Posted on 09/10/2005 10:20:09 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
TALLAHASSEE — One thing Florida knows is hurricanes.
Florida emergency planners criticized and even rebuked their counterparts -- or what passes for emergency planners -- in those states for their handling of Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Jeb Bush, the head of Florida AHCA and the head of Florida wildlife (which is responsible for all search and rescue) all said they made offers of aid to Mississippi and Louisiana the day before Katrina hit but were rebuffed. After the storm, they said they've had to not only help provide people to those states but also have had to develop search and rescue plans for them. "They were completely unprepared -- as bad off as we were before Andrew," one Florida official said.
And how Louisiana and Mississippi officials have handled Hurricane Katrina is a far cry from what emergency managers here would have done. Mississippi was in the middle of rewriting its disaster plan when Katrina struck. Officials there were still analyzing what went wrong during Hurricane Dennis earlier this year when Katrina overtook them. Search teams from Florida were rescuing Mississippi victims before law enforcement officers there were even aware of the magnitude of the disaster.
Louisiana also lacked an adequate plan to evacuate New Orleans, despite years of research that predicted a disaster equal to or worse than Katrina. Even after a disaster test run last year exposed weaknesses in evacuation and recovery, officials failed to come up with solutions.
"They're where we were in 1992, exactly," said Col. Julie Jones, director of law enforcement for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a reference to Florida's state of emergency preparedness before Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Miami-Dade County. Since then, Florida has created what many consider a model emergency management system, initially developed by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles in response to Andrew and beefed up considerably by Gov. Jeb Bush in response to more than a dozen storms that have hit the state since he took office in 1998, including a record four hurricanes last year.
The state, under Bush, has learned even from storms that did not hit here. Bush was mortified by the long, stalled lines of cars fleeing from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and ordered a study of evacuation alternatives that led to the state's current plan to convert certain highways to northern-only routes.
Meanwhile, Florida's western neighbors haven't faced as many storms, and their emergency preparedness apparently has not evolved as Florida's has.
Local and state officials in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as federal officials, simply weren't prepared to deal with a disaster of Katrina's magnitude, according to observers, citizens and national experts on the scene after Hurricane Katrina wreaked catastrophic damage on the Gulf Coast.
One of the biggest differences between how Florida and other states handle natural disasters lies in the degree of cooperation between cities, counties and the state. In Florida, they are in constant communication with one another as storms advance and during the recovery phase. Not so elsewhere, as first responders from Florida discovered at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall. Search and rescue crews from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were poised in Pensacola on Sunday night in anticipation of Katrina's landfall Monday.
After scouting the Panhandle and determining it was OK Monday morning, Jones said she called Mississippi officials to see if they needed help.
"They said, 'We don't know,' " she said. "Monday night, Mississippi said 'We still have not been able to evaluate the damage, so please go.' So Monday night, we were at the border ready to go, and we were in Mississippi by 6 a.m. Tuesday. So before Mississippi could wake up and say, 'OK, we have to start doing assessments,' Florida was in those two counties, in Jackson and Harrison."
Jones' crews made the first rescue in Mississippi at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall, and they spent a week in the area, ferrying Mississippi Marine Patrol officers whose vessels were destroyed by Katrina.
Florida law enforcement officials in each county hold monthly conference calls to discuss disaster coordination, but it wasn't until after the storm hit that these Mississippi officials were making a plan of what to do.
"The biggest frustration for us was sitting down and trying to get all the emergency managers in a county to sit down in their emergency operations centers and talk about a plan," Jones said.
Part of the problem was that Mississippi officials were in the process of rewriting their state emergency plan when Katrina hit, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. They hadn't yet evaluated post-Dennis hurricane response surveys when the Category 4 storm and its 20- to 30-foot surge wiped out 75 miles of coastline.
Stokes and other Mississippi officials also blame problems responding to Katrina on its size and impact on telephone services. Land lines, cellphones and even satellite phones were useless, Stokes said.
"It was not so much a communications breakdown as it was a communication device breakdown," said Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel. "So if we'd have had carrier pigeons, we'd have been using them. We'd have used smoke signals, but we didn't have water." Florida's emergency management chief, Craig Fugate, said just having any old plan isn't enough. It has to be adequate and a state needs an experienced organization well-versed in putting it into effect.
"I've heard comments made in other disasters that the first thing they did was throw the plan away because the plan was worthless," Fugate said. "A plan should not be some requirement. It should truly reflect what your real needs are, and what your real resources are." Louisiana's plan doesn't do either.
A November article published by the Natural Hazards Center, a University of Colorado research institute, analyzed what would have happened if Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans last summer instead of Pensacola.
"Hurricane Ivan would have pushed a 17-foot storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain; caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city 'bowl' with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet; flooded the north shore suburbs of Lake Pontchartrain with waters pushing as much as seven miles inland; and inundated inhabited areas south of the Mississippi River," wrote Shirley Laska, a University of New Orleans disaster expert.
But the most recent Louisiana emergency operations plan doesn't address how to evacuate in the case of flooding from storm surge, saying simply that "The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area represents a difficult evacuation problem due to the large population and its unique layout."
It continues, "The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating."
Buses were unable to transport New Orleans citizens for days following Katrina's landfall. The plan acknowledges that, in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, "the evacuation of over a million people from the Southeast Region could overwhelm normally available shelter resources." But it doesn't include a solution to the shelter issue.
Louisiana officials could not be reached for comment this week. Mississippi and Louisiana officials, however, have increasingly decried what they called a slow federal response to the disaster, blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But Gov. Bush defended FEMA.
"If we weren't prepared, and we didn't do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation," he said. Natural Hazards Center director Kathleen Tierney agreed, saying emergency planners in the Gulf states should have taken a tip from the jazz legends that made New Orleans famous.
"Organizational improvisation" is essential to cope with unpredictable events such as Katrina, Tierney said. "Research on jazz musicians shows that people don't just pull stuff out of the air when they're improvising. These are people with an extremely wide knowledge of musical genres. They have always practiced and practiced and practiced. Similarly, improvising involves a deep understanding of the resources you have at hand in your community."
Local officials, she said, "could have listened to researchers. They could take seriously Congressman Patrick Kennedy's bill called the Ready, Willing and Able Act that calls for more interaction with the community. They could have approached this improvisational task with imagination." And they might yet, Biloxi spokesman Creel said.
"Believe me, we're going to be doing a lot of what you call critiquing of this, but we haven't reached that point yet. We're still at the midst of it."
"and the head of Florida wildlife..."
What is the proper title of such an official in Florida? Chief alligator?
for later
This is a rational, well-written article with a lot of good points.
I have to assume that because it is from Florida that the democrats will decry it as a partisan political attack, even though it does not mention political parties or politics, and merely discusses states and their emergency preparedness plans.
It has to be sickening to try to run the country when half the elected representatives are actively trying to screw everything up for partisan political purposes.
What has happened to people? There is no way to prepare for what we've never experienced; why don't they just shut up and get to work?
We usually use wood and FIRE to make our smoke signals.
How can you not prepare for this? The forecasts of what would happen to NO if a hurricane hit it have seem to be dead-on so far.
In my opinion, the lack of planning for something so obvious is criminal.
I AGREE THEY WAS RUNNING JEB BUSH DOWN AFTER HAURRICANES BUT IT DID NOT WORK. WHAT THEY ARE TELLING IS MISSISSIPPI HAD DAMAGE FROM ONE END TO OTHER OF THIS STATE. NOT MANY IN MISSISSIPPI HAD POWER AND I MEAN NONE. THIS LIKE NOTHING THAT HAS EVER HIT THIS COUNTRY. NOT MATTER HOW PREPARED WE WAS MANY THING WOULD GO WRONG. NEW ORLEANS IS ANOTHER STORY FOR THEM TO NOT USE BUSES TO GET PEOPLE OUT IT NUTS AND NOT LETTING IN RED CROSS AND SATVATION ARMY IS CRIMINAL. MISSISSIPPI COAST IS GONE AND HATTIESBURG AND MEERIDIAN IS IN BAD SHAPRE AS IS MOST OF THE STATE. WE LIVE IN PEARL, MS. AND WE STILL HAVE POWER PEOPLE FROM MI., GA., ARK., AL., AND PEEN IN OUR CITY IF 30,000.
ALL MEDIA NEED WAS TELL ABOUT NEW ORLEANS AND EVEN NORTHERN LA. WAS DAMAGED VERY BAD. WE HAVE FAMILY WHO LIVES AT COAST.
IF THEY HELP ANY CLOSER THEY WOULD BE GONE LIKE 1ST. RESPONDERS AT WTC BOMBING.
But Gov. Bush defended FEMA.
"If we weren't prepared, and we didn't do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation," he said. Natural Hazards Center director Kathleen Tierney agreed, saying emergency planners in the Gulf states should have taken a tip from the jazz legends that made New Orleans famous.
"Organizational improvisation" is essential to cope with unpredictable events such as Katrina, Tierney said.
Too bad Democrats can't comprehend these simple, straight to the point words. Because emocrats offer no sollution but to blame others who weren't responsible, this should be a WAKE UP CALL to people living in states in disaster prone regions, DO NOT ELECT democRATS, unless you want to swim towards dry land with them.
Strange isn't it that when cities or states want to build a new arena, aquarium or other high cost project they will send delegations to Hawaii or Las Vegas or wherever at public expense to study how others did it. They'll get even more grandiose ideas for wasting the taxpayers' money. But when it comes to disaster planning, they couldn't be bothered to even ask someone who has done a successful job of it.
Maybe in your world people don't take the time to prepare for the unexpected, but most of us do. If I'm going to take a trip someplace I've never been before, I'll sure as hell ask around amongst my friends and family for someone who has SOME idea of what I'm getting into so I can prepare myself.
Florida offered to help their neighbors prepare for something they (Florida) could be considered as "subject matter experts" on. Their neighbors refused, like the fools they are seen as now. Sadly, others are suffering, and paying, for the foolishness of the leaders of these states.
Just think, if they had accepted the help offered, most of the work having to be performed now (like recovering the dead) would be unnecessary, and they would not have to "just shut up and get to work."
Well, unless you just want to create a pointless blaze, you also need a wet blanket.
Notice those corrupt "leaders" in NO have no problem implementing the land and gun grab plan. Nagin, Blanco and their pals should be in leg irons and an orange jump suit right now, entering a plea.
Mobile, Alabama was hit by Katrina's stronger East side, yet Mobile's pre-hurricane planning, disaster plan, relief plan, and state/federal cooperation went by the book. Result: no news from Mobile, Alabama (no lootings, no riots, no rotting corpses, you know...what makes news for liberals).
New Orleans, hit by the weaker West side of Katrina, discovered that it had no responsible state or local leadership.
Quite a contrast. Same storm.
Why ruin a perfectly good blanket? just use green grass clippings, or leaves- build a fire in a metal garbage can, get it smoking, and use the lid.
Hey, that's not a bad idea! Indians didn't have garbage cans, and I wasn't creative enough to improvise. =)
Good article
bump
The Indians wouldn't have built a city in a swamp either, and even if their ti-pi's blew away, they'd just run a heard of buffalo over a cliff and make new ones.
I don't know why the didn't use a buffalo hide for their smoke signals though, sleeping on that stinky, (and valuable) blanket after couldn't have been pleasant.
Bump for later
Nonsense.
Nothing could have prevented this short of divine intervention.
For over five years now as weather forecasting has taken on dimensions of crisis-proportions people have been burning out and tuning out; they simply can't comprehend the potential of disaster and refuse to spend sleepless nights concerning themselves with what has never happened to them before.
And, anyway, they have more important things to do - like walking the dog and getting laid.
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