Copyright 2005 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Report says supplies, planning inadequate
By BRUCE ALPERT
Washington bureau
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
WASHINGTON — The federal government’s emergency medical response to Hurricane Katrina was jeopardized by poor planning, inadequate supplies and poor management, according to a report prepared by Democratic staffers on the House Committee on Government Reform.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversaw the medical response, disputed the report’s findings. FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said medical teams of about 6,000 doctors and nurses, mostly volunteers, worked under difficult circumstances to treat about 160,000 people after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
The Democratic staff report said that the Department of Homeland Security, which assumed control of the National Disaster Medical System in 2003, was warned of breakdowns in planning, supply, management and communications in its response to 2004 hurricanes but did little to improve operations.
A 2005 report, prepared for then Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, warned that the nation’s medical response apparatus for disasters is “fragmented and ill prepared to deal with a mass-casualty event.”
That was borne out in the response to Hurricane Katrina, the report said.
It cited a separate report by Oregon physicians who participated in the medical operations in New Orleans as saying that, despite heroic efforts of individual doctors and nurses, the effort was hindered by poor planning, inept logistics, failed communications systems and inadequate supplies to meet the needs of so many tens of thousands needing medical help.
Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, one of three Democrats who released the report Friday, said that after the storm he was helping deliver much-needed intravenous hook-ups, tetanus shots and latex gloves to St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes by helicopter because the National Disaster Medical System wasn’t meeting the urgent needs.
“The findings of this report are startling, but confirm what we saw firsthand in Louisiana,” Melancon said. “Doctors coming in from around the country were being turned away, while people were sick and dying everywhere from the Superdome to St. Bernard.”
Andrews said that the agency had positioned medical personnel near the Gulf Coast before Katrina struck Aug. 29, and had an emergency medical team from Oklahoma on its way to the Superdome on Aug. 30, but it was turned away by State Troopers.
While the Democratic report quotes some current employees of the disaster medical system saying the program worked better when it was part of the Department of Health and Human Services, because of its medical expertise, Andrews said that being part of FEMA gave the system logistical help and access to equipment and personnel, allowing doctors and nurses to set up operations quickly.
But Democratic staffers said interviews with the Oregon doctors who participated in the Katrina relief efforts found inadequate coordination from FEMA.
Two doctors reported that the teams at the Louis Armstrong International Airport and the Superdome lacked basic supplies to treat predictable post-disaster medical conditions and couldn’t communicate their needs because the FEMA-provided cell phones didn’t work.
“They also stated that prior requests for restocking of team caches had been ignored or denied by . . . managers and that their teams almost always deploy with an insufficient cache” of supplies, according to the Democratic report. “All team members reported making urgent requests for food, water and medical supplies in the first days of the operation without success. By the time sufficient quantities of food and supplies were delivered by the U.S. Air Force and forest service, team members had begun to give away their own rations to patients and evacuees.”
The report said that in the first few days after the storm, a single New Mexican team and then a replacement team from California tended to the medical needs of thousands of evacuees in the Superdome, fearing for their own safety and struggling to provide care with inadequate resources.