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JP's Maestri said FEMA didn't keep its word

Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer

Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said Friday night that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reneged on a promise to begin relieving county emergency preparedness staffers 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Maestri’s staff has been working almost around the clock since Katrina approached the Louisiana coastline on Sunday. Today, the staff is
expected to finally switch to a 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule, he said,
adding that they’re both tired and demoralized by the lack of assistance from federal officials.

“We had been told we would be on our own for 48 hours,” Maestri said.
“Prepare to survive and in 48 hours the cavalry would arrive.

“Well, where are they?” he said.
Maestri said the agreement was signed by officials with the Southeastern Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Officials Association, the state and
the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of this year’s Hurricane Pam tabletop exercise. That exercise began the process of writing a series of manuals explaining how to respond to a catastrophic disaster. Financed by FEMA, it included a variety of federal, state and local officials.

A FEMA spokesman late Friday said they couldn’t confirm or deny that
the agency signed the agreement Maestri referred to.

FEMA Director Michael Brown also raised Maestri’s ire when he said in a television interview Friday that he waited so long to respond because he didn’t want to interfere with local aid attempts, and that local officials hadn’t asked FEMA to come in.

“My response is very simple,” Maestri said in an interview on a cell phone after repeated attempts to reach his office. “We didn’t have any communications. We still don’t have outside communications.”

He said FEMA officials have now informed him the first members of a liaison team might arrive at the Emergency Operations Center this morning or Sunday.

Staffers also are upset by Thursday comments by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. that suggested he felt the city shouldn’t be rebuilt. Asked in the interview whether it made sense to spend billions rebuilding a city that lies below sea level, he replied, ``I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me.''

He said several of Hastert’s comments are posted on the center’s wall, “like the comments of opposing coaches are pinned on the wall of the Saints locker room.”

Hastert's office later issued a statement insisting he was not calling for the city to be abandoned or relocated.

Maestri admitted he and his staff were tired and frustrated, and that that helped fuel his criticism. Also on his list for criticism was new Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Assistant Director Jeff Smith, who he talked to for the first time only on Thursday.

Maestri said the communications problem has occurred despite the funneling of millions of dollars of Homeland Security grant money into parishes and state coffers, much to upgrade communications equipment. Jefferson Parish used that money successfully for an internal radio system that worked well during the storm, he said. But the state assigned those dollars to the Louisiana State Police, which he said hadn’t completed connecting it to the parish communications system.

Maestri also was upset with American Red Cross officials for delaying the staffing of shelters in the parish. He said a Red Cross official said he should send a staffer to Mount Olive, La., with a request for personnel. When the staffer arrived, he was handed a note saying help would not be coming until it was safe for Red Cross workers.

“They can go to Iraq and Afghanistan and tell us it’s too dangerous to
New Orleans,” he said. “I’ve got that note and will frame it with a copy of my resignation letter for the board of directors” of the southeastern Louisiana Red Cross.

Maestri said some of his frustration is fueled by conversations with several parish business owners who donated goods to the parish for use in the recovery.

“They’re saying, ‘Come. Please get it because we’re relocating. We can no longer work here,’” Maestri said. Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mersmia@cox.net .

Same guy in a 2002 PBS Special on a Cat 5 hurricane drill....complaining about FEMAs response....

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html

WALTER MAESTRI: A couple of days ago we actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five hurricane--

WALTER MAESTRI: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evident that we were going to lose a lot of people we changed the name of the storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody who was here as that Category Five storm came across... was gone.

WALTER MAESTRI: It's going to look like a massive shipwreck. There's going to be-- there's going to be, you know-- everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.

All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River --much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.

WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost.

WALTER MAESTRI: It's going to look like a massive shipwreck. There's going to be-- there's going to be, you know-- everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.

All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River --much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.

WALTER MAESTRI: I think they know that, I think that they've been told that. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, you know has come to grips with that as-- as a-- a potential real situation. Just like none of us could possibly come to grips with the loss of the World Trade Center. And it's still hard for me to envision that it's gone. You know and it's impossible for someone like me to think that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone.