Military Response to Hurricane Katrina: Coast Guard & DOD

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 experienced. Prior to the hurricane, the ICS had been trained primarily in responding to fires and therefore failed to know what steps to take to address the various needs of the population (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 in place, which meant FEMA was not ready to act (Lewis, 2009; Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006).

It was therefore largely up to the military to provide assistance. Because the military — particularly the U.S. Coast Guard — was animated by a coherent and unified spirit of mission, it was able to rise to the challenge and provide the relief, support, and rescue operations that FEMA and the local agencies were unable to deliver. This paper discusses the role of the military in the disaster response to Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. Coast Guard's Role

The U.S. Coast Guard played one of the most important roles in the response effort. The Brookings Institution (2007) reported 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 Admiral Allen was precisely 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 clear 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 demonstrated that the military's spirit of mission was both essential to disaster response and exactly what the civilian and local agencies were lacking. Trained to provide this type of response, the Coast Guard also illustrated how important it is for a disaster response plan to incorporate able-bodied military servicemen into its design.

Department of Defense Failures

The spirit of mission that animated the Coast Guard was not present in the Department of Defense (DOD), which operated within a silo culture and acted without coordinating closely with FEMA. As one analysis noted, "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 central issue with the DOD was the absence of pre-written authorizations that would have allowed local government to request military assistance in advance, enabling forces to be in place and ready to act in a timely manner (Philips, 2017). Had such authorizations existed, a simple phone call from New Orleans authorities could have mobilized military forces and enabled a full-scale rescue operation. Because this plan was not in place, and because the DOD was neither willing nor ready to communicate and cooperate with FEMA, the only military agency prepared to act and take the initiative on its own was the U.S. Coast Guard under Admiral Allen, who clearly understood the situation, recognized the lack of leadership among the civilian agencies, and knew what needed to be done.

Conclusion

What the military's response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates is that communication is essential, 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 charge when it became apparent that few others were capable of doing so. As a result, the Coast Guard rescued tens of thousands of survivors as the city flooded. The DOD, by contrast, found itself largely ineffective as it failed to communicate with FEMA, which had itself failed to prepare the city of New Orleans and its ICS for such a disaster. The civilian agencies lacked leadership and vision, and the DOD was not communicating effectively.

However, the National Guard, under General Honoré and General Landreneau, was able to develop a consistent and coherent strategy to provide relief and support the Coast Guard in responding to the disaster that swept across New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Taken together, the lessons from these three military actors point clearly to the value of pre-authorized coordination plans, interagency communication, and a unified spirit of mission in any future large-scale disaster response effort.