FEMA and Hurricane Katrina

Katrina The problem with the response to Hurricane Katrina was not that a National Response Plan (NPR) was not in place or that a National Incident Management System (NIMS) did not exist.

It was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had been in decline for years, was suffering from significant turnover among top leaders, and the individuals who were in charge lacked the appropriate leadership experience and knowledge to oversee an effective response to a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina (Lewis, 2009; Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina,2006).

This paper will 1) describe 3 major examples regarding the leadership demonstrated in regard to preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina, give an assessment of each and explain why each was pivotal in the response’s outcome. It will also give an assessment of how each could have been improved. 2) It will describe 3 examples of interagency collaboration demonstrated in regard to preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina, assess each one and explain why each was pivotal in the response’s outcome.

3) The paper will consider the challenges for the leader of an interagency team involved with operating in such an environment and extend this view beyond the specific response effort, then name and discuss 3 significant issues for an IA leader—namely, information sharing, coordination of effort, and managing personnel directed by various leaders.

3 Major Examples of Leadership First, FEMA had inadequately trained staff and New Orleans’ Incident Command System (ICS) was not ready or prepared to respond to a disaster like Katrina, and this was the fault of leadership under both Director Michael Brown, who resigned shortly after Katrina, and New Orleans’ local government. Second, FEMA had been unable to provide adequate shelter for all those affected by the hurricane and the following flooding, and this was a result of leadership’s failure to organize.

Third, leadership failed to provide adequate logistics in handling the response and had to rely on the leadership of the U.S. Coast Guard to accomplish anything of substance in the aftermath of Katrina (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). The U.S. Coast Guard excelled and surpassed expectations in the wake of Katrina because it acted as an independent, autonomous organization with a single purpose and spirit of mission (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). This type of spirit, vision, organization and independence was what FEMA needed to demonstrate to show it was ready.

Pre-Katrina, the Incident Command System (ICS) in New Orleans was only being used for fire-related incidents and not for major flooding or hurricane relief. This could have been improved by incorporating hurricane response and flooding response into the concept. As a result of this failure, response was delayed for days as teams struggled to understand what to do (Samaan, Verneuil, 2009). Additionally, the emergency operations center (EOC) was not trained in ICS either, which meant that the EOC ended up being a liability rather than an asset.

The challenges that the hurricane brought to the ICS concept were that it exposed the lack of realistic prep and planning between agencies at the local and federal levels. Secondly, FEMA was unable to provide shelter for the homeless, which was pivotal in the response because hundreds of thousands were without homes and needed to be relocated. FEMA should have coordinated with local leaders to determine where and how to provide emergency shelters.

Thirdly, logistical operations crumbled right out of the gate as there was confusion about who was in charge, a lack of communication among agencies, and mishandling of assets. Few were prepared to put the ICS concept into practice and ICS training had to be given on the spot, and too little on-site coordination among various departments added to the difficulty of putting the concept into practice (Samaan, Verneuil, 2009). For ICS to work properly, it must be understood, embraced, and utilized by all agencies concerned.

At Katrina, this was not the case as only the US Coast Guard had demonstrated effective understanding of emergency response. 3 Examples of Interagency Collaboration Interagency collaboration was shown under Admiral Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard, who managed an effective collaboration with all three levels of agency response. As The Brooking Institution (2007) noted, “the Coast Guard rescue teams had pulled roughly 33,000 stranded Katrina victims off rooftops and overpasses.

[Admiral Allen] was personally responsible for injecting some capacity for interoperability among the various civilian agencies at different levels—local, state and federal—integrating with that an effective military response” (p. 3). This collaboration was pivotal to the response because it brought civilian agencies in line with the Coast Guard to allow all of them to pursue one objective: singleness of purpose allowed for prompt rescue of thousands of stranded persons. Another example was that of collaboration between the Department of Defense (DOD) and FEMA.

As the E-PARCC Collaborative Governance Initiative (2008) showed, the DOD was “sluggish” both in the days before landfall and immediately after Katrina hit. Then it decided to spring into action. Yet “even as the DOD became more aggressively involved in the response, it did so on its own terms. It established its own command, and frequently did not coordinate with FEMA and other agencies” (E-PARCC Collaborative Governance Initiative, 2008, p. 2).

In other words, there was a lack of collaboration at the federal levels and this negatively impacted the federal response to the disaster. The DOD and FEMA were waiting for information to be processed before they could start responding. FEMA and the DOD should have had pre-planning exercises in place allowing the paperwork of bureaucratic red tape to be sped up as quickly as possible.

FEMA should have gotten military services to the local area by getting pre-written authorizations approved ahead of time so that when the hurricane landed with the expected force authorities anticipated, the military could respond with a simple phone call (Philips, 2017). A third example of collaboration was that of the National Guard and active duty forces under the command of General Honore, who collaborated with General Landreneau by coming together face-to-face outside the Superdome to coordinate the effective use of manpower in response to the disaster.

Honore stated that “the art of command is to take the situation as you find it…and unconfuse people....And that's what General Landreneau and I did by standing outside the same tent outside the Superdome, was to work together in collaboration to achieve a unity of effort, not through staff, not by long distance, but the most personal way that can happen, face to face, and collaborated decisions” (E-PARCC Collaborative Governance Initiative, 2008, p. 11).

In doing so, the National Guard and active duty forces were able to provide assistance in disaster relief and fill a gap left by DOD and FEMA leaders who were not communicating in an effective manner.

Challenges One of the biggest challenges for the leader of an interagency team involved with operating in such an environment is the implementation of an appropriate model: a “pull” approach to disasters, as E-PARCC (2008) notes, is that which a”ssumes that FEMA and state responders will identify needs and communicate them to other agencies” (p. 3).

But this is not an effective model for responding to a disaster like Katrina where fast response is needed and forces need to be ready to act and have to know how to act and what to do as soon as they are needed. Waiting on information to come in, when it can be well approximated what response will be needed ahead of time is completely wasteful and unnecessary.

As E-PARCC (2008) points out, “this model works least well in a catastrophe such as Katrina, where time is limited, the needs are extraordinary, and the capacity of a central coordinator to communicate all of its needs in detail can quickly become overwhelmed. The early DOD stance during the Katrina disaster illustrated the weakness of this approach. By waiting for requests, and requiring that these requests be procedurally correct and detailed, the DOD slowed their ability to pre-position resources” (E-PARCC Collaborative Governance Initiative, 2008, p. 3).

In order to overcome challenges like this, leaders have to be better prepared and that means they have to have experience, vision, singleness of purpose and a spirit of mission that unifies all stakeholders and informs them of their duties (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). 3 Significant Issues for an IA Leader Information sharing, coordination of effort, and managing personnel directed by various leaders are the three significant issues for an IA leader to address when leading an interagency collaboration response.

Information sharing is not something that has to be done after the disaster strikes. Regardless of whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster, all agencies should be well-informed of what to expect and how to respond ahead of time. It should not require training after the fact: that is only the result of poor leadership. Information has to be shared beforehand based on prior experiences, which is why experienced leaders are so important.

Coordination of effort depends upon leaders of various agencies working together to establish a chain of command, a duty-sphere, and a communication channel. Working together with other leaders to collaborate is something that should.