of the Katrina response that could have easily been corrected in the most basic conversations with DHS leaders.”

The GAO report was presented to a special House inquiry of the government’s response to the storm. The committee, chaired by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, is expected to release its findings by Feb. 15.

The report praised the Coast Guard, the Pentagon, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Finance Center for taking a “lean forward” approach to preparing for and responding to Katrina.

Additionally, the Senate panel will conclude an investigation by mid-March, and the White House is completing its own review, conducted by homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend.

At a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Nagin said he thought the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will meet its deadlines to have the city’s levees repaired by the start of the next hurricane season in June.

“The city will be pretty well-protected by the next hurricane season,” he said.