the katrina aftermath: a failure of federalism or leadership?

The Katrina Aftermath: A Failure of Federalism or Leadership?Author(s): Donald C. MenzelSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 66, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2006), pp. 808-812Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4096598 .

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Donald C. Menzel Northern Illinois University and

University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

Public Documents

The Katrina Aftermath: A Failure of Federalism or Leadership?

Donald C. Menzel is the Director of the Institute for Public Policy & Leadership at the University of South Florida Sarasota- Manatee, a professor emeritus of public administration at Northern Illinois University and the immediate past president of the American Society for Public Administration. He has published widely in the field of

public administration, with a particular interest in local government management and ethics, and he has lectured on these

subjects in Europe and Asia. His most recent book, Ethics Management for Public

Administrators:. Building Organizations of

Integrity(M. E. Sharpe), was published earlier this year. His current research focuses on public administration and governance in China, where he also conducts public management training for Chinese

government officials. E-mail: [email protected].

his public documents review focuses on two reports released in February 2006 that attempt to describe, explain, and learn from the imple-

mentation disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina's destructive rampage through the Gulf Coast states in 2005. The White House-commissioned report The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned is the result of an effort led by Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland

security and counterterrorism. The report was ordered

by President George W. Bush when he addressed the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans on

September 15, 2005.

A White House staff of high-level appointees, along with senior agency representatives who formed the Katrina Lessons Learned Review Group, authored the Lessons Learned report. Documentary materials, such as testimony before congressional committees, letters and other correspondence, and other available documents and media sources, were drawn on to identify the lessons learned and develop recommendations for the future. The report consists of more than 200 pages and contains 125 recommendations for strengthening the ability of federal agencies to respond to future crises. Though it notes actions taken by state and local

governments that had a bearing on federal decisions or operations, it does not include an assessment of the state and local responses.

The second report, A Failure ofInitiative, was pro- duced by the House Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. The 11-member Republican committee was chaired by Tom Davis of Virginia and

included, by invitation, five Democratic members of the House of Representatives. (The House Democratic

leadership refused to appoint members to the com-

mittee, contending that an independent commission should be appointed by the president.) The House

report is the product of "nine public hearings, scores of interviews and briefings, and the review of more than 500,000 pages of documents." It exceeds 400

pages and includes eight appendices, as well as a

supplement by Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Specific chapters deal with the pre-landfall preparation, the National Framework for Emergency Management, the tabletop planning exercise "Hurri- cane Pam," New Orleans's levee system, evacuation

issues, the preparedness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), communications

problems, command-and-control issues, the roles of the National Guard and active-duty military, law enforcement problems, medical care, shelter and

housing challenges, logistics and contracting, and charitable organizations. The report is quite comprehensive.

The White House Report: Lessons Learned What lessons did the federal government learn from Hurricane Katrina? According to the White House

report, many of the lessons learned will result in a much more effective response when the next disaster

occurs. There are 34 lessons threaded throughout the

report, brought together as 17 critical challenges in

chapter 5, "Lessons Learned." The first lesson learned deals with national preparedness, and the report concludes that although the 600-page National Response Plan was in place, many government officials were unfamiliar with it (Townsend 2006, 36). The first

lesson, then, is that all federal agency personnel must understand their roles and responsibilities. Most

importantly, all must be aware of the situation on the ground and share a common operating picture when an incident occurs. Katrina was unforgiving in

revealing (1) how uninformed decision makers were about the situation on the ground, especially in New Orleans, and (2) how blind high-ranking federal officials were to the multitude of efforts made

by personnel within and among agencies to aid in the rescue and recovery. This lesson led to the recommendation that a National Operations Center be established to deal with a catastrophic crisis.

The last lesson learned is the need for citizen preparedness, which was severely lacking in the case of Hurricane Katrina. The report concludes that citizen

preparedness programs differ greatly from jurisdiction

808 Public Administration Review * Novemberi December 2006



to jurisdiction and, perhaps as the situation in New Orleans illustrated, are inadequate. Consequently, the report recommends that the federal government work with state, local, nonprofit, and private sector

partners to "combine the various disparate citizen

preparedness programs into a single national

campaign to promote and strengthen citizen and

community preparedness."

There are no priorities attached to the 125 recommendations, nor are the recommendations easily under- stood, as they accent federal bureaucratese. The

report's authors, however, state that "these recommendations are written for policy makers and emergency managers and contain more technical information not

appropriate for the narrative" (Townsend 2006, 2). Each set of recommendations is derived directly from a specific lesson learned, with many recommendations

calling for agencies, especially the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to make changes in its

operations and revamp significantly the National

Response Plan. Each agency is apparently responsible for acting on the recommendations (see table 1). There is no indication that the White House task force will assume oversight responsibility.

The recommendations also call for more planning, coordination, and involvement by other departments in emergency management, including the Depart- ments of Defense, State, Transportation, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services. The lack of interdepartmental coordination during Katrina was painfully evident. Consider the offer of charitable assistance from Switzerland: An aircraft loaded with relief supplies was

ready to be dispatched to the United States, but the

flight was cancelled by the U.S. embassy in Bern and the government of Switzerland when it was discovered that the supplies could not be unloaded quickly and

repackaged into smaller quantities in a timely fashion, per FEMA's request.

The narrative contains a wealth of facts and information and paints a picture of the planning and

implementation as incredibly disjointed. A few facts are worth recalling:

* $96 billion in property damage * 1,330 lives lost (estimated), with 80 percent in the New Orleans metro area * 215 lives lost in New Orleans nursing homes and hospitals * 1.1 million evacuees * $3.13 billion in cash or in-kind donations * 151 nations and international organizations offered aid

The disconnect between planning and implementation is highlighted by the description of a 2004 exercise executed in response to a hypothetical Hur-

Table 1 White House Report Recommendations

Topic Recommendations Primary Agencies

National preparedness 1-21 DHS Integrated use of 22-32 DoD, DHS

military capabilities Communications 33-37 DHS

Logistics and evacuation 38-43 DHS, OMB, DOT Search and rescue 44-48 DHS, USFS Public safety 49-56 DOJ, DHS

and security Public health and 57-62 HHS, PHS

medical support Human services 63-67 HHS, DHS Mass care and housing 68-72 ARC, DHS, HUD Public communications 73-77 DHS Critical infrastructure 78-85 DHS, DOC

and impact assessment Environmental hazards 86-88 DHS, EPA, HHS,

and debris removal DOE, USDA Foreign assistance 89-97 DOS, DHS Nongovernmental aid 98-103 DHS

Training, exercises, and 104-111 DHS lessons learned

Homeland security 112-118 DHS, OPM professional development and education

Citizen and community 119-125 DHS, DOEd preparedness

Note: Some recommendations apply to all federal departments; most recommendations identify a specific agency.

Acronyms: ARC, American Red Cross; DHS, Department of Homeland Security; DOC, Department of Commerce; DoD, Department of Defense; DOE, Department of Energy; DOEd, Department of Education; DOS Department of State; DOT, Department of Transportation; EPA, Environmental Protection

Agency; HHS, Department of Health and Human Services; HUD, Department of Housing and Urban Development; OMB, Office of Management and Budget; OPM, Office of Personnel Management; PHS, Public Health Service; USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture; USFS, U.S. Forest Service.

ricane Pam. Funded by FEMA, 300 responders and decision makers from all levels of government and the American Red Cross gathered to identify, analyze, and address the complexities that would be involved in responding to a catastrophic hurricane striking southeast Louisiana. According to the White House report, "T-he results of this exercise revealed to the Louisiana Office of Homeland

Security and Emergency Preparedness... and FEMA the shortfalls in existing plans and were to be used to inform future development of State and federal

plans to address this potential catastrophe" (Townsend 2006, 25). Follow-up workshops were not convened until late July 2005 and did not

generate an actionable plan that could be put into

place before Katrina struck.

Other disconnects among federal, state, and local

responders after landfall on August 29, 2005, are well known. They include search-and-rescue

The Response to Hurricane Katrina 809



The report spares no one-not former FEMA director Michael Brown, Secretary of Homeland

Security Michael Chertoff, Louisiana governor Kathleen

Babineaux Blanco, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, nor President George W. Bush (although not

by name)-for the sad state of affairs.

operations, communication blackouts that necessi- tated Civil War-like runners delivering messages, law enforcement coordination, shelters and near- riot conditions in the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center, poor medical care, and on and on. As the White House

report puts it, the situation in New Orleans was a "disaster within a disaster."

The White House report points to a systemic failure. Put differ- ently, the federal system of governance contributed to the inept response of federal, state, and local governments. And the

report may be right insofar as the founders successfully established institutions that, at least histori- cally, prevented a concentration of power that, under catastrophic conditions, may not be what is needed. The report notes that the federal government's disaster response has evolved over the past 200 years from ad hoc in- tervention without an established federal role or coordinated response plan to the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, which rests on the "principle that response efforts should first utilize state and local resources" (Townsend 2006, 12). State governors can request federal assistance when an incident overwhelms state and local resources. Under the Stafford Act, the president can

designate an incident as either an emergency or a

major disaster. Under certain circumstances, the

president may declare an emergency unilaterally but

may declare a major disaster only at the request of a state governor. Once the president acts, either unilat-

erally or at the request of a governor, direct federal assistance is set into motion. The issuance of a presi- dential emergency declaration before landfall is ex-

tremely rare. However, on August 27, two days before

landfall, President Bush issued an emergency declaration in three states and ordered full federal assistance to save lives and property from the approaching Hur- ricane Katrina. Thus, it would seem that this push/ pull system, as it is called, should have worked. But it did not, especially in New Orleans when some levees

protecting the city gave way. (New Orleans has 350 miles of levees.)

The White House Report concludes with a call to transform national preparedness, which, when and if the 125 recommendations are acted on, will be a

significant step in the transformation. "At the most fundamental level," the report asserts, "the current

system fails to define federal responsibility for national

preparedness in catastrophic events.... [O]ur current

system is too reactive in orientation" (Townsend 2006, 66).

The House Committee Report: A Failure of Initiative The House Select Committee report provides the reader with a comprehensive, detailed, and graphic depiction of the Katrina experience. It has much to

offer PAR readers who want a

big-picture view of Katrina. At the same time, readers may be overwhelmed by the descriptions of the unfortunate events and circumstances that led one col- umnist to describe Washington as a "Can't-Do Government"

(Krugman 2005). Other news accounts have called the report "blistering," which is an apt description. A failure of initiative is another way of describing a failure of leadership. The report spares no one-not former FEMA director Michael Brown,

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, nor President George W Bush (although not by name)-for the sad state of affairs. Here are a few examples from the report:

* Secretary Chertoff acted "late, ineffectively, or not at all" in carrying out his responsibilities to designate Katrina an "incident of national

significance," "convene the Interagency Incident

Management Group," designate the principal federal official, and order the "invocation of the national response plan's catastrophic incident annex" (131). * "The White House failed to de-conflict varying damage assessments and discounted information that ultimately proved accurate" (140). * "Despite adequate warning 56 hours before

landfall, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin delayed ordering a mandatory evacuation in New Orleans until 19 hours before landfall" (2). 0 "The failure to order a timely mandatory evacu-

ation, Mayor Nagin's decision to shelter but not evacuate the remaining population, and decisions of individuals led to an incomplete evacuation" that, in turn, resulted in preventable deaths, great suffering, and further delays in relief (2). * Mayor Nagin repeated in an interview with

Oprah Winfrey rumors of armed gangs committing rapes and murder, which House investigators found to be untrue.

Neither does the report provide safe haven for federal

agencies and others:

* Federal agencies, including the DHS, had varying degrees of unfamiliarity with their roles and

810 Public Administration Review * November jDecember 2006



responsibilities under the National Response Plan and the National Incident Management System (143). * The military played an invaluable role, but coordination was lacking (3). * Levee operations and maintenance in New Orleans by local reclamation districts and water and sewage districts often worked at cross-purposes with one another.

Not surprisingly, the report singles out FEMA as a

seriously troubled and unprepared agency. The merger of FEMA into the DHS, through which many FEMA functions, personnel resources, and authorities were shifted to the DHS Emergency Preparedness and

Response Directorate, left the agency, as former director Michael Brown vociferously claimed publicly and in his bruising battle with Secretary Chertoff, in

disrepair if not broken. Morale plummeted, and many high-ranking FEMA professionals left the agency. The

report takes note of the "FEMA brain drain," indicat-

ing that 500 of the agency's 2,500 positions were vacant when Katrina hit. Moreover, eight out of its 10

regional directors were working in an acting capacity.

Job satisfaction at FEMA began to diminish in the

early years of the Bush administration, evidenced by a

survey of the best places to work in the federal government that was conducted by the Institute for the

Study of Public Policy Implementation at American

University. The 2003 survey ranked FEMA last among the 28 federal agencies studied. When the survey was conducted once more in 2005, FEMA was no longer a separate agency, but the DHS was next to last

among the "best places to work in the federal

government."

Was FEMA broken? Ineffective? Disconnected? One more example makes the case. House investigators discovered that FEMA wanted to order 200,000 trailers and mobile homes shortly after the storm. But, as the report states, "FEMA's strategy ... was blind to the nation's manufacturing capacity of 6,000 units per month" (U.S. House 2006, 314). In other words, the last batch of trailers would be coming off the produc- tion line in three and a half years.

Communications breakdowns during the crisis blan- keted rescuers and victims. The role of the media in

hyping rumors was especially troublesome, as it often

discouraged rescue efforts and the delivery of needed

supplies by drivers out of fear for their personal safety. The report notes,

Throughout the early days of the response, media reports from New Orleans featured ram-

pant looting, gunfire, crime, and lawlessness, including murders and alleged sexual assaults at the Superdome and Convention Center. Few of

these reports were substantiated, and those that were-such as the gunfire-were later under- stood to be actually coming from individuals

trapped and trying to attract the attention of rescuers in helicopters. (169)

The House Select Committee report concludes that

"we are left scratching our heads at the range of inef-

ficiency and ineffectiveness that characterized government behavior right before and after this storm.... Too many leaders failed to lead" (359-60).

Implications for Public Administration The Katrina debacle has had both an upside and a downside for the study and practice of public administration. An upside has been the availability of information about decision making during a crisis of such magnitude. There is no question that Hurricane Katrina was beyond the ordinary in both scope and

intensity. The fault lines in planning, implementation, and execution became evident-so, too, did the fault lines of the past: race, poverty, and politics. Thus, social scientists, as well as public administration students and practitioners, have at their fingertips a

golden opportunity to describe, explain, and understand what went wrong and what went right. More

importantly, they have a responsibility to advance corrective measures to ensure that future Katrinas do not bring death and devastation to our shores in such magnitude.

The downside of this experience, however, is perhaps the most concerning. There may be a Katrina legacy that fosters an "anti-9/11" future. The tragedy of 9/11 enabled the American public to appreciate the hero- ism of public servants and gain a renewed respect for the place of government in our lives. The anti-9/11 future brought about by Katrina would have grim consequences for the public sector. It is one in which our political leaders may be buffeted by a public that believes that under dire survival circumstances, no one will be out of harm's way. Survival will depend on one's own resources, chance, and ingenuity. It will be the uncommon politician who will be able to resist this antigovernment, anti-public service mentality. Our political leaders are likely to try to fix the situation in much the same way they have tried to fix

political failures of the past-by bashing civil servants. The public service ethos that was so gallantly em- braced following 9/11 will be at risk.

The fixes that are required to put into place both a well-planned and operational success in the face of

catastrophic incidents such as Katrina must go beyond bureaucratic tinkering. Elected officials and policy makers at all levels of government must take a broader, more comprehensive view of the problem and put forward solutions that are sound public policy and fiscally responsible. Among other things, this

The Response to Hurricane Katrina 811



means that serious attention must be given to inter-

governmental policy coordination and field implementation. It also means that bureaucratic and

political fiefdoms, so widespread throughout Ameri- can government, must join in a common cause when disaster is at hand. Katrina demonstrated that well-

meaning intentions by individuals, agencies, and

nonprofits to rise to the occasion are not sufficient.

At the federal level, the "stovepiping" that is so common among hierarchically structured agencies must be dismantled. How? Perhaps through the adaptive management model put forward by Charles R. Wise

(2006). He points out that adaptive management brings "together interested stakeholders to discuss a

problem and any available data" (314). At its best,

adaptive management works in an environment characterized by turbulence and incomplete information, in which "surprise is an inevitable component of

implementation" (314). He further contends that

adaptive management "is not a substitute for sufficient

professional personnel who are well trained or for astute leadership and decision making" (315). But what it does mean is that "there is a formal framework that facilitates the interpersonal interaction across

agency, intergovernmental, and intersectoral boundar- ies and at multiple levels" (315).

Conclusion: Turning the Corner? As I finished writing this review, I opened my local

newspaper, the Tampa Tribune, one Sunday morning to find the headline "Every Man for Himself" splashed across the front page. Stunned, I thought this may be the real lesson that most people have learned from Hurricane Katrina. Curious, I read on. According to the story, if a catastrophic storm comes "up the gut" of

Tampa Bay, it will be a war with weather that the area has never seen. People are going to expect government to give them help, but the "best efforts may fall short in many areas." It's every man for himself.

I hope this indictment of government does not come to pass. However, I must confess that as I watched

Katrina wend its way up the Gulf of Mexico from my vantage point in Tampa and then make landfall, I watched in horror as rescue and recovery operations

were botched in New Orleans. Like many Americans, I could not believe that under dire survival conditions, the most advanced, powerful government on earth seemed to abandon so many helpless men, women, and children. A few weeks later, I found myself in Bangkok, Thailand, making a presentation on Hurricane Katrina. I closed my presentation with the "lessons I learned." I told the audience that the lessons I had learned are as follows: Don't believe it can't

happen to you; don't be poor, old, or in ill health; and most importantly, don't count on government to save

your life-count on yourself.

The two reports reviewed here do little to contradict the lessons I learned. I wish it were not so, but the

chaos, confusion, and dysfunctional planning and execution detailed in these reports are sobering and

frightening.

References Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation.

2005. The Best Places to Work in the Federal

Government. Washington, DC: American University.

www.spa.american.edu/isppi/bptw.php [accessed

July 31, 2006].

Krugman, Paul. 2005. A Can't-Do Government. New

York Times, September 2.

Parker, Gretchen. 2006. Every Man for Himself.

Tampa Tribune, May 21.

Townsend, Frances Fragos. 2006. The Federal

Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned.

Washington, DC: Office of the Assistant to

the President for Homeland Security and

Counterterrorism. www.whitehouse.gov/

reports/katrina-lessons-learned/ [accessed

August 2, 2006].

U.S. House Select Bipartisan Committee to

Investigate the Preparation for and Response to

Hurricane Katrina. 2006. A Failure ofInitiative. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. http://katrina.house.gov/full_katrina_

report.htm [accessed August 2, 2006].

Wise, Charles R. 2006. Organizing for Homeland

Security after Katrina: Is Adaptive Management

What's Missing? Public Administration Review

66(3): 302-18.

812 Public Administration Review * November IDecember 2006

