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Former FEMA Boss Blames State Officials for Delayed Katrina Response

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 September 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Michael McAuliff, Daily News, New York

Sep. 28--WASHINGTON -- The nation's disgraced ex-emergency manager put the blame for nearly all the country's failures in the Hurricane Katrina debacle on other people yesterday -- infuriating lawmakers.

"I get it when it comes to emergency management," Michael Brown, the former Federal Emergency Management Agency boss, told a congressional panel probing the glaring lapses in the response to Katrina.

"I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it," Brown insisted. He said his two major errors during Hurricane Katrina's rampage were not holding regular media briefings and failing to persuade Louisiana officials to evacuate sooner.

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown said, referring to Aug. 27, two days before the hurricane struck, killing hundreds of people.

But legislators on the special panel laced into Brown -- who resigned in the storm's aftermath -- for being clueless.

"I can't help but wonder how different the answers would be . . . if someone like Rudy Giuliani had been in your position instead of you," said Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.). "It is somewhat shocking to me that you basically said, 'If I had things to do over again, I'd only two things.' "

When Shays asked whether Brown did a good job "coordinating" the disaster response by urging Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to evacuate, a flustered Brown answered, "What would you like for me to do, Congressman?"

"That's why I'm happy you left," Shays answered, "because that kind of look, in the light like a deer, tells me that you weren't capable to do the job. I would have liked you to do a lot of things."

But Brown insisted the failures of Nagin and Blanco -- both Democrats -- to order mandatory evacuations sooner than the day before Katrina hit was the "tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated."

He said "the system worked in Mississippi and Alabama; the system did not work in Louisiana," angering the only two Democrats who attended the hearing.

"I'm a witness as to what happened in Mississippi," said Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). "You folks fell on your face. You get an F-minus in my book."

Taylor asked Brown whether his emergency plan included having National Guard troops "loot" grocery stores and Wal-Mart for supplies.

Brown also insisted he reached up the chain of command to the White House for help. "I remember saying to [White House chief of staff Andy Card] at one point that this is going to be a bad one," Brown said. "They were focused about it; they knew it."

That testimony disturbed Democrats. "The unanswered calls for help from FEMA to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security should send a shiver down every American's spine," said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is not part of the panel but wants a separate Katrina commission created and FEMA to be made an independent agency.

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WMT,

Source: Daily News

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