Hurricane Katrina Military Response

Introduction
The major problem that New Orleans faced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was a lack of preparedness and leadership at both the local and the federal level. New Orleans’ Incident Command System (ICS) was not prepared for the type of flooding the city saw. Prior to the hurricane, the ICS had really only been trained in responding to fires. The ICS failed to know what steps to take to respond to the various needs of the people at the time (Samaan & Verneuil, 2009). The emergency operations center (EOC) was more of a liability than an asset as it had not been trained for such a disaster either. A National Response Plan had not been developed nor was there a National Incident Management System, which meant FEMA was not ready to act (Lewis, 2009; Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006). Thus, it was basically up to the military to provide assistance, and since the military—particularly the U.S. Coast Guard was animated by coherent and unified “spirit of mission,” it was able to rise to the challenge and provide relief, support and rescue operations that FEMA and the local agencies were unable to give. This paper will discuss the role of the military in the disaster response to Katrina.
Coast Guard
The U.S. Coast Guard played one of the most important roles. The Brookings Institution (2007) has stated that “the Coast Guard rescue teams had pulled roughly 33,000 stranded Katrina victims off rooftops and overpasses” and that 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). In other words, the military leadership of Allen is what was required to get the civilian agencies to begin working together and acting coherently. Allen had the training, vision, understanding and experience to pull rank and communicate an effective strategy to the various civilian agencies that had no background, no experience and no real idea of what to do or how to do it.
The Coast Guard brought stability and—most importantly—unified action to the front lines. The thousands rescued by the Coast Guard showed that the military’s spirit of mission was both essential to disaster response and what the civilian and local agencies were lacking. Trained to provide this type of response, the Coast Guard also showed how important it is for a disaster response plan to incorporate able-bodied military servicemen into their plans.
Department of Defense
The spirit of mission that animated the Coast Guard, however, was not to be found in the Department of Defense (DOD), which really had a silo culture and acted without coordinating much with FEMA. The problem with the DOD was that “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). Communication between the DOD and FEMA resulted in delays, failures of initiative and leadership, and subsequent roadblocks in the processing of information. The main issue with the DOD was that there were no pre-written authorizations in place that would have allowed the local government to request assistance from the military ahead of time and have the military in place so that it could act in a timely manner (Philips, 2017). Having such authorizations in place would have ensured that a simple phone call from the New Orleans authorities would have been able to mobilize military forces and allow a full-scale rescue operation to be undertaken. Because this plan was not in place, and because the DOD was not willing or ready to communicate or cooperate with FEMA, the only military agency ready to act and to take the initiative on its own was the U.S. Coast Guard under Admiral Allen, who understood exactly the situation, the lack of leadership among the various civilian agencies, and what needed to be done.
National Guard
The National Guard also played a role in responding to Katrina. The National Guard showed the importance of actually engaging in communication with other military leaders to make sure there was a consistent and cohesive strategy in place. General Honore thus collaborated and communicated with General Landreneau in an effective and (at the time) very important face-to-face meeting that took place outside the Superdome. The purpose of the meeting was for the two generals to come to an understanding about the best way to coordinate efforts and mobilize an effective use of manpower in response to the hurricane. Gen. 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). By meeting face to face, the two generals helped to make sure that there would be an effective National Guard strategy. It was similar in a sense to the type of spirit of mission shown by the U.S. Coast Guard in that the two leaders got together, developed a plan, and got to work, focusing on what they had to work with and what their men could do in the situation presented them. Thus, National Guard worked with active duty forces to give assistance and disaster relief—assistance and relief that was otherwise not being provided by the DOD or by FEMA.
Conclusion
What the response of the military shows is that communication is essentially, pre-planning is even better, and a spirit of mission is a must. The U.S. Coast Guard had the training, expertise, leadership, experience, vision and spirit of mission to leap into action and take leadership when it became apparent that few others were able to do so. As a result the Coast Guard rescued thousands upon thousands when the city began to flood. The DOD on the other hand found itself largely ineffective as it failed to communicate with FEMA, which in turn had failed to ready the city of New Orleans and its ICS for such a disaster. The civilian agencies were wanting in leadership and vision. The DOD was not communicating well. However, the National Guard, under Gen. Honore and Gen. Landreneau was able to develop a consistent and coherent strategy to help provide relief and support the Coast Guard in the effort to respond to the disaster that swept across New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
References
The Brookings Institution. (2007). 9/11, Katrina and the future of interagency disaster response. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/20070529.pdf
E-PARCC Collaborative Governance Initiative. (2008). Collaboration Amid Crisis: The Department of Defense During Hurricane Katrina Teaching Note. Retrieved from https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/parcc/eparcc/cases/Moynihan- Teaching Notes.pdf
Lewis, D. E. (2009). Revisiting the administrative presidency: Policy, patronage, and agency competence. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 39(1), 60-73.
Philipps, D. (2017). Seven hard lessons responders to Harvey learned from Katrina. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/hurricane-harvey-katrina-federal-responders.html
Samaan, J. L., & Verneuil, L. (2009). Civil–Military Relations in Hurricane Katrina: a case study on crisis management in natural disaster response. Humanitarian Assistance: Improving US-European Cooperation, Center for Transatlantic Relations/Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD/Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin, 413-432.
Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. (2006). A failure of initiative. Retrieved from http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/15feb20061230/www.gpoaccess.gov/katrinareport/mainreport.pdf