FEMA EMails Show Internal Chaos During Katrina
Posted by StormWarning on 21 Oct 2005 at 01:21 pm | Tagged as: Federal Policy, Opinions
Recent disclosures of a series of emails sent within FEMA and DHS leading up to and during the Katrina disaster illustrate just how much in disarray they were.
FEMA EMails
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/national/22text-fema.html
Marty Bahamonde is a public affairs officer in the Boston regional office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He was sent to New Orleans in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina and ended as the only FEMA representative in the city when the storm hit. He sent a series of e-mails from his BlackBerry to other FEMA officials in Louisiana and back in Washington warning them about the dire conditions he saw, starting on Sunday, the day before the storm hit.
E-mail exchanges from Natalie Rule and David Passey, two other FEMA officials who work in the public affairs division, are included in the exchanges. At times, Mr. Bahamonde wrote emails directly to Michael Brown, who was then acting as the FEMA director…[more]
Read these emails yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20051022_FEMA2.pdf
And then there are the emails to/from Mike Brown himself:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20051022_FEMA1.pdf
I can only conclude that reference to a "certain governor" means Jeb Bush.
FEMA Ignored Katrina Warnings, Agency Official Testifies
Lone official at Superdome told a Senate committee that his calls for help were disregarded.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1512003/20051021/index.jhtml?headlines=true
As supplies of oxygen began to run out and the situation inside the Superdome deteriorated one day before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the lone Federal Emergency Management Agency official on site made a desperate plea for help.
It was a call that fell on deaf ears, said Marty J. Bahamonde, according to transcripts of his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is investigating the government’s response to the disaster…
…"There was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation." — FEMA’s Marty J. Bahamonde…
None of this absolves Nagin and Blanco from their balls dropping. It does belie some of the things that Sec’y Chertoff was saying during and right after the hurricane struck.
Michelle Malkin has a good run down on this on her website as well.
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003755.htm
There will be more to be written on this one.
Federal Policy, Opinions
