Home > Truth Is Casualty of Katrina’s Aftermath
By JOHN SOLOMON
WASHINGTON (AP) - One of the bigger casualties of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has been the truth itself. From federal emergency managers to Democrats, much fingerpointing - and even the promises not to engage in it - have fallen short of the facts.
For instance, the levees that broke weren’t ones waiting for Army Corps of Engineer repairs as Democrats have implied. They were ones that had already been fortified, and still failed.
And, yes, some in government did envision long ago that the New Orleans levees might give way in a major hurricane - despite President Bush’s comments to the contrary.
Such casualties of fact are the result of traditional politics mixing with the emotion of disaster, say those who study truth in government.
I find this more troubling than deception in the political campaigns,'' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center who has studied truth in politics for years.The level of misunderstanding and the consequences of misunderstanding can be much more dramatic.
If we don't hold the right people accountable and the right processes accountable, we'll risk having another catastrophe without real preparedness, and more people will die needlessly,'' she said.
Like flooded or flattened homes on the Gulf Coast, misstatements abound in this disaster. Here are some examples:
^LEVEE REPAIRS
Many Democrats have suggested that if the Army Corps had simply finished the incomplete levee reconstruction projects in that city, New Orleans might never have suffered the devastating flooding.
But the Army Corps' projects mentioned by those critics only were supposed to fortify levees in New Orleans to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina churned up the waters as a much more powerful Category 5 storm while in the Gulf and hit land while still at Category 4 furor.
Furthermore, the levees that were breached and flooded New Orleans- 17th Street Canal Levee and London Avenue Canal Levee - had already been fortified by the Army Corps to category 3 strength, with no additional work planned or even requested, the Army Corps said.
Even if the remaining levees had been upgraded as planned, the flooding would have occurred, officials say. More funding would have helped only to speed the post-flood draining of the city, they say.The levee failures we saw were in areas of the projects that were at their full project design. So that part of the project was in place and had this project been fully complete ... it’s my opinion, based on the intensity of this storm, that the flooding of the Central Business District and the French Quarter would still have occurred,’’ said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Strock’s answer, however, cuts against his own boss’ credibility on another issue.
^LEVEE FAILURES
President Bush said shortly after the disaster that I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.''
In fact, many in New Orleans and the federal government anticipated exactly that scenario. And Strock's own comments make clear the Army Corps knew a hurricane over category 3 strength could pierce the levees.
The concerns were so serious that FEMA and the Homeland Security Department ran an exercise last year calledHurricane Pam’’ that provided a dire prediction about a category 3 hurricane hitting New Orleans.
Flood waters would surge over levees, creating a catastrophic mass casualty/mass evacuation'' - 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year, the Hurricane Pam exercise predicted.
Bush finally clarified his remarks Monday, saying his comment was meant to suggest that there had been a false sense of relief that the levees had held when the storm passed, only to break a few hours later.
But that too, doesn't pass muster. The Bush administration's own emergency preparedness site warns resident that big floods often don't occur right away butgenerally develop over a period of days.’’
^FINGERPOINTING
Put on the defensive, Republicans have offered another argument that hasn’t held up.
There will be plenty of time to play the blame game,'' Bush says in a refrain adopted by all of his top deputies to avoid assessing blame early in the crisis.
But almost as soon as they made theno-fingerpointing’’ promise, Republicans pointed fingers back at local officials.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff did it on the Sunday talk shows a week ago.
We will have time to go back and do an after-action report, but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are,'' Chertoff said, deflecting a question about whether government heads should roll.
Then a few minutes later, Chertoff suggested it was the fault of city officials that more people didn't evacuate.The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials,’’ he said, adding the city should have used public buses to move the poor from harm’s way.
^IRAQ EFFECT?
Democrats have alleged that funding for the Army Corps for New Orleans levee repairs and available personnel from National Guard were depleted by the war in Iraq, worsening the situation.
Such claims are oversimplified.
Critics can point to numerous spending proposals or ideas submitted to the Army Corps about the levees and New Orleans that didn’t materialize.
But the Army Corps’ spending for New Orleans’ levee project actually has gone up under President Bush - $276.4 million total in his first five budgets, compared with $195 million in the last five years of the Clinton administration, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The Army Corps’ overall budget did take two hits during 2003, when the Iraq war started.
But the first was a reduction to finance a legal settlement unrelated to Iraq. And the second came as part of a 0.65 percent cut in nondefense discretionary spending for all agencies initiated by Congress. That means the Army Corps wasn’t singled out.
As for the National Guard, it is true a third of Louisiana’s troops were in Iraq or Afghanistan when Katrina hit. But numerous states - Michigan, New Mexico and Arizona to name a few - were ready when the storm hit to send in their troops, only to be left waiting for days.
And once the widespread activations occurred, both active duty and National Guardsmen flowed into the disaster zone, rising from 5,100 the day of the storm to more than 65,000 in the region this week.
The bigger question for Congress will likely be why more troops weren’t pre-positioned or activated as the storm approached.
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On the Net:
Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.fema.gov
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President Bush on the levees:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/bushlev ees.pdf
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Meet the Press'':
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/chert.p df
Army Corps of Engineers funding:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/corpsfu nding.pd f
Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. onHannity and Colmes’’:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/corps.p df
National Guard response to Katrina:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/forcefl owchart. pdf
Army Corps of Engineers Commander Lt. Gen. Carl Strock:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/katrinatruthcheck/strock. pdf