Hearing on
Disasters and the Department of Homeland Security: Where Do We Go From Here?
TABLE OF CONTENTS(Click on Section)
The Committee will meet on Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. in room 2167 Rayburn House Office Building for a hearing on “Disasters and the Department of Homeland Security: Where Do We Go From Here?”
The purpose of this hearing is to have the Secretary of Homeland Security address the key findings of the federal government’s inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina and to present the department’s perspective on improving emergency management capabilities and readiness at the federal, state, and local levels.
During the weeks and days leading up to the committee’s February 16 hearing, four investigative review entities will have released their final or preliminary findings on the response to Katrina. These include the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) preliminary findings released on February 1, the White House Homeland Security Council’s lessons learned process and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) review to be announced on Monday, February 13. In addition, the House Select Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina (Select Committee) will issue its report on February 15 (report, 10mb pdf ). Collectively, these reviews are expected to address three groups of issues related to the federal response: 1) the preparedness level (i.e. planning, capabilities, and readiness) of the federal government prior to the disaster; 2) leadership, or key decisions by senior officials about how and when to engage federal response assets; and 3) the execution of the response plans and authorities. In general, these reviews include the following findings:
Included in this memo is a copy of the GAO’s preliminary findings released on February 1, 2006. The Select Committee’s report and findings, including the minority’s views, will be released on February 15 (report, 10mb pdf ) and is expected to include significantly greater detail than the findings listed above.
Emergency management is the discipline and the profession of applying science, technology, planning, and management to deal with emergencies, natural and man-made, thereby reducing the loss of life and property, avoiding injury, and minimizing economic loss. The cycle of emergency management begins with preparedness and mitigation, flows into response, and ends with recovery. These four cornerstones are interdependent and vital to successful emergency management. A fifth element, prevention, is often included in comprehensive emergency management since DHS released the National Preparedness Goal in 2005.
The Disaster Declaration Process
The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. §5121 et. seq., as amended) (Stafford Act) integrated previous disaster acts and authorizes the president to direct federal agencies to save lives and protect property in support of state and local response efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been delegated the responsibility for carrying out many of the authorities contained in the Stafford Act.
Once a disaster or emergency strikes, and in some cases before, the impacted local jurisdiction will request the governor to declare a state emergency if the situation is beyond the capacity of the local jurisdiction to respond. Similarly, the governor will request the president to declare a federal emergency or disaster if the state’s resources are overwhelmed. Upon request of a governor, FEMA may conduct preliminary damage assessments and recommend that the president declare a federal emergency or major disaster. Under the Stafford Act, the president can only declare a major disaster upon request of a governor. This process can take as little as a few hours or as long as several weeks depending on the severity of the damage. On average, 50 disaster declarations are issued each year.
Federal Disaster Response
Under a Stafford Act emergency or major disaster declaration, the president has broad authority to direct any federal agency to protect life and property or assist states in responding to a disaster. Additionally, the Stafford Act requires the president to designate a Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO) to coordinate response efforts in the field. Because the law does not give the FCO command authority over other federal agencies, the FCO is not in a position to direct the operations of large departments, especially DOD. Only the president appears able to promptly engage active duty military forces and achieve a unity of effort among all the federal agencies responding to a catastrophic disaster.
The federal government’s chain of command and the roles and responsibilities of each federal agency are defined in the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP assigns federal responsibilities by Emergency Support Functions (ESFs). ESFs are groups of capabilities and resources that are most likely to be needed during an incident (e.g., firefighting, transportation, logistics, mass care, etc.). Under each ESF, there is one designated lead federal agency and several supporting agencies. The purpose of the NRP is to avoid confusion over the chain of command and roles and responsibilities during an incident.
In practice, FEMA performs its coordination mission by detailing disaster management teams to state and local emergency operations centers where they establish a unified command structure with the various state agencies present. Under a unified command structure, FEMA personnel sit side by side with their state counterparts, assist in the coordination of response activities, and task missions to various federal agencies upon the request of state officials, or during catastrophic disasters in anticipation of state and local needs.
It is important to remember that FEMA, as originally intended, does not have its own response assets; rather, it directs the assets and personnel of other federal agencies to perform response missions. For example, while FEMA does not own helicopters or search and rescue teams, FEMA will task the Coast Guard or the military to perform water rescue missions. FEMA does not have the authority to dictate how federal agencies perform their mission tasks; those operational decisions are made by the responding federal agency in accordance with the NRP and their own internal policies.
Emergency Management and FEMA: The Beginning
Prior to the creation of the FEMA, disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation responsibilities were fragmented and dispersed among over 15 different agencies and departments. Reacting to significant problems with the federal response to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant accident, President Carter established FEMA by Executive Order 12148 in 1979. The order created FEMA as an independent federal agency and for the first time aligned the responsibility for disaster management with the authorities necessary to accomplish that mission. To carry out this mission, FEMA trained first responders and emergency managers, provided grants to support emergency planning, supervised mitigation projects funded by the federal government, developed best practices in the area of preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery, coordinated the federal response to disasters and emergencies, as well as many other activities in support of its mission.
The Department of Homeland Security: Changing FEMA
Since 2002, FEMA has been reorganized three times. Each reorganization has resulted in a loss of programs and staff, culminating in the FEMA that exists today.
Reorganization I: The Homeland Security Act
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296) (HSA) established the Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R;) Directorate within DHS with FEMA comprising the bulk of the directorate. To lead EP&R;, the HSA created an Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response with a direct reporting relationship to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The director of FEMA was named the Under Secretary for EP&R.;
With the creation of the department, FEMA no longer had a direct reporting relationship with the president. The Secretary of Homeland Security became the president’s principal disaster advisor responsible for enabling the president to effectively utilize his authority under the Stafford Act to direct all federal agencies, particularly DOD, to respond in a coordinated and expeditious fashion.
During consideration of the HSA, H.R. 5005, the president proposed that all terrorism preparedness functions be consolidated into FEMA’s Office of National Preparedness. The intention was to provide a one-stop shop for state and local governments and achieve a unified approach to disaster response. Instead, Congress opted to split preparedness functions between FEMA and the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP), which was to be transferred to DHS from the Justice Department.
However, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s markup of H.R. 5005 struck the provision from the underlying bill that included FEMA in DHS, thus keeping the agency independent. Subsequently, the rule accompanying H.R. 5005 reinstated the provisions into the base bill, transferring FEMA to DHS. Floor amendments to keep FEMA independent were defeated.
Separating the preparedness function was intended to place terrorism preparedness in an organization with a strong law enforcement background and relationship with that community. Instead of consolidating preparedness functions and integrating them with the response organization, the HSA created two separate preparedness functions—one for terrorism and one for all other hazards. The emergency management community, including the National Emergency Management Association in a memorandum to its members, cautioned that the separation of the preparedness function from the other components of emergency management would impair response capabilities over time.
Reorganization II: The Office for State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness
In 2003, Secretary Ridge proposed a reorganization of DHS, including transferring FEMA’s preparedness grants to the Office of Domestic Preparedness. Ridge and his aides believed FEMA should be a response and recovery agency, not a preparedness agency. In an age of terrorism, they argued, preparedness needed a law enforcement component, to prevent and protect as well as prepare to respond.
The proposal prompted former FEMA Director Michael Brown to caution Ridge, by letter, that further distancing preparedness from response “can result in an ineffective and uncoordinated response...[would] shatter agency morale and would completely disconnect the department's response functions from the responders and governments they are supposed to support.”
Secretary Ridge created the new Office for State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness (SLGCP) and transferred ODP and all preparedness grants over to the new SLGCP. As part of this consolidation, responsibility for administering the following programs was transferred out of FEMA to SLGCP:
Until this reorganization, FEMA’s Preparedness Division assisted state and local governments prepare for disasters through training programs, exercises, emergency planning, technical assistance, and grants.
In December 2004, Secretary Ridge released the NRP, an all-discipline, all-hazards plan that establishes a single, comprehensive framework for the management of domestic incidents. With the creation of DHS and the development of the NRP, an additional layer of management and response authority was placed between the president and FEMA, and additional response coordinating structures were established.
As part of these changes, critical response decision points were assigned to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Under the NRP, the Secretary of Homeland Security has authority to declare an Incident of National Significance (INS), convene the Interagency Incident Management Group (IIMG), designate the Principal Federal Official (PFO), and invoke the National Response Plan’s Catastrophic Incident Annex (NRP-CIA). The emergency management community expressed concerns about most of these newly created structures, which ultimately proved problematic or experienced difficulties achieving their intended purposes during the response to Hurricane Katrina. These concerns were also evident in an internal memorandum by emergency management professionals within FEMA.
According to the NRP, an Incident of National Significance is an actual or potential high-impact event that requires a coordinated and effective response by a combination of federal, state, and local governments and/or private-sector entities in order to save lives and minimize damage, and it provides the basis for long-term community recovery and mitigation activities. The declaration of an Incident of National Significance allows for the convening of the Interagency Incident Management Group, designation of the Principle Federal Official, and invocation of the National Response Plan’s Catastrophic Incident Annex.
The Interagency Incident Management Group comprises senior experts from all federal departments, key agencies, and the American Red Cross; provides the White House, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other national leaders with a focal point for strategic coordination; and recommends courses of action. The Interagency Incident Management Group is intended to fill an important operational planning gap during an incident by projecting the likely consequences of an incident several days in advance, anticipating the federal requirements needed to address those consequences, and developing appropriate action plans, which can then be handed off to FEMA’s operational teams for implementation. FEMA response teams are not well suited to perform this function because they are focused on the current, 24-hour, and subsequent operational periods.
The NRP defines the Principal Federal Official as the federal official designated by the secretary to act as his/her representative locally to oversee, coordinate, and execute the secretary’s incident management responsibilities under HSPD-5 for Incidents of National Significance.
According to the NRP, the purpose of the Catastrophic Incident Annex is to provide a protocol for shifting the federal posture to a proactive response from one where the government waits for the affected states to request assistance. A catastrophic disaster is defined as one that results in extraordinary levels of mass evacuations, casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. The NRP’s Catastrophic Annex establishes the strategy for implementing and coordinating a proactive national response to a catastrophic incident. Proactive response, including the mobilization of assets before requests by the state, and without the benefit of a detailed or complete situation and critical needs assessment, is necessary where the response capabilities of local jurisdictions are insufficient and overwhelmed.
Reorganization III: Secretary Chertoff’s Second Stage Review
Under Section 872 of the Homeland Security Act, the secretary has broad authority to reorganize functions, responsibilities, and organizations of DHS after a 60-day notice to Congress. The only limitation is that the secretary may not eliminate an entity or function that is required by statute. That type of change requires legislation. In July 2005, Secretary Chertoff announced the reorganization component of his second stage review (2SR) of the department. As part of 2SR, Chertoff announced significant changes to DHS’s structure, including extensive changes to the EP&R; Directorate and FEMA.
Specifically, under Chertoff’s proposal, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate was dismantled, and FEMA remained a direct report to the Secretary of Homeland Security for response, recovery, and mitigation. FEMA’s remaining preparedness functions were transferred to the newly created Preparedness Directorate effective October 1, 2005. DHS officials argued the federal government’s preparedness efforts needed to be enhanced, particularly for catastrophic disasters, and that could be achieved best by consolidating the department’s preparedness functions into a new Preparedness Directorate. The FEMA components transferred included:
The transfer of the remaining preparedness authorities out of FEMA arguably was the final step in the elimination of FEMA’s preparedness mission.
Again, the emergency management community cautioned that the proposed transfer of functions from FEMA would undermine its ability to respond to future disasters. For example, David Liebersbach, the president of the National Emergency Management Association, the professional association of state emergency management officials, testified before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that separating preparedness from response and recovery would break emergency management’s cycle of continuous improvement and result in a disjointed and ineffective response operation.
Additionally, DHS’s acting inspector general voiced reservations about segregating FEMA’s preparedness function from its response and recovery responsibilities, noting that disaster preparedness, response, and recovery are integrally related, each relying on the other for success. In similar fashion, Bruce Baughman, a former FEMA official responsible for heading FEMA’s Office of National Preparedness following 9/11, also voiced objection to separating preparedness from the other emergency management functions. Specifically, he said separating the people who plan disaster response from responders “was a big mistake. We tried that before, and it was a disaster.”
DHS and FEMA Respond to Katrina
The consequences of a major storm striking New Orleans were well known
Within the emergency management community, Louisiana, FEMA, and the National Hurricane Center (NHC), it was well known that a category 3 hurricane or larger would likely exceed the design of the New Orleans levee system and cause catastrophic flooding of the city and surrounding parishes. Because of the areas high risk and extreme vulnerability to a major storm, FEMA and Louisiana began a catastrophic hurricane planning project for Southeast Louisiana in 2003. As part of this effort, a planning exercise involving a fictitious category 3 storm called Hurricane Pam was developed to project the likely consequences of such a storm and develop contingency plans to address them. The exercise scenario was prescient, envisioning a storm with sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of Southeast Louisiana, and storm surges that topped levees in the New Orleans area. Under the scenario, more than one million residents were evacuated and 500,000 to 600,000 buildings were destroyed.
In July 2004, emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal, and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held at the Louisiana State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Baton Rouge. One of the stated goals of the exercise was to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana. Numerous action plans ranging from debris removal, to sheltering to search and rescue were developed. FEMA, due to budgetary issues, was unable to participate in follow-up planning meetings.
In addition, the NHC accurately predicted the course and strength of Hurricane Katrina as early as 56 hours prior to landfall. Given the risk posed by Katrina to New Orleans, the director of the NHC, Max Mayfield, took the initiative to call the Governor of Louisiana and warn the state of the likely catastrophic consequences of the storm. That was only the second time in his 30-year career that he made such a warning call.
Katrina and Its Impact
On August 23, 2005, the National Weather Service began tracking a tropical depression, which would become Hurricane Katrina. On August 25, Katrina made landfall in South Florida as a Category 1 storm, with sustained winds over 75 mph. It took seven hours for the storm to cross Florida, dropping as much as 15 inches of rain in some parts of South Florida, causing some home damage and extensive power outages.
Once the storm reached the Gulf of Mexico, it intensified and sped up, achieving Category 3 status with sustained wind speeds exceeding 111 mph on August 26. On August 28, one day before its second landfall, Katrina became a Category 5 hurricane, with wind speeds in excess of 150 mph. However, as the storm moved into shallower waters closer to land, wind speeds decreased such that Katrina was downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane.
Katrina eventually made landfall in Southeastern Louisiana with sustained winds over 140 mph at the eye of the storm, and wind gusts over 100 mph in the City of New Orleans, just west of the eye of the storm. Katrina also brought with it rainfall exceeding 8-10 inches over much of the storm’s path. Damage directly from the storm was felt in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, though Louisiana and Mississippi received the brunt of the storm.
When Hurricane Katrina finally stalled out and died over Tennessee, it left in its wake devastation never before seen in either size or type in the United States. Covering an area estimated to be near 90,000 square miles, the storm ravaged four states, caused damage in several others, and impacted the entire country.
While neither the most powerful, nor most deadly storm to hit the United States, its combined wind speed, storm surge, flooding effect, and deadliness make it one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Katrina exacted enormous human suffering and the loss of significant numbers of lives, and resulted in billions of dollars in property damage. The storm caused the deaths of more than 1400 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were in Louisiana and Mississippi, with known deaths in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
Katrina caused flooding in six states, mostly from storm surge and the high rate of rainfall. In Louisiana, the worst flooding was in the New Orleans area, caused by the failure of a number of levees. At least 80% of the City of New Orleans was at some point underwater, though the flooding from Lake Pontchartrain ranged from as little as a foot or two in areas such as the French Quarter to over 20 feet in the Lower Ninth Ward. Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama were underwater as a result of a 20-30 foot storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay.
Operational Capabilities and Readiness had Declined or were Inadequate
One of the major themes of the GAO’s preliminary findings and of the House and Senate investigative committees is that FEMA’s operational capabilities had declined in important areas or were never adequate for a natural disaster of this magnitude. For example, an internal FEMA memorandum from July 2004, discussed in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, warned of the precipitous decline in the capabilities and readiness of FEMA’s national response teams. The memo described how the response teams had been reduced in size from 125 person teams that were well trained, exercised, and had dedicated communications equipment assigned to them to a couple dozen names on a roster list. There were no longer funds to train or exercise collectively or for dedicated communications equipment. Emergency management professionals note the need for trained people, who have experience working together with their federal colleagues and state counterparts prior to a disaster, as a part of national emergency response teams. Emergency responders should not meet each other for the first time right before or after a major catastrophe.
The Senate committee also received testimony that the single greatest problem facing the operational teams was a lack of qualified personnel to staff the operations centers. The response to Hurricane Katrina required large numbers of qualified personnel at a time when FEMA’s professional ranks had declined. Since 2002, when FEMA was transferred to DHS, FEMA has lost a number of its top disaster specialists, senior leaders, and experienced personnel, described as “FEMA brain drain.” Many emergency management professionals had predicted this ‘drain’ would have a negative impact on the federal government’s ability to manage disasters of all types. Since 2003, for example, the three directors of FEMA’s preparedness, response, and recovery divisions had left the agency, and departures and retirements thinned FEMA’s ranks of experienced professionals. At the time Hurricane Katrina struck, FEMA had about 500 vacancies and eight out of its ten regional directors were working in an acting capacity.
It is clear the federal government in general and DHS in particular were not prepared to respond to the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina. There is also evidence, however, that in some respects, FEMA’s response was greater than it has ever been, suggesting the truly catastrophic nature of Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed a federal response capability that under less catastrophic circumstances might have succeeded. For example, the logistics system moved more commodities in the first week of the disaster than it did during the entire 2004 hurricane season. Nonetheless, the volume of commodities shipped was dramatically insufficient to meet the demand for food, water, and medical supplies during the first couple weeks. Another area where FEMA’s capabilities were simply inadequate to meet the requirements was long term housing.
Key decisions were made late
Similar to the troubled national responses to Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew in 1989 and 1992 respectively, the federal government failed to recognize the magnitude of the situation presented by Hurricane Katrina prior to landfall, adequately project future needs, fully engage the president, and respond in a proactive and timely manner.
Although federal emergency management has evolved since Andrew, including the development within the NRP of a protocol for a proactive response to catastrophic disasters, important aspects of the NRP were poorly executed, which contribute to the inadequate federal response to Hurricane Katrina. According to the GAO, the principal federal official should have been designated prior to landfall instead of a day and a half after Katrina struck the coast.
Because it takes several days to mobilize federal resources, critical decisions must be made as early as possible, so that massive assistance can surge into the area during the first two days, not several days or weeks later. The GAO reported that the Secretary of Homeland Security should have invoked the Catastrophic Incident Annex in order to shift the federal response from a reactive mode to a proactive response, where the federal government anticipates the need for federal resources and provides them without delay.
The process for requesting DOD assistance was slow.
Another common finding of past disaster reviews and the Hurricane Katrina investigations is that prompt, active-duty military assistance is critical for meeting the massive logistical requirements of a catastrophic disaster, but the current process for requesting such assistance is overly bureaucratic and slow. For example, the negotiations for the DOD mission assignments for Hurricane Katrina began on Thursday, September 1, and were not completed until the following Monday, one week after landfall. During catastrophic disasters, administrative procedures must be streamlined and not delay the provision of necessary military support to civil authorities. In addition, there appears to be little support for having the military take over federal disaster operations, or for the federalization of state disaster activities.
ISSUES
As Congress reviews and considers reform proposals for the emergency management system, the preliminary findings suggest that a number of reform principles should be considered.
Informed Presidential Involvement
Lessons learned from past catastrophic disasters have shown that early presidential involvement is necessary for a timely and well-coordinated federal response. Additionally, the president needs the advice and counsel of emergency management professionals in order to make appropriate and timely decisions.
Following Hurricane Andrew, the National Academy of Public Administration issued a congressionally requested report calling for the FEMA Director to have direct access to and the support of the president. Only the president can engage DOD and other big departments. Prior to the creation of DHS, the emergency management professionals of FEMA had this direct reporting relationship to the president. In fact, in 1996 the director of FEMA was made a cabinet designee.
Former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise has testified previously before the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management that a direct relationship to the White House is crucial. If FEMA is truly to coordinate planning and response to disasters, the other federal agencies must know that the FEMA director and the president communicate directly.
Preparedness activities must be closely integrated with response
Since the enactment of the Homeland Security Act and culminating in the new Preparedness Directorate of DHS, the preparedness function has been removed from FEMA. Emergency management professionals have consistently argued that preparedness and response should be integrated as part of the four cornerstones of emergency management, or the cycle of improvement will be lost and planning will be completed in a vacuum. Emergency management professionals question how FEMA is to build relationships with state and local governments without involvement in preparedness.
Additionally, most preparedness initiatives and funding focus on improving state and local preparedness, but fall silent on federal preparedness. The response to Hurricane Katrina illustrated the need to focus not only on state and local preparedness, but also on federal preparedness. FEMA staffing shortages are only one area that needs to be improved to better prepare the federal government to respond to catastrophic disasters. Additionally, work must be done to make sure that all agencies and departments within the federal government understand their roles under the NRP and have processes in place to implement them.
An all-hazards emergency management system is needed to meet the threats facing the nation
Given the variety and severity of threats posed by terrorists, natural disasters, accidents, and other man-caused events, the nation should strengthen the capacities and readiness of its all-hazards emergency management system. The federal government should strive to reconcile the current tensions between terrorism and the other hazards.
Emergency management requires a robust professional workforce
Perhaps the most important principle for reforming the current emergency management system is the development of a well-trained professional disaster workforce. Without such a workforce at all levels of government, it will not be possible to successfully implement response plans in an effective and timely manner. There is no substitution for professional training, experience, and judgment.
FINAL REPORT (10mb pdf)
of the Select Bipartisan Committee
to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina
CHAIRMAN'S OPENING STATEMENT
Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska)
WITNESS
PANEL I
The Honorable Michael Chertoff
Secretary, Department of Homeland Security