By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Top Department of Homeland Security officials were told about New Orleans’ levee failures the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, former disaster chief Michael Brown said Friday, contradicting agency officials who said earlier they were unaware of the severity of the problems until the next day.
“I find it a little disingenuous,” Brown, who at the time headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told a Senate oversight committee. “For them to claim that we didn’t have awareness of it is just baloney.”
Brown also told senators that decisions and policies by the parent Homeland Security Department doomed FEMA to “a path to failure” that led to the government’s slow response to the storm. He said that because of a focus on terrorism, natural disasters “had become the stepchild of the Department of Homeland Security.”
In an appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that blended an atmosphere of both cooperation and confrontation, Brown went far further than he had previously in blaming other elements of the Bush administration for the government’s halting reaction to the massive storm.
The Aug. 29 maelstrom killed more than 1,300 people, displaced hundreds of thousands of others, and caused tens of billions in damage, including widespread destruction in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities.
Brown, who quit under fire as chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency just days after the storm hit, said FEMA’s mission was marginalized when it was swallowed by the newly created Homeland Security agency.
“There was a cultural clash that didn’t recognize the absolute inherent science of preparing for a disaster,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. “Any time you break that cycle … you’re doomed to failure.”
He added: “The policies and decisions implemented by the DHS put FEMA on a path to failure.”
Earlier, the chairwoman of the panel, Sen. Susan Collins, said that FEMA missed early warning signs that emergency response teams were unprepared to handle a catastrophic disaster like Hurricane Katrina.
He added: “The policies and decisions implemented by the DHS put FEMA on a path to failure.”
Earlier, the chairwoman of the panel, Sen. Susan Collins, said that FEMA missed early warning signs that emergency response teams were unprepared to handle a catastrophic disaster like Hurricane Katrina.
A management audit prepared by Brown months before the Aug. 29 storm showed that the agency had a lack of adequate and consistent situational awareness to size up emergencies, and was unable to properly control inventory and track assets, she told fellow committee members. Collins said the audit also showed that FEMA misunderstood standard response procedures.
“Despite this study, key problems simply were not addressed and, as a result, opportunities to strengthen FEMA prior to Katrina were missed,” she said.
Collins said Brown also told Senate investigators that the Bush administration’s sluggish response to Katrina was blamed in part on what he called a clash of cultures between preventing terrorism and preparing for other disasters.
Brown’s appearance in front of the Senate investigative panel came as new documents reveal that 28 federal, state and local agencies including the White House reported levee failures on Aug. 29, according to a timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports.
That litany was at odds with the administration’s contention that it didn’t know the extent of the problem until much later. At the time, President Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said there were conflicting reports about the levees in the immediate aftermath of the storm. “Some were saying it was over top, some were saying it was breached,” he said.
“We knew of the flooding that was going on,” McClellan said. “That’s why our top priority was focused on saving lives.”
“The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority and that’s the way it should be,” the spokesman said at an occasionally contentious briefing.