Disaster-response plan raises ire
Posted on Thursday, August 9, 2007
WASHINGTON — A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation’s emergency-response blueprint angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago.
State and local officials in charge of responding to disasters say that their input in shaping the National Response Plan was ignored in recent months by senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials, despite calls by congressional investigators for a shared overhaul of disaster planning in the United States.
“In my 19 years in emergency management, I have never experienced a more polarized environment between state and federal government,” said Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma’s emergency management chief and president of a national association of state emergency managers.
The national plan is supposed to guide how federal, state and local governments, along with private and nonprofit groups, work together during emergencies. Critics contend that a unilateral approach by Washington produced an ill-advised response plan at the end of 2004, an unwieldy, 427-page document that emphasized stopping terrorism at the expense of safeguarding against natural disasters.
Bruce Baughman, Ashwood’s predecessor as president of the National Emergency Management Association and a 32-year veteran of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said a draft of the revised plan released to state officials last week marks a step backward because its authors did not set requirements or consult with field operators nationwide who will use it to request federal aid, adjust state and county plans and train workers.
“Where’s the beef ?” said Baughman, who is Alabama’s emergency management chief. “I don’t have any problems with a framework... but it’s not a plan... and it’s not national. Who are we fooling here ?“ Last week, the homeland security department circulated a streamlined, 71-page draft — renamed the “ National Response Framework” — to federal and state officials. Agency spokesman Laura Keehner said that state and local officials were included earlier in the decision-making process, but an initial draft they produced with FEMA and homeland security preparedness officials in May “did not meet expectations.” The collaboration resulted in what several federal officials familiar with the process described as a convoluted version that sought to satisfy too many constituencies and re-fought old bureaucratic battles.
The disagreement over the plan comes at a time of increasing mistrust between Washington and state homeland security officials. In recent months, they have sparred over dwindling federal grants, the adequacy of local intelligence-gathering efforts, and what the states regard as Washington’s reluctance to share information about potential threats.
“Coordination between state and local governments and the feds... seems to be getting worse rather than better,” said Timothy Manning, head of emergency management in New Mexico and a member of a homeland security-appointed steering committee that initially worked on the emergency plan before being shut out of the deliberations in May.
Testifying before a House panel last week, Ashwood and colleagues openly questioned why the draft was revised in secret. The final document was to be released June 1, at the start of this year’s hurricane season.
Federal officials, Ashwood said, appear to be trying to create a legalistic document to shield themselves from responsibility in future disasters, and to shift blame to the states. “It seems that the Katrina federal legacy is one of minimizing exposure for the next event and ensuring future focus is centered on state and local preparedness,” he said.
The blunt remarks spotlight a breakdown in joint efforts to fulfill a core recommendation by investigators who examined federal missteps after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coast in August 2005.
In the White House’s afteraction report in February 2006, Bush homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called the National Response Plan overly complicated, Washingtondriven and filled with “enough government acronyms and jargon to make your head spin.” “ We need to rewrite the National Response Plan so it is workable and it is clear, ” she said. “We will draw from the expertise at the state and local levels to ensure that we get it right.” Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, who is preparing the new draft with White House deputy assistant for homeland security Joel Bagnal, said in May that the old plan was “impenetrable” and that a rewrite was necessary so that “people can use it and train to it and understand it at a governor’s level, at a mayor’s level, at the level of a congressman.” The new draft, which was released publicly only after it leaked to Congressional Quarterly, states that it is a simplified but “essential playbook” that describes various responsibilities of government executives, private-sector business and nongovernmental leaders and operators. Acknowledging that its directives exceed current capabilities, however, the framework commits the federal government to developing actual strategic and operational plans later.
Bush officials add that state, local and private-sector partners will get their say during a 30-day review when the plan is formally released later this year. “The draft National Response Plan will be presented to the president after an extensive 30-day review period by federal, state and local officials, and we look forward to receiving the draft plan after that review period,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
