Many factors hampered rescue efforts, officials say
WASHINGTON -- Rebuked and scorned for their slow response to the crisis in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, federal and National Guard officials insisted yesterday their reaction to the chaos and desperation left by Hurricane Katrina was severely hampered by a worst-case combination of factors: severed communication lines, bureaucratic mixups, widespread confusion, and failure to anticipate the unexpected.
As aid flights, supply convoys, and thousands of National Guard troops fanned out across the battered Gulf Coast four days after the hurricane struck, response teams were still struggling to find out where some desperate residents of New Orleans were waiting for life-saving assistance, according to federal authorities. National Guard units across the country were gathering at bases and transportation hubs, but awaiting orders.
Military officers at the active-duty US Northern Command in Colorado Springs, tasked with supporting civil authorities, contended they were not getting requests for help quickly enough. Officers said the Pentagon told them that, when disaster strikes, they should anticipate what FEMA might need, rather than wait for requests. But on morning network news shows, Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown defended the federal government's response, saying that the relief effort was expanding by the hour.
Brown said the Bush administration has quickly marshaled the military forces, rescue crews, and supplies to ultimately alleviate the suffering and stabilize the chaotic situation. ''We're doing everything we can to get the supplies in to those folks," Brown said on CBS's ''Early Show."
President Bush, however, said yesterday the response so far was ''not acceptable."
Federal officials and homeland defense specialists contended that FEMA and other agencies did not plan for the worst-case scenario -- including the catastrophic collapse of levy systems, submerged evacuation routes, failure of law enforcement and the sheer damage that could be caused by uncontrollable flood waters. Relief workers themselves were hamstrung by communication problems and a level of desperation among the victims that they had never foreseen.
Governor Mitt Romney, who has worked on a special homeland security committee for the National Governors' Association, said conditions in New Orleans were extremely difficult to navigate, but a slow and haphazard response made things worse.
''In this case, it's obviously being undermanaged, and whether that's a local, state, or federal mismanagement or undermanagement, time will tell," Romney told reporters. ''My guess is, there is plenty of blame to go around."
Romney, who oversaw the 2002 Winter Olympics, said that ''any of us who have watched the TV in the last couple of days recognize that this has not been a real showcase for American ingenuity and management. . . . This has been an embarrassment for the emergency management setting as it's been demonstrated to the world."
The challenges, however, have been enormous, federal officials argued. Indeed, merely enabling command centers and relief workers to talk with one another has been a severe challenge.
For example, Brown and others said the delayed response to a mounting crisis at the New Orleans convention center, where storm victims waited for days with insufficient food and water, ''shows how difficult communications are in the situation, where there's virtually no communications except for our teams on the ground."
Specialists said yesterday that there was not the kind of backup network necessary to connect relief workers and troops with many residents who required assistance the most. In other disasters, there are usually some communications systems that remain undamaged. But the massive flooding in New Orleans shorted out the entire network. Instructions for most residents could not be delivered via radio or television because of the widespread devastation.
''There was a communications network that was just overwhelmed," said Timothy Kane, an economist at the Heritage Foundation in Washington who has studied disaster relief. ''There was not deep enough infrastructure support. The critical link is communications, electricity. You have ample troops, but it is a matter of getting the command structure in place and getting them where they need to be."
Another major challenge to rescue efforts was the one thing that is not in short supply along the devastated coast: water.
''The scope of this disaster overwhelmed our preparedness," said Kane. ''It could hit a civilization 100 years more advanced and they couldn't fully prepare for it."
Still, there was mounting evidence of some early miscues in the aftermath of the crisis, officials and specialists asserted.
The delay in getting help to the New Orleans convention center when the misery was broadcast to the world by television news crews was one example of mismanagement raised yesterday. Another was evidence of frustrated military planners waiting for requests from FEMA and other agencies, according to one senior military official who asked not to be named.
Michael O'Hanlon, a homeland security specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, agreed. ''I think it is a problem entirely of the quality of planning. It is not about the availability of forces. It is a question of how ready were we ready for this."
Indeed, federal officials insisted they have plenty of forces on hand to respond to the hurricane. Seven thousand additional National Guard troops were headed today to New Orleans alone.
But Lieutenant General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard, acknowledged that getting troops to where they are needed has been a major obstacle in the aftermath of the disaster.
''I think you're going to see a dramatic change in the next few days," he said.
Bender can reached at bender@globe.com. 
