[Senate Hearing 109-591] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 109-591 HURRICANE KATRINA: PERSPECTIVES OF FEMA'S OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS ======================================================================= HEARING before the COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ DECEMBER 8, 2005 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 26-744 WASHINGTON : 2006 _____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel David T. Flanagan, General Counsel Jonathan T. Nass, Counsel Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel Mary Beth Schultz, Counsel Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Opening statements: Page Senator Collins.............................................. 1 Senator Lieberman............................................ 2 Senator Stevens.............................................. 4 WITNESSES Thursday, December 8, 2005 Scott Wells, Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA Joint Field Office, Baton Rouge, Louisiana................................. 7 Philip E. Parr, Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA Joint Field Office, Austin, Texas.................................... 9 William L. Carwile III, Former Federal Coordinating Officer, FEMA Joint Field Office, Biloxi, Mississippi........................ 13 Alphabetical List of Witnesses Carwile, William L. III: Testimony.................................................... 13 Prepared statement........................................... 61 Parr, Philip E.: Testimony.................................................... 9 Prepared statement........................................... 52 Wells Scott: Testimony.................................................... 7 Prepared statement........................................... 43 Appendix Exhibit 1........................................................ 71 Exhibit 8........................................................ 83 Exhibit 9........................................................ 90 Exhibit F........................................................ 94 Exhibit G........................................................ 99 Exhibit H........................................................ 102 Exhibit I........................................................ 104 HURRICANE KATRINA: PERSPECTIVES OF FEMA'S OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS ---------- THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2005 U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Hon. Susan M. Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Collins, Stevens, and Lieberman. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. Today, the Committee continues its investigation into the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina. This morning, at our eighth hearing, we will hear from three witnesses who are among the Federal Emergency Management Agency's most experienced emergency managers and operations professionals. Each of our witnesses--Scott Wells, Philip Parr, and William Carwile--was directly involved in Katrina preparation and response. They will give us a more complete understanding of FEMA's role, share their observations about the State and local response, and provide their insights and recommendations for reforms. One of our witnesses today has described the national emergency response as a ``bottom-up system,'' with local and State authorities leading the way and Federal authorities coordinating operations and the deployment of resources. In Katrina, this system broke down, and the result was the very deprivation and suffering the structure was designed to avoid. This system must be fixed from the bottom to the very top. One of the most glaring breakdowns was in communications. This powerful storm devastated the land-based communications infrastructure throughout the Gulf region. This, however, was an utterly foreseeable result of howling winds and surging water that apparently was not adequately anticipated, nor compensated for. At our last hearing on November 16, we heard testimony from private sector witnesses who stressed the critical importance of maintaining communications in disaster management. They emphasized that good communications are the life blood of emergency operations, allowing for the effective movement of personnel and other assets as well as real-time assessments. In each of these companies, developing and maintaining robust systems, importing extra communications gear, and re- establishing contact with the outside world were of the utmost priority and a key component of their preparedness plans. Their outstanding performance, unfortunately, stands in stark contrast to the inability of government at all levels to plan and execute backup communications systems. FEMA has mobile communications vehicles. But by the time anyone thought to bring one to the Superdome, the building was already surrounded by water, and FEMA was apparently unable to figure out a way to get its equipment into the building. FEMA also has communications equipment that could be airlifted in. But despite Mr. Parr's urgent request for such equipment, none arrived. In his interview with the staff, Mr. Parr estimated that the lack of communications equipment reduced his team's effectiveness by an astounding 90 percent. Much of the post-Katrina criticism has been justifiably focused on FEMA. But today's witnesses will explain that Katrina also exposed serious flaws at the local and State level that contributed to the suffering experienced by so many in the Gulf region. For example, according to the staff interview of Mr. Wells, Louisiana's emergency operations officials failed to follow-- perhaps even to comprehend--the National Response Plan, which is an integrated system designed to coordinate the Federal, State, and local responses to a disaster. Indeed, Mr. Wells noted that Louisiana's emergency managers were getting training on the critical Incident Command System 2 days after the storm hit. Today's witnesses will also help us determine how FEMA, State, and local officials can do better. They are all current or former Federal Coordinating Officers (FCOs) and possess a wealth of emergency management experience. The FCOs play a critical role in FEMA. In June of 2004, the FCO cadre urged Under Secretary Michael Brown to undertake reforms to remove obstacles to command, control, and core mission accomplishment and to reconfigure and enhance the national emergency response teams. The memorandum strongly advised that these reforms be implemented to help prepare for ``the next big one.'' But we will hear today that disturbingly little was done in response to these recommendations, far too little to prepare for the big one when, indeed, it hit 14 months later. I very much appreciate the testimony of our witnesses today so that we can be better prepared for the catastrophic events yet to come. Senator Lieberman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman, for calling this hearing and for your continued leadership of our investigation. We have already held several important and informative hearings about Hurricane Katrina on subjects that range from the fate of the levees to the actions of the private sector in the wake of the storm, to the testimony of FEMA employee Marty Bahamonde during those dangerous days when he tried to get help to the thousands stranded in the Superdome. This morning's witnesses, FEMA's operations professionals who were on the scene in the Gulf Coast, will, I am confident, move the Committee's investigation forward toward finding out what went wrong before and after Hurricane Katrina so that we can achieve the purpose that Congress and all of us have in mind, which is to make sure that it never happens again. I want to thank our witnesses for the testimony they are about to give. I want to thank them for their distinguished careers of public service that each of them has. And those careers should not, in any sense, be diminished by the criticism that FEMA is receiving and may well receive today. I will say that, having reviewed your testimony prepared for this morning and the interviews that you had with our Committee staff and having now gone over other testimony and documents gathered by the Committee so far, it certainly seems to me that FEMA is a troubled agency that failed at its prime mission, the mission it draws its name from, which is emergency management. The fact is that the whole world watched on television as Hurricane Katrina, a disaster waiting to happen, developed in the Gulf of Mexico. The whole world listened to the experts who said that this was the long-dreaded ``big one'' that could take out the levees and flood the Big Easy. Yet FEMA seemed to underestimate the gravity of the storm coming and/or failed to realize that doing business as usual was unacceptable and would compound the disaster. Katrina obviously was not a typical hurricane in response to which FEMA or anyone else--Federal, State, or local--could work off of a typical playbook. Katrina required a more urgent, comprehensive, and aggressive governmental response. Katrina was a catastrophe. It knocked out many of the State and local communications, as Senator Collins has said, and response capabilities and overwhelmed those that remained. But FEMA seemed to expect a severely damaged State and local response network, itself the victim of the catastrophe, to operate as if it was at full and normal capacity. Like Senator Collins, I have been very surprised and upset to learn in the course of our Committee's investigation that America's battle plan for catastrophes, the National Response Plan's Catastrophic Incident Annex, was never activated in response to Katrina. And FEMA apparently still believes that it should not have been activated. As we will hear today, FEMA deployed too few people to respond to Katrina and deployed them too slowly. Many of those that did deploy apparently failed to appreciate what the breaking of the levees around New Orleans meant, and that failure had disastrous consequences, as we all know, for the people of New Orleans. As we learned at our previous hearings, New Orleans industrial canal levees were leveled by the storm surge early Monday morning, August 29. That led to almost immediate flooding in the eastern part of the city, including the lower 9th Ward. By mid day, the Lake Pontchartrain levees were also breaking, and that led to a much slower flooding of downtown New Orleans, what we so often heard referred to as New Orleans ``filling up like a bowl.'' Mr. Bahamonde, previously referred to as FEMA's first man on the ground in New Orleans, told us that he communicated these facts by mid day Monday to FEMA and had a conference call with FEMA officials at the emergency operations center, among others, that night. We now know that other sources were providing the same information throughout the day to the Baton Rouge emergency operations center, where FEMA's top regional operators were stationed. Yet, as we will hear today, the FEMA emergency response team did not depart Baton Rouge for New Orleans until noon on Tuesday, significant hours later, almost a full day after the hurricane had hit and already passed. By that time, Lake Pontchartrain had been dumping its waters into downtown New Orleans for hours, making it impossible for the FEMA team to bring its vital communications tractor-trailer, so-called ``Red October,'' into the city. This left the team without any reliable means of communications and reduced its effectiveness in New Orleans, as Senator Collins said, by some 90 percent. That is according to Mr. Parr's testimony that we will hear this morning. But that wasn't the only costly delay. Unfortunately, we have learned from other witnesses that the Coast Guard was performing rescue missions as soon as hurricane-force winds abated on Monday afternoon. The State itself sent out rescue boats later Monday afternoon. But FEMA's search and rescue teams didn't arrive in New Orleans until Tuesday morning, and we want to ask why. Given the catastrophic nature of Katrina's damage, we must understand why FEMA wasn't prepared to move sooner. And of course, the most vexing part of it all is not just that this was all foreseeable, but that, in fact, it had been foreseen. This precise disaster scenario was used in the Hurricane Pam planning exercise conducted in June 2004. It also had been the topic of numerous stories in the media and hurricane conferences over the years. This was not a failure of imagination, as some might want to label it. It was a failure of realization. Realization that the catastrophe, about which we had all long been warned, was about to occur and that FEMA and everybody else, State and local, had to move quickly to address it. Yes, a disaster like Hurricane Katrina is an act of God. Yes, there will be confusion in such extraordinary natural disasters. Yes, mistakes will be made by people who are well intentioned. But adequately preparing for and responding to a disaster of this magnitude required a well-led, well-trained, well-drilled, and well-manned FEMA that had a plan in place and a sense of mission to guide its actions. Regrettably, it appears to me, at this point in our investigation, that all of these things were lacking as disaster swept across the Gulf Coast region last August. This morning, we want to ask why. And I am confident that these three witnesses can help us answer that question. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Stevens. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS Senator Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator Lieberman. I regret to disagree with the Senator from Connecticut. Our Committee took a trip to New Orleans. As a result of that trip, we became convinced that what happened in New Orleans was that Katrina went through New Orleans. We saw the buses in line that were ready to deal with the evacuation. The people of New Orleans were prepared for Hurricane Katrina. They were not prepared for the failure of the man-made systems of levees and gates and the enormous impact of that canal from New Orleans to the sea, which should never have been there. It is like saying that in terms of our earthquake, which we had in the Anchorage area, that someone was at fault because they didn't notify Kodiak and Seward that a tsunami might hit them--which did happen. What happened here is in the aftermath of Katrina going through, because of the subsequent series of events that caused the failure of the levees, the failure of the system, it was impossible to execute the plan. Now the plan for New Orleans was caused by a provision in the 1998 appropriations bill, which the last administration failed to make. But finally, in 1999, we mandated that plan. It was prepared. It was actually exercised after the start of 2001. It was there, and I think the people of New Orleans started to follow that plan, and they started to move their people to the dome and to the various places which should have been safe. But with the failure of the man-made systems and the failure of having the ability to shut off the surge that came across Lake Pontchartrain, this became a man-made disaster. And I do not agree that we can fault FEMA or the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana for failing to anticipate the complete failure of the systems that were prepared in the past. As a matter of fact, I think you can go back to President Johnson's time and find that he tried to build even better systems at the time, and the funding was turned down. But as a practical matter, this damage, as sad as it is--it is a sad thing--it is not a failure of the warning system. The warning was there. It was a failure of systems that were put in over the last 30 years to prevent the surges that happened in a way and the combination of them was by the time that surge came in from the ocean, it came up that canal, it was like a tsunami coming up that canal. Had the canal not been there, those levees might not have failed. So this is not some time to critique the failure of the people involved to predict that the basic systems for protection that had been designed over a period of years would simultaneously all collapse. And that is what happened. Every single one of them collapsed. Now those were man-made. This isn't an act of God. This is a failure of our basic engineering systems, our basic concepts of protection, and we have to do better in the future. I am not going to join in criticizing those who tried to do the best in the most extraordinary circumstance I have ever seen. Now this Senator has seen war. I have seen cities in China totally destroyed. I never saw destruction like I saw in New Orleans. No person on Earth could have predicted that. It had to be a combination of circumstances caused by Katrina going through, and then the surge and all the collapse that came afterward. So I hope we look at FEMA and the rest of these people and ask them what can we do to prevent this in the future? Let us quit looking backwards and trying to assess blame. Let us find out what can we do to assure that this won't happen not only in New Orleans, but anywhere else where we are relying on levees and man-made protections to prevent disasters. Thank you very much. Chairman Collins. I would now like to welcome our panel of witnesses before us today. Our first witness, Scott Wells, joined FEMA as a Federal Coordinating Officer in 1999. Since that time, he has been deployed by FEMA to more than 20 disasters. For Hurricane Katrina, he was the second in command, serving as the deputy FCO. Mr. Wells arrived at the emergency operations center in Baton Rouge on Saturday, August 27. Mr. Wells previously served as an Army officer for more than 20 years, and he was the DOD liaison to FEMA before retiring from the Army in 1999. Next we will hear from Philip Parr. For more than 20 years, Mr. Parr served as a firefighter for New York City, ultimately rising to the rank of battalion chief. In January 2004, Mr. Parr left the New York City Fire Department and joined FEMA as a Federal Coordinating Officer. During Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Parr led the emergency response advance team and was deployed to New Orleans. Mr. Parr and members of his team arrived in the Superdome on the morning of Tuesday, August 30. He later led FEMA teams into the hardest-hit parishes of southern Louisiana. William Carwile joined FEMA in 1996 as director of Region 10, headquartered in the Pacific, and was a Federal Coordinating Officer for five tropical storms in the Pacific. His emergency management experiences on the mainland include New York City following September 11, the 2003 California wildfires, and four hurricanes that struck Florida last year. During Hurricane Katrina, he served as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Mississippi. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel with a 30-year military career. I want to thank each of you for your testimony today and for your public service. Because this is part of an ongoing investigation, I would ask that you each stand so that I can swear you in. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God? The Witnesses. I do. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Wells, if you would go first and proceed with your statement? TESTIMONY OF SCOTT WELLS,\1\ FEDERAL COORDINATING OFFICER, FEMA JOINT FIELD OFFICE, BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA Mr. Wells. Good morning, Chairman Collins and Members of the Committee. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wells appears in the Appendix on page 43. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- My name is Scott Wells, and I am honored to appear before you today. My current position with FEMA is Federal Coordinating Officer in Louisiana for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I would like to start this morning by thanking you for the invitation to testify before this Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspectives on FEMA operations before, during, and after our Nation's costliest disaster, Hurricane Katrina. It is my intention today to speak candidly with you about my experiences in Louisiana, both leading up to and following Katrina, as well as my perspectives on emergency management. I will begin my testimony today with a brief overview of my professional career in emergency management. For almost 2 decades, I served in various positions of emergency management. Beginning in 1985, for 2 years as a first responder MEDEVAC pilot. During my 24-year military career, I also spent 10 years in the Pentagon providing military support to civilian authorities. My last military assignment in the Pentagon was as a military liaison officer to FEMA. In these assignments, I was involved in numerous disasters and emergencies such as Hurricane Andrew, the Northridge earthquake, the Midwest floods of 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Haitian/Cuban immigration emergency, the Waco siege, and the Ruby Ridge incident. I retired in 1999 from the Army and have been working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an FCO for the past 6 years and served on several disasters and emergencies to include Tropical Storm Allison in Texas and the Columbia Shuttle recovery operation. On August 27, I was assigned to Louisiana as the Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer to Bill Lokey for Hurricane Katrina. I served in that capacity until September 19. At that time, I was reassigned to Texas as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Hurricane Rita, as she made her way through the Gulf of Mexico. As the FCO for Rita, I remained in Texas until the first week of October, at which time I returned to Louisiana to replace Bill Lokey for Hurricane Katrina. Detailed preparation for a Katrina landfall in Louisiana started in earnest on Friday, August 26, when the National Weather Service quickly changed the projected zone for landfall to include Louisiana. Much work had been done earlier in the week, but the focus of those efforts--given the projected path of the storm--was on Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Field deployments to Louisiana began on Saturday, August 27, with the emergency response team's advance elements deploying to the Louisiana emergency operations center here in Baton Rouge. The Federal regional and national staffs consolidated that night and started conducting field operations in preparation for landfall. In addition to the command and control element being set up in Baton Rouge, we concurrently were setting up an operational staging area in Alexandria, Louisiana, that served as a Federal logistics base for Katrina operations. The first actual employment of Federal resources--that is, where we provided--FEMA provided response assets to the State-- occurred on Sunday, the day before landfall, when we shipped six truckloads of water and three truckloads of MREs to the Superdome. Two of the truckloads, one each of water and MRE, did not complete delivery. They were denied entry by the Louisiana State Police before reaching the Superdome. That was the beginning of response operations and was soon followed by many other response resources, such as medical teams, search and rescue teams, and other critical commodities, such as water, food, and ice. There has been much said about the slow Federal response to Katrina. From my perspective, with all due respect to Senator Lieberman, I want to say nothing could be further from the truth. We had a fully operational logistics base, a fully operational command cell, and response teams in place, all before landfall. We even moved some supplies in before landfall and attempted to move in a medical team. On the day of landfall, we moved search and rescue teams, medical teams, and critical supplies into the affected area. It may not have been enough for an event of this magnitude, but it was fast. I think the real issue is that the response was not robust. It was not enough for the catastrophe at hand. And as you look--as we all look--to make it better next time, I think it is an important distinction to make. ``Slow'' means one thing. ``Not enough'' means something else. More importantly, the corrective actions between fixing ``slow'' and ``not enough'' could be significant. Emergency management is unlike any other system in the government. It is a bottoms-up approach. The people on the ground are in charge. The first responders are supported, as required, by local government, then State government, and as a last resort, the Federal Government. Ultimately, authority for disaster response operations rests at the local level. The State and Federal Governments are not in charge, but are responsible for assisting local governments. And that is how it should be, as all disasters are local. Disasters start at the local level, and disasters end at the local level. This system works for small to medium disasters. It does not work so well for large disasters, and it falls apart for a catastrophic disaster. I think that is a fundamental problem with the response to Katrina. Following are some of the other major problems and proposed changes I believe could improve our national readiness posture to respond to future disasters. And I will list them, but in the interest of time, I won't go through all of my statement, but you will have it. (1) We need to strengthen the emergency management capability at the State and local level. (2) We need to review the emergency management architecture for response and recovery operations. There are problems associated with the implementation of the Stafford Act as it is executed through the National Response Plan and the Incident Command System. (3) We need a trained, staffed, and equipped Federal response team. (4) We need to change the financial management of disasters. (5) We need to simplify the public assistance process. (6) We need to simplify individual assistance process. (7) We need a greater investment in the leadership and management within FEMA. Emergency management is not a simple system. Accordingly, there are no simple solutions. To have an effective national disaster response structure, we must have a viable local, State, and Federal capability. If any of these links in the emergency management chain breaks, the system itself begins to break down. If we cannot have viability at all three levels, then we should change the system. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a field perspective of Hurricane Katrina. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Wells. Mr. Parr. TESTIMONY OF PHILIP E. PARR,\1\ DEPUTY FEDERAL COORDINATING OFFICER, FEMA JOINT FIELD OFFICE, AUSTIN, TEXAS Mr. Parr. First, I want to say good morning to this august Committee. Good morning, Chairman Collins. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Parr appears in the Appendix on page 52. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- My name is Phil Parr, and I want to thank you for the opportunity of testifying before you about my experiences and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The views expressed in my testimony are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Homeland Security. Presently, my position with FEMA is that of Federal Coordinating Officer. I have been involved with response and emergency management for the past 26 years. I was sworn in as a member of the New York City Fire Department in 1979 and rose through the ranks to attain the level of chief officer in 1999. During my tenure with the FDNY, and particularly during my tenure as a chief officer, I served in many capacities, including, but not limited to, fire and emergency ground commander, operations, planning for Y2K scenarios, and as a deputy director in the New York City Office of Emergency Management. I have played an active role in countless disasters and crisis situations to include the September 11 attack at the World Trade Center, where I was on scene prior to the towers collapse. Since January 2004, I have been a member of the Federal Coordinating Officer program, assigned to FEMA Region 1, New England. In this role, I have served in various capacities, including FCO for three presidentially declared disasters. Before I continue with my testimony, I think it is important to mention that I have always taken great pride in my years of service as a member of the New York City Fire Department. At one time, I would not imagine serving in any other position in which I would serve with the same feeling and pride. However, during my tenure with FEMA, the dedication to service as displayed by its members and their care for disaster victims has allowed me to serve with the same pride and satisfaction that I experienced during my previous 25 years of public service. So it is with that passion that I speak before this Committee, and I thank you again for the opportunity to do so. On Saturday, August 27, I was informed that I would be the emergency response team advance element team leader for the State of Texas. My team was composed of personnel from FEMA Region 1, New England, and we were instructed to rendezvous in the Region 6 Regional Response Coordination Center in Denton, Texas, on Sunday, August 28. Soon it became clear that Texas was not in the path of Hurricane Katrina and that members of my team and I would be assigned as the lead element in New Orleans, Louisiana. I flew to Louisiana immediately following the hurricane passing, Monday, August 29, with a contingent of my team. And Tuesday morning, August 30, we helicoptered into the Superdome. Our mission was threefold. One, form a unified command with the State, as represented by the Louisiana National Guard, and the City of New Orleans. Two, maintain visibility of commodities ordered. And three, build out a base from which FEMA teams could be formed to locate and assist in the hardest-hit parishes. To accomplish these goals, we were to meet a mobile emergency operations and communications vehicle and use that as a base of operations and communication. Due to extensive flooding in the city, our communications vehicle was unable to enter the Superdome, and this severely hampered our operations. Despite this, and while working under the most difficult of circumstances, we were able to assist the National Guard in maintaining a supply of food and water to Superdome evacuees-- all were fed and provided water--and, even with limited communications, facilitate the arrival of what was to become over the next 4 days a thousand-bus convoy to evacuate the City of New Orleans to start the day after our arrival. The FEMA disaster medical assistance team treated hundreds and identified seriously injured and special needs patients who were evacuated via air and ground assets throughout the operation. In addition, several meetings were held with the mayor and his staff, ranking National Guard officers on the scene, and other Federal officials to include DOD and the Coast Guard. This facilitated the initiation of a unified command structure. Due to the enormity of the event, not all of our initial goals were met. A delay ensued in placing teams into other hard-hit parishes, which I believe took place that Friday and Saturday. I have been asked whether FEMA was overwhelmed, or could our response be considered slow? To consider the latter first, I must say, in my opinion, no. FEMA teams--response, management, medical, and urban search and rescue--were in position in four States pre-landfall. Commodities were staged close to the impacted areas, and in some cases, the hand-off to the State had already taken place. In addition, and as previously mentioned, FEMA mission assigned Emergency Support Function 1, the Department of Transportation, and they verified that, by September 3, 990 buses were in service performing evacuations. It is estimated that over 66,000 persons were transported by that date. The number of buses grew to over 1,100 in the next 2 days. Were we overwhelmed? The simple answer is yes. But what needs to be understood is that, at any disaster, the initial response always feels overwhelmed. I must draw on my experience as a local responder to give you an example on a small scale of what I mean, and then a larger one. The police officer who pulls up to a 2-car accident with severe injuries while he operates alone, waiting for help, is overwhelmed. The fire officer who pulls up to a burning structure with people trapped inside is overwhelmed. But the true professional, while responding and operating, knows that he is constantly sizing up the situation, gaining intelligence, shifting strategies, modifying plans, and calling for assistance where needed to meet unfulfilled needs, whether expected or unexpected. I would like to refer back to the disaster of September 11 and its effect on the emergency personnel operating at the World Trade Center. First, it must be remembered that within the 369 square miles of New York City are the resources of a State with a strong central government. There are over 35,000 New York City police officers, about 13,000 firefighters and emergency medical personnel. These numbers only begin to enumerate the assets available to the city. No other city in the country can begin to come close to the responders that are contained within New York City. The response to the attacks on the towers was immediate. The enormity of the task at hand was overwhelming. Then with the collapse of the towers, it was chaos. Emergency services within New York regrouped almost immediately and restarted operations, but a full, coordinated plan took days. The World Trade Center complex was 13 acres. The landfall of Hurricane Katrina affected four States and covered an area of 90,000 square miles, an area the size of Great Britain. It affected millions. Effectively, Louisiana was hit by two disasters. First, a devastating hurricane along with its associated blast damage and, second, a catastrophic flooding event caused by levee failures. Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating disaster to hit our country. We were all overwhelmed--the city, the State, the affected parishes, and the Federal Government. What can FEMA, individuals, local governments, and States do to be more prepared? First, it must be realized that the response to any crisis or disaster is the responsibility of every individual and form of government in this country. Emergency management is more than just coordination. It is about partnership with all entities previously mentioned. Each of us plays a vital part, and any one of us who fails in our part fails in that partnership. That failed responsibility must be picked up by one of their partners, and that causes delay, confusion, and lack of coordination. For FEMA's part, it is my belief we have not done what is needed to get that message across to individuals, locals, and States. We have worked to create an image that Uncle Sam will be on your doorstep with MREs, food, water, and ice before the hurricane-force winds subside. We have created an expectation that in a large or no-notice event, such as a terrorist attack or an earthquake, we can never hope to meet. As an agency, we must help our partners understand their role in the emergency management cycle, as many States and locals do now. To this end, I believe we can do much with conditional and competitive grants to State and local governments to achieve this. Generally because response is immediate and local, FEMA's primary role in disaster is recovery. With some notable exceptions, what is described at the Federal level as response in actuality is ``response support''--that is, supplying life- saving commodities--with local and State responders performing what we traditionally call response. But as an agency, we can do better in the response role. Primarily, I believe this can be accomplished by a shift in attitude and training by some in management and decisionmaking roles in our agency. In another area of improvement, FEMA has initiated a total asset visibility system whereby truckloads of commodities can be located via satellite transponder and tracked more closely. This system must be fully put online before our next hurricane season. We should recognize that FEMA is a small agency, especially when compared with other Federal agencies. But its strength lies in the fact that the National Response Plan identifies it as the coordinating agency for the entire Federal response. I believe more drills, familiarization and otherwise, are necessary between FEMA and other Federal agencies to help clarify roles and responsibilities under the NRP and in their critical emergency support functions. Understanding their contribution and role in the emergency response team structure is essential for effective response. These crucial elements must be established and become routine to help ensure that a better-coordinated Federal package can be delivered to States to assist them in their response. Additional standardized and practical training must be provided to personnel who may be asked to serve on response teams at the county or local level. Training programs and expectations that build on practical experience from this and previous operations, with input from States, must be provided to FEMA staff, who may be needed to assist at the local level in response operations. As with any operation, I hope that, as an agency, we can make these changes based on lessons learned. I would also hope that State and local officials will review their emergency management procedures and also adopt necessary changes. Finally, each citizen has a responsibility to plan, heed warnings, and do whatever is within their means to prepare and respond to disaster. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this subject. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Carwile. TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM L. CARWILE III,\1\ FORMER FEDERAL COORDINATING OFFICER, FEMA JOINT FIELD OFFICE, BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI Mr. Carwile. Good morning, Chairman Collins and distinguished Members of the Committee. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Carwile appears in the Appendix on page 61. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am Bill Carwile. Thank you for inviting me today to testify about operations in Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina. Between August 29 and October 15, I was initially the Federal Coordinating Officer and later the Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer. I recently retired from FEMA and am currently affiliated with the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. I am testifying today as a private citizen. There are many lessons to be learned from the responses to Hurricane Katrina. I applaud your efforts to gather information critical to charting a future for disaster operations in our country. I hope my testimony will, in some way, make a contribution to that undertaking. My perspective is from one who has been in the field, on the ground in large-scale disasters during much of the last 9 years. My recent experiences include serving as operations section chief for the World Trade Center operations in New York, serving as Federal Coordinating Officer for the 2003 wildfires in California, and FCO for each of the four hurricanes last year in Florida. I joined FEMA in 1996 as the director of the Pacific area office in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I reside today. In 1999, I became one of the first members of the Federal Coordinating Officer program created to provide a pool of trained professionals to manage the Federal side of disasters. In 2003, I was appointed as one of the first predesignated principal Federal officials by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Prior to my service with FEMA, I retired as an Army colonel, having served almost 3 decades as a special forces and infantry officer in the regular Army. My assignments included two tours in Vietnam. I would like to address three major points in my oral testimony. First, there were three separate presidential disaster declarations as Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast--Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These were three different disasters in the type and extent of destruction, the number of people affected, and each State's constitutional relationships with its local jurisdictions. While each disaster was different, they were similar in that in each disaster the governor of the State was in charge. As FCO, I was appointed by the President as his representative to support the governor using the authorities provided for in the Stafford Act. While there were three distinct disasters, today my comments will cover only operations in Mississippi, where I was. Second, in my view, this was the first time we fully implemented appropriate portions of the National Incident Management System, the National Response Plan, and the Incident Command System in a major disaster response. During the summer of 2005, following the distribution of the National Response Plan, many Federal and State emergency managers underwent training on the plan and ICS. Fortunately, I and key members of our emergency response team in Mississippi, which is mostly comprised of personnel with whom I have worked for years, had participated in extensive ICS training. Similarly, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director Robert Latham and his staff and most county emergency managers had recently undergone NIMS and ICS training. One of the key members of my team, operations section chief Bob Fenton, has long been involved in the doctrine on training development, is an expert on how to adapt ICS for large-scale operations. Using this training and our experience in prior disasters, Robert Latham and I and our teams established a unified command to a degree beyond which I believe is envisioned by the National Response Plan and began the joint incident action planning process, which set our priorities for each of the operational periods, which is a 24-hour period at first, following the ICS concepts. Governor Barbour attended and participated in many of our meetings and provided leadership and important strategic guidance. During the response, we found that some aspects of the National Response Plan did not fit our organizational needs for a joint State/Federal response to a catastrophic disaster. We found it necessary to modify some important aspects of the plan. These changes are detailed in my written testimony. While it is my belief that ICS works well for fires and smaller disasters, some substantial modifications are required for large-scale events. Mostly, these modifications revolve around the need for unified command up and down the organization and in order to address political and operational realities. I would recommend that an effort be made to capture the experiences of the individual geographic and branch directors and division supervisors. They were down in the communities and provided us a manageable span of control. This might be accomplished through interviews, similar to the Army's oral history program, to find out what really worked down there, where the rubber meets the road. This effort will provide a more detailed view of what changes to the NRP should be made to accommodate the realities of joint State/Federal response to a catastrophic disaster. Third, there have been questions raised about the competence of FEMA personnel in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In my career in FEMA, I worked with many dedicated and highly competent individuals who were committed to serving both our country and the victims of disasters. Many routinely give up holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, and normal family lives to help others. I am proud to have been part of FEMA and especially proud of the many individuals whose heroic efforts helped the people of Mississippi and other States in which I have served. They deserve our thanks. A disaster can bring out the best in people. There are thousands of stories of individual acts of heroism and kindnesses during Katrina. Mississippians helped their neighbors. Hundreds of local officials, who had just lost everything, reported for duty. And all around the country, volunteers left their lives behind and headed for the Gulf Coast to help. We should not forget, however, that in a catastrophic disaster, the government and those wonderful voluntary agencies can never provide adequate aid in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. We all need to better prepare ourselves and our families and be ready to help our neighbors. In my written testimony, I provide comments about what I think went well and what didn't go well in the response and initial recovery for Katrina in Mississippi. Two main points. The State/Federal unified command worked well in Mississippi. But this success was obscured by the fact that requested resources did not arrive quickly enough. Better, more effective methods must be adopted to quickly deliver resources in a catastrophic event. In Mississippi, while temporary housing has been provided in numbers far exceeding any previous effort, this success is obscured by the overwhelming need and an exceptionally long period of time that people remain in shelters. New methodologies must be examined and implemented to take care of Americans in need of humane housing while in a catastrophic event. These are but two of the many challenges the Nation faces if it is to really prepare for the next catastrophic disaster. We must do all we can to capture the lessons learned, both good and bad, from Katrina in Mississippi in order to make real changes so that the next time, elected and appointed officials will be able to better support the needs of victims. I thank the Committee for undertaking this important work for the Nation. I will be glad to try to answer any questions you may have. Chairman Collins. Thank you for your testimony. I want to start my questioning today to get your judgment, your assessment of preparedness and response at the State and local level. As Mr. Wells pointed out in his testimony, our Nation's emergency management structure is often referred to as a bottom-up structure. It has key roles for local, State, and Federal Governments to play. I thought that Mr. Wells made an important point when he said that there is some misconception on the part of the public about who plays what role in our emergency response system. So starting with you, Mr. Wells, if FEMA and the Federal Government are at the top of the structure, how did the bottom part work, in your judgment, for Hurricane Katrina? How would you assess the State and local response in Louisiana? Mr. Wells. Well, a lot of it is situational. Each parish in Louisiana has different capability. The important thing in emergency management is you have to have a foundation established for the Federal departments to build on. When we go into a disaster, the locals are in charge. The locals ask for assistance from the State, who, in turn, asks for assistance from FEMA. If there is no structure, if there is no organization, if there is no capability at the local or the State level, there is no foundation from which we can build. I will give you one example to compare between Katrina in Louisiana and Rita in Texas to try to demonstrate what I mean by that. In Texas, for Rita, I was there for the preparation phase, and we are just going to talk about prior to landfall because it is equivalent to Katrina in that no disaster struck. It wasn't catastrophic in Texas for Rita. So, post landfall, it was different. So let us just talk about pre-landfall. In the State of Texas, they had plans. They had plans at the local level. They had plans at the State level that leveraged the Federal capability. One example, evacuation. In Texas, we were asked--the Federal Government--to provide evacuation support prior to landfall. The State of Texas had a plan to build on, and so we worked with the State of Texas and the areas of Beaumont to Houston to evacuate special needs patients, elderly, and the disabled. One person had an iron lung. This is a very difficult mission. Just getting one patient onboard an airplane is very difficult, and they did somewhere between 11,000 and 13,000. And we were able to have an effective national response structure--national is local, State, and Federal--because the Federal Government had something to build on. We did not have that in Louisiana. Chairman Collins. Senator Stevens informs me that he has to leave, and he has one question that he would like to ask before he does so. Senator Stevens. Thank you very much. I am going to the reconciliation meeting. One of the problems we are having is that there seems to be a congressional feeling about the extent of our responsibility to the people in New Orleans, who really suffered damage from what I call really man-made disasters. I wonder if the two of you would join me in sending a letter from this Committee asking the Department of Justice if there is a different standard of liability for the Federal Government to those areas that were not harmed by Katrina, but were harmed by the failure of the levee and other systems that were man-made? Chairman Collins. Well, as the distinguished Senator may be aware, we have had one hearing looking at why the levees have failed. We have a second hearing scheduled for next week, which is going to look at all the roles of the various players--the local levee district, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the State of Louisiana, and the Commonwealth of Louisiana's Transportation Department. There is a lot of confusion, our investigation has found, over who was responsible for the maintenance and the inspection of the levees. I would like to wait until we complete that hearing before proceeding. But I hope you will be able to attend that hearing. I think it is going to be a very interesting one, based on what our extensive investigation has found. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Yes, thanks, Madam Chairman. Senator Stevens, obviously, I would be glad to look at any letter you put together. But I agree with the Chairman, it is probably best for us to wait until after the hearing next week. I will just say very briefly, because I know you have to go, where I think we agree is that the immediate cause of most of the damage in New Orleans was the failure of the levees. And there is some reason to believe--I can't conclude at this point--from what we have heard that there was a failure of construction, design, and other issues. Where I think we disagree is that, unfortunately, I believe that was foreseeable. In other words, the levees may have failed more quickly and in some different ways than people expected. But we have a lot of history that we put together here that shows that the experts were all saying if a category 3 or higher hurricane hit New Orleans, those levees would not hold. Maybe more of them broke than we thought. Maybe they broke sooner. But there is a lot of communication indicating they might fail. In fact, the Hurricane Pam exercise that was carried out in June 2004 was based on the levees failing and what would we do as a result. And that is where, I think, we have a reason to ask FEMA why it wasn't ready to deal with it. Senator Stevens. Well, I think my question goes to who is going to be responsible? There is a lot of damage out there now that was not covered by insurance, either flood or otherwise. Senator Lieberman. Right. Senator Stevens. And attempts to try and use Federal funds to meet some of that damage is being met with resistance. I think the duty of this Committee is to demonstrate that there is an extra added level of responsibility in the areas where those levees failed. And it is true that there were predictions. When we did our thing in appropriations in 1998 and 1999, we had the feeling that there were severe problems. We had people that told us there were problems there. Senator Lieberman. Right. Senator Stevens. But notwithstanding that, we got a plan. But no one really fixed the levees, and no one fixed the gates, and people have suffered enormous loss. Now we have to have a greater feeling in Congress about our responsibility to those people who are in that one area where it was not just Katrina, a natural disaster, but damage from man-made disaster. I think there has been a failure in Congress to recognize that difference. But I appreciate and I hope I can attend the hearing. Thank you very much. Chairman Collins. Thank you. I am going to resume my questioning with Mr. Wells to try to get us back on track a little bit. It was helpful to hear your different experience dealing with Louisiana versus Texas. In general, were the Louisiana officials that you dealt with familiar with their responsibilities under the National Response Plan? And did they understand how the Incident Command System worked, in your view? Mr. Wells. No. Short answer. The Incident Command System is very important. You cannot do anything without command and control. If I may take a minute to read something from an emergency services person who is on a workgroup for the search and rescue mission, which was a combined effort of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the state police for Louisiana, DOTD, and FEMA, to show you what it is like when you don't have an effective Incident Command System? And I am just going to read this verbatim. It is unvarnished. ``Establishing a State/Federal search and rescue workgroup on August 28 was a great concept. However, there were some shortfalls. The workgroup was a joint effort in name only. We had a great initial meeting and established solid operational concepts, but had no decision-makers present with the authority to obligate their agency's resources. ``The State appointed a workgroup leader who was to oversee the State assets. However, this workgroup leader flew to Jackson barracks the afternoon after the initial meeting and was not heard from for 9 days. For 3 weeks, I sponsored''--this was the FEMA person--``the workgroup's twice-a-day meetings that were attended by FEMA, who had resources and authority to direct search efforts. ``The U.S. Coast Guard, who had junior officer representation but no authority to direct search and rescue air operation, all operations were directed by senior Coast Guard officers from another location. These officers refused to meet and conduct joint search and rescue operations with FEMA and State agencies. ``State wildlife and fisheries had representation but no authority to make management decisions on search and rescue operations. That authority remained with senior officers who conducted solo operations. ``State police, who had an interest in following up on 911 calls, but had no State search and rescue authorities or resources to assist. ``Civil air patrol attended and had air resources to support search and rescue, but had no State taskings to engage their resources. ``The DOTD, the State Department of Transportation, had resources to support joint search and rescue missions, but refused to attend any of the meetings or plan joint efforts.'' This is a failure of the Incident Command System. It is all about having people that can make decisions on the spot and get on down the road. This is just but one example of why things were slow and why things didn't work out as fast, as efficient, or as effective as they should. If people don't understand ICS, we can't do ICS. And if we can't do ICS, we cannot manage disasters. Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, what is your assessment of how the Incident Command System worked in Louisiana? Mr. Parr. I want to echo Mr. Wells's sentiments. It is extremely important, in my experience, at a local level, as something that is near and dear to my heart. I think, and as I said before--and this is not necessarily to point fingers, but hopefully, for us to critique ourselves and learn how we can do better next time--I cannot begin to explain the dedication that the police officers and firefighters in the City of New Orleans, how they acted, how they responded. The same thing with the National Guard. I was working with people every second of every day who literally lost everything. But they were there doing their jobs, working as hard as they could. I think one place where we need vast improvement is in their preparation. It is the responsibility of local authorities to evacuate their people. It is the responsibility of local authorities to set up shelters that are properly protected from flood waters, that are properly protected from hurricanes because not all are going to be able to be evacuated. It would be unreasonable for us to expect 100 percent evacuation of a city the size of New Orleans. I found that there was very little preparation. No information on shelters other than the Superdome. There was no assets or commodities at the Superdome, other than what FEMA gave to the State, which they did distribute at the Superdome. There were no sanitation facilities before the levees broke. You can imagine the difficulty of moving sanitation facilities into a city with 4, 5, 6, and, in some areas of the city, 14 feet of water once that happened. That is the job of local and State governments. And simply, that just did not happen. Chairman Collins. Mr. Carwile, how did the Incident Command System work in Mississippi? Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, I think it worked very well at the top. There had been training previous to Hurricane Katrina by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency on down to the county emergency managers. So it worked well. We quickly were able to form a unified command with both myself and Robert Latham, my counterpart from the State. And we included at the top of the unified command the Adjutant General for the State of Mississippi, Major General Cross, as well as the commissioner of public safety, George Phillips, because each one of those brought so much to the table in terms of resources to manage. I think where the difficulty becomes--and I believe Senator Lieberman talked about this in his opening remarks--in a situation, a catastrophic disaster, it is very difficult to build from the bottom up if there is no bottom. Mayor Tommy Longo of Waveland and over in Hancock County, Mississippi, I mean, he lost every fire truck, and the fire station. Every police officer lost their home. There was no city hall. There was nothing left for Mayor Longo to build on. Similarly, in Hancock County, the emergency operations center in the county had to be evacuated, and we moved our folks over to Stennis in order to have a communications and a coherent system. So I think it is true that it builds from the bottom up. But in a catastrophic, we have got to be able to reach down and to supplement the absence of a coherent system down below. And to get around that, we predeployed division supervisors with communications from both the Federal and the State teams to the three what we believed would be, most impacted counties with available resources to prop up, if you will, those great first responders and emergency managers and mayors down in the local areas. We did not do that to the degree we would have liked to have done it because, frankly, there was a paucity of trained personnel to do that. But I think overall, and I believe in ICS. I think that we need to make some modifications as we look at a catastrophic, however, because, to me, the unified command as it is outlined in the National Response Plan calls for unified command only at the top, a few people. I believe that unified command has to go all the way down the structure, and we have to be able to use State and Federal personnel to prop up local communities that have been totally destroyed by something like Katrina. Chairman Collins. I think that is an excellent point that perhaps we should take a look at whether the system is scalable, whether it makes sense to expect the State and local governments to play the role that is envisioned when the magnitude of the catastrophe may wipe out all of the capability at the State and local level. Mr. Carwile. Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. And I think we can do that without in any way encumbering or impeding the constitutional authorities within the State constitutions of the local elected and appointed officials. Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, under the current system, FEMA is besieged with requests from State and local governments for various commodities or forms of assistance. I would like to refer your attention to certain exhibits that are in the book that is by you, specifically Exhibits 8, 9, G, H, and I. They all reflect requests made by State and local government entities in Louisiana to FEMA for assistance. And I am just going to go through what those are. Exhibit 8\1\ is from the New Orleans police department asking FEMA for, among other things, 400 M-4 weapons, 25,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,500 pairs of black military boots in various sizes, and 200 Crown Victoria police cruisers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Exhibit 8 appears in the Appendix on page 83. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exhibit 9\2\ is from New Orleans parish, and it asks for 10 gas-powered golf carts to transport firefighters around Zephyr Field. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ Exhibit 9 appears in the Appendix on page 90. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exhibit G\3\ is from Mayor Nagin's office. It seeks a bus to Shreveport. Exhibit H\4\ is also from the mayor's office. It seeks portable air conditioning units to cool offices. And Exhibit I\5\ is from the Louisiana Department of Social Services, asking for a taxi to take one person from a hospital to a shelter. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \3\ Exhibit G appears in the Appendix on page 99. \4\ Exhibit H appears in the Appendix on page 102. \5\ Exhibit I appears in the Appendix on page 104. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- As I was reading through these requests, they struck me as not the typical requests that State and local governments would make to FEMA during a natural disaster. But obviously, I don't have your experience. First, let me ask you, are these typical of the requests that you would expect to get from State and local governments to FEMA in the aftermath of a disaster? Mr. Wells. The problem with these is we got literally hundreds and hundreds of requests like this intermingled with valid requests. And when you get that volume that are not screened, it clogs down the system for legitimate requests that we need to process. I think this is an indication of just a lack of understanding--this came from the local level--the lack of understanding of what FEMA is there for, what we can do, and probably more importantly, what they can do themselves. Also, we normally with most disaster operations, when the request comes to the State emergency ops center, they will screen out all of those requests prior to us even getting them. So this is not typical. No, ma'am. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks to you three gentlemen. Having heard your opening statements and the questioning thus far, I go back to what I said at the beginning. You are three extraordinary professionals. I admire the work that you have done. We are lucky to have had you working and to have you still working, at least in two cases, for FEMA. And what strikes me as particularly significant is that you have something to add from the ground about what we could do to perform better in the next catastrophic natural disaster. That you are proud of your service in FEMA, but you are not defensive about everything that happened. And I think that is the spirit of this Committee. We are not out to get or protect anybody in this. We are out to figure out what happened. In response to what Senator Stevens said, just beyond what I have said when he was here, there is no question that New Orleans suffered a lot because the levees failed. It was a hurricane that would have had one level of damage. But the levees failing compounded it enormously. The failure of the levees was not only foreseeable, but was foreseen for years if the hurricane was above category 3. In fact, there is some reason now to believe that maybe the levees failed even earlier with a lower category impact of the hurricane because of some kind of negligence in design or construction. That is a very important question we have to answer. But having said all of that doesn't mean that FEMA was ready or did everything it should have done. And that is why, in a nondefensive way, we want to get at it. I will say and ask my first questions to you, Mr. Wells, that just a few of the things you have said so far suggest to me changes that ought to be implemented. For instance, as you said, and in some sense was expanded upon by Mr. Parr and Mr. Carwile in response to Senator Collins' questions, the bottoms-up approach makes a lot of sense in many disasters or emergencies. I wrote it down quickly, so I may have missed it. But when you get to a large disaster, it doesn't work so well. And when you get to a catastrophe, the bottoms-up falls apart. And part of what I think, therefore, we probably want to do as a government going forward is, as you all said, to put in place for FEMA and the rest of the Federal apparatus some plans in those more significant disaster situations when the bottoms- up won't work, and the Federal Government really has to assume a significant amount of responsibility. Second very instructive thing I thought you said, you compared the preparation of Texas for Hurricane Rita to the prepareatin of New Orleans and Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina. Texas had an evacuation plan that was adequate to the circumstances. We all understand that Rita didn't hit at the level of catastrophe that Katrina did. But you saw a plan there, which you didn't see in the case of Louisiana. So this suggests to me that part of what we may want to do as a matter of law or regulation, probably law, is to have some more aggressive Federal oversight of the emergency planning of State and local authorities to the point of having to certify and make sure not just that we look at it, but that they actually have as comprehensive a plan ready for emergencies as possible. Mr. Wells, let me, in that spirit, go on. Because as I read the statements that you made to our staff in the interviews, I am struck by one quote after another in which you are willing, from the ground, in a very professional and confident way to say this just didn't go as it should have gone. And I am going to quote a little bit. You talk about FEMA's ability to respond, ``But FEMA is not trained. FEMA is not equipped. FEMA is not organized to do very large response operations.'' You talk about inadequate communications, ``What we had was a communications kind of vacuum here in Baton Rouge.'' You speak of FEMA's difficulties in staffing positions. ``Just about every position we have, this is a secondary job for people. I think everybody fails to recognize this. Very important.'' ``Our system is based on--this is whole interagency--who is available at this time, put them in there, get them out the door.'' You acknowledge difficulties in planning. ``Now we did do some different things here that would need a lot of study like the continuity of government. We didn't work continuity of government at all. In New Orleans, they melted down. Their whole government was just melted down. We didn't have a plan for continuity of government.'' And I was struck also by your views of the Stafford Act, ``You need different laws. The Stafford Act is not--the Stafford Act is like bringing a donkey to the Kentucky Derby.'' Have you heard him say that before? ``It is not designed for a disaster this big.'' So what I am saying is that your candor is very important and very appreciated and very necessary as we work together to try to fix this. And bottom line, it would appear from your statements that FEMA was lacking a plan, communications, appropriate personnel, and various other assets to deal with a catastrophic disaster of this kind. I want to give you a chance now to comment broadly on those points that you made in the staff interviews. Mr. Wells. I don't know if I can remember all that you said, sir. Let us talk about the FEMA part---- Senator Lieberman. Yes. Mr. Wells [continuing]. And the Stafford Act and all that. We are not, we do not have the capability versus equipment, people, expertise, training to do large catastrophic disasters. We do not have teams. We do not work as teams. The people you get, and it is not just FEMA--this was a National Response Plan. And people talk ``FEMA this and FEMA that.'' But you know what? FEMA, once you get out in the field, we are a very small percentage of what is out there. And at the height of Katrina, I think we had, if you include the military, maybe 70,000 people? Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Wells. And FEMA was maybe 1,500 or 2,000 of that. And even when the military went down, it was still a small part. Senator Lieberman. Am I right that full-time FEMA personnel are numbered at about 2,000? This is all around the country, not in that crisis. Mr. Wells. Right. There are only 2,500. Senator Lieberman. And so, what you are drawing on when you say 1,500 to 2,000 personnel for Katrina was redeployment of FEMA full-time personnel from elsewhere, but also a lot of part-time people or people just brought in for the crisis? Mr. Wells. Right. Senator Lieberman. I want to get to that later. Mr. Wells. Anyway, we do not have enough people. We rob Peter to pay Paul in disasters. Even in medium disasters, we are doing that. We have 10 regions we have to man. A regional office has to do three things. They have to do two things. They need to do three things, but they have to do two things. They have to set up a regional response coordination center. It is an emergency ops center. And they have to staff a team that goes forward to Louisiana like we did. Now you only have about 90 people in a region. That is woefully inadequate to do both. You cannot do both. Pick one. When you get to a field, when we got to Louisiana, we had enough staff for our advance team to do maybe half of what we needed to do for a day shift. We had to do a day and night shift. So we had to prioritize. We did not have the people. We did not have the expertise. We did not have the operational training folks that we needed to do our mission. And it has been this way for years, sir. Years after years, you are working on the margins. You are getting people from other agencies with no experience or no experience in response operations. They are just filling a billet. We have never trained together. We need to really train together as a team. We need to work as a team. What you have with this National Response Plan in the field is we have no unity of command. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Wells. FEMA has more of a coordination role. We need to have a command role, where we can direct the sub-elements assigned to us to do things. And it doesn't play out that way, despite what the National Response Plan indicates. Senator Lieberman. That is a very important point. In some sense, as I read your testimony, as I hear you today, it is as if you are the generals, and you are first rate. But we haven't really given you an adequate trained force to go into battle with you. I want to ask a few questions similar to Mr. Carwile. I know you also expressed some concern about FEMA's staffing levels and problems. In your opening statement, you talked of how FEMA needs many more trained people. I know that you had a chance to look at these problems. I wonder if you would describe the impact of funding decisions on FEMA's effectiveness, particularly the ERT-N team. And let me refer you in particular to a memorandum that I believe you contributed to, dated June 30, 2004, which is Exhibit 1.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Exhibit 1 appears in the Appendix on page 72. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In it, you refer ``to the unpreparedness of national emergency response teams.'' You say the teams are unprepared because of ``zero funding for training exercises or equipment.'' So I ask you to comment on that in light of what you found in the response to Katrina. Mr. Carwile. Yes, Senator Lieberman. This has long been a concern of mine, as well as Mr. Wells. After September 11, I was asked by Director Allbaugh at the time to reconstitute a national team, an emergency response team national, and to write an operations plan and be prepared to respond to the next terrorist event. It was an all-hazards plan, but the focus, obviously, at the time was on terrorism. I took a small group from New York City, our joint field office there, went down to Atlanta and put together a team of very seasoned emergency managers and with members of other Federal agencies, including the military, and wrote what was known then as an ERT-N op plan. We were then able to build a team to about 125 individuals, hand picked, from around the country, and we were able to routinely exercise that team because we had the funding in place to do so on the plan against several scenarios. Senator Lieberman. Were these full-time FEMA employees? Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. For the most part. We did have some reservists, which we called disaster assistance employees, on the team. But the intent was to use them only in certain areas where we have almost no full-time employees to do certain functions within FEMA. We rely solely on our reservists for things like administration and that sort of thing. We were asked to take the team to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and we exercised and exercised. And as well as buying satellite communications and being able to, we felt we had a robust plan, a well-trained team, and communications. It wasn't long after that, and the longer we got away from September 11, the less funding we had. Funding, it appeared to us--and I am just a field guy, not a headquarters person. The small amount of money we did have was being diverted, and we got no money in the out-years. So there was no money. Then we morphed that team into another team. The red team morphed, and we split it up and formed a blue team. And subsequently, a white team, which was a hollow team. But there was never any money. In former years, prior to September 11, when I was on a national team, we at least had money to do one training event a year and one meeting for the leadership of the teams. That money also went away. Senator Lieberman. So in that period of years that you have described post-September 11, there was no money for training exercises? Mr. Carwile. Except for that first year, sir. Senator Lieberman. That first year. Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. And after that, the money went away, and the emphasis on the readiness of those teams, as I said in my opening comments, I came from 30 years in the military. We had a very rigorous reporting system and the red/amber/green to report unit status. We had nothing like that in FEMA, although those things were being--anyway, I think there was a great problem in resourcing those teams. Senator Lieberman. Yes. So this was not only a natural disaster waiting to happen, this was a personnel, kind of a FEMA disaster waiting to happen because we weren't giving you the resources to get ready for this. If I may, Madam Chairman, I just want to ask one follow-up question because I think it is important. It is something I have come to learn myself, in the course of this investigation, which speaks to the fact that FEMA has relatively few full-time personnel. And this is the response teams and the so-called reservists, which in the interview you did with our staff, it seemed to me you were saying that these teams are mostly names on rosters. They are not really teams because they don't train together, they don't work together, and they don't really have a budget. And I wonder if you could just give, for the record, a little background on what does it mean to be a reservist for FEMA in this regard? Who are these people, typically? And obviously, I assume you believe, based on what you said before, that if they are there as reservists that we ought to be spending more money training them? Mr. Carwile. Yes, sir. I will specifically speak to the fine Americans that form the reserve cadre, which we call the disaster assistance employees, which we rely on almost to a great extent to our ability to surge personnel capacity to respond to any large disasters. In other words, in Florida last year, probably 90 percent of the workforce were disaster assistance employees. Those employees have traditionally, if you look at the demographics, many of them are retired from all sorts of walks of life. They are people you would be very proud to be associated with. They bring skill sets from decades of experience in various parts of the civil sector and some from the military. They are inadequately recompensed for the time they spend on active duty. They have absolutely no benefits. None, no benefits whatsoever, even when they are on active duty, we call them up. So, for example, if there is a holiday, and you happen to be on a big disaster, and there is no benefit. If you want to let a few people off, you can't even pay them for being off on the holiday. Senator Lieberman. Am I right? They don't really train as units? Mr. Carwile. Sir, was that the individual part of your question? Senator Lieberman. Yes. Mr. Carwile. The collective part of your question and the teams, there is no training money and very little. Now the regions, as Mr. Wells indicated, they have a responsibility to field an emergency response team for a small to a mid-level disaster. They may, because they are all pretty much co- located, have an opportunity to do some, what we used to call in the Army, collective training as opposed to individual. But there is no money to do team training. So if you go out on a disaster, to me--and I was very fortunate in Mississippi because I had a team from my home region that I have worked with for years--you need to know how that other person is going to respond in a crisis. You need to have gone through. In the military, of course, we have a very rigorous exercise program that is evaluated. And I have long advocated, and it was included in a white paper that I wrote last year, that we should have a similar system and have emergency deployment readiness exercises for these teams, and go out and do a rigorous evaluation and give feedback to the team members, much like we do in the military. But that is not done, sir. Senator Lieberman. Yes. That is a real big gap that we have to figure out how to fill. I assume that there were a lot of people on the reserve rosters who were called up to respond to Hurricane Katrina? Mr. Carwile. Sir, one of the national teams was deployed to Louisiana, that is the blue team--the blue team went down. In Mississippi, we had a lot of members that were on the national teams, but we did not deploy a national team, per se. There are only two remaining. Those two teams were reconfigured probably in the last month or so before Katrina. They were brand-new teams. New members were put in there, some of whom have been on other teams in the past. And they were pared down to, I think, around 25 persons per team, and they, to my knowledge, never had an opportunity to train together beforehand. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Carwile. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Carwile, I want to follow up with some additional questions on this June 2004 memo that Senator Lieberman just questioned you about. First of all, this memo was an extensive memo. It includes many significant recommendations, and it also sounds the alarm. There is the heading on page 3 that says ``unpreparedness of national emergency response teams.'' It says ``unprepared teams, zero funding for training exercises and team equipment.'' It talks about the need for a single division for response and recovery. It mentions that there had been four different budget proposals submitted over an 18-month period. And just so we understand, this is from highly trained and important professionals within FEMA. It is the Federal Coordinating Officers. Did you get any response to this memo from Michael Brown or anyone else in his office? Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, first of all, I wasn't the author of the entire document. But these two---- Chairman Collins. You were the author of part of it? Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. These two issues were--and I am guilty as charged on that. Ma'am, we put this together, and probably Scott may have had input as well. I am pretty sure he did. Former Director Brown had asked the Federal Coordinating Officers for their input on things we thought were critical. And my former colleague Mike Hall was elected by the rest of us to put this together, each of us having some input. These were mine. Mike related to me that this had been submitted to the eighth floor, being kind of the command group in FEMA. And as far as I know, there was never any feedback on any of these issues. Chairman Collins. So, as far as you know, there were no actions taken in response to this detailed set of recommendations that the FCOs sent to Secretary Brown? Mr. Carwile. That is correct, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. If the recommendations in this June 2004 memo had been implemented, do you believe that the response to Katrina would have been improved? I realize that is speculative. But what is your best judgment? Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. I can't help but believe that having trained and effective teams that are well equipped and have had opportunities to work together through training and rigorous exercises would not have made a difference. Again, I felt very fortunate because many of my colleagues with me in Mississippi had been with me on a national team in years past. It was kind of coincidental. But I can't help but believe that trained and ready teams, people who have worked together, would not have made some difference in a positive way. Chairman Collins. Could you explain to us why you think that a single division for response and recovery would help improve the response to future disasters? Mr. Carwile. Yes, ma'am. And first of all, that is not a novel idea. That was formerly that way. My former colleague is sitting right back here, who was formerly the associate director for FEMA for response and recovery. It was only with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security that the two efforts, that is response and recovery, were bifurcated. Formerly, there was a greater among equals division within FEMA was response recovery. Because when you go to the field, you don't do response, and then all of a sudden, one day you say, ``Well, we are going to quit doing response. Now, guys, we are going to start doing recovery.'' It is a continuous effort. I was looking at our timeline in Mississippi. On September 2, we were putting disaster recovery centers out to meet the needs of the people to be able to communicate with us and the Federal and the State officials. So, to me, and it is also from a person in the field, it is a little bit difficult to know who the heck you work for at headquarters. You know, on some issues, you go to one person. Other issues, you go to another. When they first bifurcated them, I was in the field, and we would talk to what is now called the National Resource Coordination Center, then known as the Emergency Support Team, and you really didn't know who you were reporting to. Because was it the response guys or was it recovery guys? So, to me, it is a natural fit. It was an unnatural thing to break it up in the first place. Chairman Collins. Thank you. I would now like to turn to the issue of evacuation. One of the problems that New Orleans had was evacuating citizens before the storm. Mr. Wells, are you aware of any requests from the City of New Orleans for assistance with evacuation? Any request to FEMA? Mr. Wells. No. We would get the request from the State. The city would come to the State, and the State would come to us. And for any pre-landfall evacuation requests, we got none, zero. And as I mentioned earlier, that was totally unlike what we did in Texas, where we were actively involved. Chairman Collins. Now I understand that you were involved in the Hurricane Pam exercise. Did that include a segment on the evacuation of New Orleans and the vicinity? Was that part of the exercise? Mr. Wells. No, ma'am. Evacuation was not part of it. When we set up the Pam exercises, we were developing it, we worked with the officials in Louisiana. And they determined I think it was five to eight functions that they wanted us to work as Federal/State partners in it. And I think we had talked about evacuation, and they said let us leave that off the table because the city and the State, we have been working evacuation issues. And we will park that over there, and we will just work on these other issues. So that was not one of the issues we addressed in the Pam exercise. Chairman Collins. And whose decision, just for clarity, was it to not include evacuation as part of the Hurricane Pam exercise? Mr. Wells. Well, it would have been the deputy director of emergency management at the time in Louisiana. Chairman Collins. So it was a State official? Mr. Wells. The State. Yes, they determined the issues that we were going to be looking at for Pam. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Parr, another issue of evacuation arose after the storm, and that was the evacuation of the Superdome. You have previously told the Committee that you worked with the National Guard at the Superdome throughout Tuesday night and that you had a plan that was actually approved by your supervisors at FEMA and was in coordination with the National Guard to evacuate the victims at the Superdome, beginning Wednesday morning. Is that correct? Mr. Parr. That is correct. Chairman Collins. Could you explain what that plan was? Mr. Parr. Sure. As the population of the Superdome started growing almost exponentially on Tuesday and with the waters rising, the breach wasn't able to be closed, we realized we had to get the people out of the Superdome. We felt, the Guard felt that there would be mass confusion, violence once the lights went out in the Superdome. That was the only thing that was keeping people together. We came up with a plan in conjunction with the Guard. It was the chief of staff or the adjutant general, the ops officer, the commanding general that was there for the Guard. What we were going to do was use Chinook helicopters because they are the largest in the U.S. inventory. The Guard had availability of three. We came up with a plan to move anywhere from 300 to 500 people an hour out of the Superdome by landing helicopters every 15 to 20 minutes. At the time, we estimated about 15,000 people in the Superdome. We figured we could clear them out within about a day, about 30 hours or less, once we started the evacuation with an additional 9 helicopters. In addition to that plan, I should say it would be short haul trips. The airport was dry. I believe Belle Chase, which is a base, was also dry. We would have buses meet them there and then take them to shelters after that. Chairman Collins. That sounds to me like a very good plan that would have helped to evacuate people from a situation that was becoming increasingly unsanitary and dangerous. Why wasn't it implemented? In fact, the evacuation did not occur the next day, despite your having what sounds like a very good plan. Mr. Parr. That is correct. At least the evacuation for the general population didn't begin the next morning, as we had hoped. At some point during the early morning hours--this was a plan we worked on in the overnight hours. None of us slept at all as we developed this and had constant conference calls with Washington, DC. We couldn't reach our command group at the EOC in Baton Rouge because of communications, but we were able to reach our response and coordination center in Denton, Texas. So we would have conference calls with those two groups. We were notified at some time around 5 a.m. that General Honore had taken charge or was in charge of the evacuation of New Orleans and that all plans were to be put on hold, that he would be directing the evacuation. And that was the direction I got from the command group of the National Guard that they would be awaiting his orders. Chairman Collins. So, as far as you know, General Honore canceled the plan? Mr. Parr. Well, I can't speak to specifically what happened, but I will tell you that the Guard told me I got a call from General Landreneau at some point probably between 5 and 6 a.m. in the morning, thanking me and thanking us for our hard work. But they were awaiting orders of General Honore. Chairman Collins. So instead of the evacuation from the Superdome starting on Wednesday morning as it would have under your plan, the plan worked out with the National Guard, when were people actually evacuated from the Superdome? Mr. Parr. The start for the general population was about Thursday morning, about 24 hours later. Chairman Collins. So the result of the delay of that evacuation plan, which you had worked all night to put together, was that thousands of people in the general population in the Superdome had to spend another very unpleasant, hot, dangerous night in the Superdome. Is that correct? Mr. Parr. That is correct. Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, I noted in your bio that you had been the liaison from DOD to FEMA back when you were working for the Department of Defense. DOD has an unusual relationship with FEMA. As I understand it, FEMA can assign other agencies certain missions. But with DOD, it is my understanding the Department has to agree to accept the missions from FEMA, and it is a much longer process. Is that correct? Is my understanding correct? Mr. Wells. Yes. When all of the agencies come into the joint field office and we give what we call mission assignments or taskings out to these agencies to do specific things, the approval authority generally rests with the person in the joint field office, and it gets done immediately. But the Department of Defense, their approval authority rests with the Secretary of Defense. And so, it has to go through a long process of validation and through their chain of command to get it approved. And that is more than awkward. It is more than cumbersome. It just takes a long time to execute. I need to say, parenthetically, that in Katrina we did not see that lag that we normally see in most disasters, and they were fairly responsive. Chairman Collins. But from your perspective, since you have seen it both as a DOD employee as well as a FEMA employee, should the Department be treated differently? Mr. Wells. No. Having DOD is sort of like somebody giving you an 800-pound gorilla. You are supposed to take care of that gorilla and be responsible for that gorilla. But that 800-pound gorilla is going to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and how he wants to do it. So you lose some of that control in your organization with the Department of Defense structure. What they have is, when General Honore came in, for example, he had really two organizations. He had a defense coordinating officer, who was in that joint field office. And he had a brigadier general, Mark Graham, with the staff, who worked directly with us out of the joint field office. And that fell within the architecture of the National Response Plan, and it was more organized. General Honore had a joint task force that went and did things separate and beyond that. He did great things. Him and his joint task force did great things, but it wasn't coordinated, and it led to some problems. Chairman Collins. Mr. Carwile, did you have something you would like to add to that? Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, in a previous life, I served as a defense coordinating officer, as Mr. Wells talked about, and I have had discussions with Secretary McHale on this very subject. And we spoke earlier about a unity of command and a unified command, and what Mr. Wells just described is outside of unity of command, unity of effort, and a unified command. In other words, you can't have two Federal agencies, even if one is an 800-pound gorilla, operating independently of other Federal agencies. And there is a difference of opinion of my personal opinion as a private citizen between what I read in the Stafford Act and the way that the current secretary and assistant secretary for homeland defense read their authorities. And as Mr. Wells indicated, we mission assign other Federal agencies. DOD, I personally know--Secretary McHale and I have discussed this--takes exception with even the term ``mission assignment'' from FEMA to the Department of Defense. Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, do you have anything to add to that debate? Mr. Parr. I can tell you on a local level. After leaving New Orleans, I worked in St. Bernard Parish for about 30 days. I think Mr. Wells' description of the 800-pound gorilla, because we had a major significant military DOD presence there, was true. They did some great things. The men and women that were there were truly phenomenal. But keeping them--and I will use this term, but it is not pejorative--reined in to keep them in--remember, when they were there on the ground, it wasn't me that was directing operations in the parish. It was the parish leadership. It was the parish president. It was the sheriff. It was the parish emergency manager. And keeping them from running over that was my job because I was supposed to be the lead Federal person there. And it is difficult. But they do bring a lot to the table, and they are a necessary part of the National Response Plan. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks again, Madam Chairman. The more we go on, the more I keep coming back to military terms because, in some sense, you are in a real crisis, almost a battlefield situation. And one I want to talk about is situational awareness. Obviously, in military matters, we are, through technology, dramatically improving the situational awareness of our forces. And that is not a bad ideal to set up for emergency response here as well. But it was, really in this case, lacking, again beginning with the fact that this was an extraordinary disaster. But part of what I want to get at is the details of that. Mr. Parr, I am going to ask you the first questions. We have seen photographs and video showing the absolutely devastating situation at the convention center. I know that most of the accounts have focused on what went on at the Superdome. But I want to ask you to talk a little bit about what was unfolding a mile down the road at the convention center, where thousands of recently homeless people sought refuge from the storm. I have taken a look at your notes from August 30, which is Exhibit F, and they mention that you had a briefing with Bill Lokey and Scott Wells. And your notes mention the convention center. But we don't see anything in your e-mails or any other documents from yourself or the FEMA team regarding the circumstances in the convention center on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. So I wanted to ask you during the briefing with Mr. Wells and Mr. Lokey, first, what did you discuss, to the best of your recollection, regarding the Superdome? Mr. Parr. OK. You have an advantage over me, Senator, because since this was kind of a last-minute request for me to appear before you, I left my notes in Texas, where I am assigned right now. So I am not able to look and see exactly what you are referring to. Senator Lieberman. I am glad to try to get our staff to give it to you. Mr. Parr. I think it is Exhibit F? Senator Lieberman. Yes, it is Exhibit F\1\ in that exhibit book. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Exhibit F appears in the Appendix on page 94. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Parr. Just one second. I am sorry. Senator Lieberman. You went to the same handwriting course that I did. Mr. Parr. You noticed that, sir. Senator Lieberman. It is on page 8, noted at the bottom, 0008. Mr. Parr. Let me address, I believe, the phone call you are speaking about because this was probably the only time we were able to get a hold of the EOC, where Scott Wells, the deputy, and Bill Lokey were. Senator Lieberman. So they were in Baton Rouge? Mr. Parr. Baton Rouge. Correct. And this was probably the only time we had any conversation, certainly any extended conversation with them. Senator Lieberman. And at that point, you were---- Mr. Parr. I was? This was Tuesday. I would guess early afternoon? Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Parr. Or mid afternoon? Senator Lieberman. And you had arrived a little earlier that day. Mr. Parr. We had arrived at some point Tuesday morning or late morning. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Parr. This is when we went from the Superdome to the city EOC, which was across the street. At that point, we had called back to the State EOC. The primary purpose of that call was to give the city's list of priorities to the EOC there up at the State, for FEMA and the State to start working on those priorities. If the call was an hour, the biggest part of that call, probably 45 or 50 minutes, was getting visibility on what was being done to close I believe it was the 17th Street Canal breach. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Parr. That is what was filling up the city, and there was a whole domino effect of things that happen if that breach was not closed as quickly as possible. Just to mention two of those things. The power plant, once that went under water, and it is my understanding that it was within inches--2 or 3 inches of going under water--the city would take about 6 months, it would probably still be under water right now---- Senator Lieberman. Yes. Mr. Parr [continuing]. If that was submerged. The emergency power at the Superdome was literally within 1 inch of overflowing the sandbags that were protecting the emergency generator there. We would have lost power there. It would have caused chaos there. So gaining visibility on that. Talking about it was the city--I am not sure of his exact title. I believe he was either the emergency manager or the homeland security person. Senator Lieberman. Let me interrupt you. By ``gaining visibility,'' you mean trying to get attention from the EOC onto those two significant problems you have just talked about? Mr. Parr. I was informed by Colonel Terry Ebert, who is the city's, I think, homeland security director, that the breach-- -- Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Parr [continuing]. That the Army Corps had stopped attempting to close the breach, and we weren't sure why. And there were some significant issues with them trying to close the breach, and they were unable to do it, and they were working the problem. We did not know that at the time, which is one thing that prompted the call. So getting that back up on the table and letting them know back up at the State why it was so important to get that closed. Which that did not happen, at least not at that point, was the primary purpose of that call, and in addition, the other priorities that the city had, the Colonel, Terry Ebert, gave it to them on that call. Senator Lieberman. Yes. Did you become aware in that conversation of the problem of the growing crowds at the convention center? Mr. Parr. Let me say that we were helicoptered into the Superdome and had no movement, no visibility of the city. The only thing we had was what the National Guard had given us. I don't quite see my note on the convention center. I am sure I was told by the Guard that there were issues at the convention center. Like I said, I don't have my notes. But because we were, in effect, literally on an island or stranded at the Superdome, if I have a note here about the convention center--OK, yes. I don't think, that was not a note about conditions at the convention center. I see it now. I am not even sure I was aware of conditions at the convention center at this time. What that was, if you notice it says ``convention center, EOV or com suite,'' that was mentioned as another place that we can carry out operations because of the difficulty of carrying out operations at the Superdome because of the situation there. I was trying to identify another place in the city where we can operate from, and that was a place that was mentioned. Senator Lieberman. Yes. So, obviously, you were at the Superdome. So you had an awareness of what the conditions were there? Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. Senator Lieberman. But you did not know at that point what the situation was at the convention center? Mr. Parr. Correct. There would be snippets from certain Guardsmen who were patrolling the city saying that the convention center was filling up. I am not sure when or how that was brought out to me. We had no personal knowledge of what was going on at the convention center. As a matter of fact, I learned more about what was going on at the convention center when I left and went back up to Baton Rouge. Then I had visibility on it. Senator Lieberman. Yes. So during that period of days before you went back to Baton Rouge, which, if I recall correctly, was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that week? Mr. Parr. Correct. Senator Lieberman. The FEMA teams that you were involved with did not do anything with regard to the convention center? Mr. Parr. No, sir, and I think this is an important point that we need to remember, and I alluded to this earlier in one of the answers to one of the questions that were given. There were no, to my knowledge, identified shelters in the City of New Orleans. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Parr. That is a very important thing. What was used as a shelter was any place that was dry. Any overpass, any high piece of ground. It is important that the city had identified shelters and areas of refuge, and they did not. So I think that was an ad hoc--since it was largely dry, it is my understanding--an ad hoc shelter that people flowed to simply because it was out of the pool of water in the city. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Parr. Mr. Wells, you were a senior Federal official at the emergency operating center in Baton Rouge. When did you become aware of the crowds and the problems at the convention center in New Orleans? Mr. Wells. To be candid, I am not exactly sure. It was probably around I would say Wednesday or Thursday, we got calls from here in Washington, DC. ``What is going on at the convention center?'' And I think they were getting reports from the media. Senator Lieberman. Yes. Mr. Wells. And as I recall, we tried to get communications up with Phil and his folks. We couldn't get communications with him to have them go check it out. And so, we went to the State and asked them what they knew, and they used their National Guard and State police assets to give us some visibility. And the big issue was how many people were there? And what is going on, and how many people were there? And we did not get a clear picture. It probably took 24 to 48 hours from the time we started asking the question to get a picture of just what was going on in the convention center. Senator Lieberman. So your answers, I think, illustrate the real problems there were in communications under the circumstances there and the inability to have anything approaching the kind of situational awareness that you would want to have or we would want you to have. I want to go back to something you said in your interview with our staff, Mr. Wells, that there was ``a big communications void,'' which created a black hole in communication abilities from the emergency operating center in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And if I asked you why, I know it may be an obvious question. But for the record, since obviously FEMA is supposed to be prepared for emergencies of this kind, why did that black hole of communications occur? Mr. Wells. I don't know. I was told all of the lines were saturated. The big vacuum was in Baton Rouge. No one could get in to us, and we couldn't get out to anybody. The people in New Orleans could talk to our regional office in Texas in a degraded way, and they could talk to the national office here in Washington, DC. But nobody could call us in Baton Rouge, and we couldn't call out. So that was the biggest vacuum in Baton Rouge. Senator Lieberman. Mr. Parr, I know that at some point in your testimony or work with the staff, you described FEMA's Red October, the mobile command post 12 feet longer than a tractor- trailer with the most elaborate state-of-the-art capabilities for communications, which would have served as the base for communications in New Orleans. As the vehicle was in transport to the Superdome, I would just say for the record, it was determined that you could not get it into the area, and you were left with no communications at the Superdome. Am I right about that? Mr. Parr. That is largely correct, sir. That was the original intention to either move that vehicle or a similar vehicle into the Superdome, but because of the water around the stadium, we could not get it in. Senator Lieberman. And there was no backup plan for anything else in that kind of circumstance? Mr. Parr. Well, sir, initially the backup plan was to have a smaller vehicle, a vehicle that was a little bit more maneuverable get into the stadium. I don't believe that the situational awareness allowed us to know. I don't believe that it was common knowledge. It certainly was not my knowledge that water would prevent us from getting those vehicles into the Superdome. Senator Lieberman. Right. And this is the final question because my time is up. You did previously state, as I mentioned and Senator Collins did, that your access to communications was ``extremely, extremely limited'' and affected your operations effectiveness, what you were able to do in the circumstance by, in your opinion, about 90 percent. Is that right? Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. And just to expand on that a little bit, as I look back on the events that happened, we were able to achieve a lot. At the time, it was extremely frustrating. It might take 2 or 3 hours to get through to the people we were calling, but we did get through and we did get things done as far as the evacuation of the Superdome. We made sure that we kept some eye on visibility of commodities so people ate. But I believe we could have accomplished a lot more if we had the proper communications. Senator Lieberman. Sure. And when you did get through on the calls, what were you using? Mr. Parr. The National Guard had two communications vehicles, one with one phone and one with I think three or four phones. So it was kind of like waiting in line. When they finished their business, then we got to go. Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Just a couple of concluding questions. First, I realize all of you were deployed to the Gulf region in your roles as FCOs. But are any of you living in the Gulf region? Mr. Wells. Mr. Wells. I am staying there. Chairman Collins. Pardon me? Mr. Wells. Yes, I will be in Baton Rouge. Chairman Collins. You are now. But prior to being deployed there, where were you living? Mr. Wells. I was living in Texas. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Parr. Mr. Parr. I have only been living in the Gulf since August 28. But my home now or at least where I rent an apartment is in Boston, Massachusetts. Chairman Collins. I noticed you were Region 1, Senator Lieberman's and my region. Mr. Carwile. Mr. Carwile. Ma'am, my family is from Gulf Shores, Alabama. It is in Baldwin County, Alabama, on the coast. They have evacuated probably six times in the last 2 years, with my mother, who turned 89 last month. I personally reside in the State of Hawaii, though. Chairman Collins. I was surprised, when I looked at where FEMA officials were deployed from, that they weren't individuals already assigned to the Gulf region. Would it increase the effectiveness of FEMA officials if they were from the region to which they are deployed, or does it not make any difference? The reason I ask is there have been some indications that FEMA officials were just not very familiar with New Orleans or the areas to which they were assigned. And I am wondering if it would be better to have the FCOs come from the area or whether it doesn't matter. Mr. Carwile. Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, the Congress authorized FEMA 25 Federal Coordinating Officer positions back in 1999. Chairman Collins. Right. Mr. Carwile. And those positions were sprinkled throughout the country. And ideally, the Federal Coordinating Officer would come from the home region impacted. For example, if the State of Maine were impacted, hopefully, Mr. Parr would be the person, as he would be. What happens in a very large disaster like Katrina, the resources are quickly stripped down in terms of personnel who are familiar to the area. So over in Alabama, Mike Bolch, who was the Federal Coordinating Officer, did come from Atlanta in the home region. But FEMA can get very quickly overwhelmed in terms of having people with regional experience. And Mississippi, fortunately, the team from Region 9, which was California and the West, that we brought in had been with Mississippi during Hurricane Dennis and also with a short exercise we had prior to the hurricane season in Washington. Chairman Collins. Mr. Parr, do you have anything to add to that? Mr. Parr. I will say all of us are national assets, and traveling is very demanding on all of us. I know in the 2 years I have been in the Federal Coordinating Officer program, I have traveled about 300 days. Chairman Collins. Wow. Mr. Parr. I don't know. I think it is important that we have significant representation from the region that is experiencing the disaster. So, for instance, Scott Wells is a resident and member of Region 6, which is a large part of the Gulf Coast. The fact that I come from Region 1 and have a lot of experience in Region 2, which would be the New York area, I don't know is significant. I think all of us are kind of, to a large extent, plug and play. You bring us to where we need to go, and the actions that we have to do are pretty much the same. Chairman Collins. Mr. Wells, are you from the region? Mr. Wells. Yes. And I think there is value added. You get your value in the peacetime planning. For example, with Katrina, prior to Katrina, in July, just a month before, Hurricane Dennis was threatening Louisiana, and we deployed our response team to Louisiana and did some training with them. So we had built up some experience with the State and did some hasty planning and things like that. And that was a benefit when we went back for Katrina. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Carwile, my final question is for you. Both Senator Lieberman and I have been to the Gulf region since the hurricane struck. The damage in New Orleans and Louisiana is incomprehensible. But what really astonished me was the devastation in Mississippi. It is just extraordinary. Do you think Mississippi has gotten the attention that it needs compared to Louisiana? I am not trying to play off one State against another. That is not my purpose. But the devastation from wind damage in Mississippi matches in many ways the horrendous devastation from water that we saw in New Orleans. Mr. Carwile. Madam Chairman, I have been on, I think, every major disaster in the last 9 years with FEMA to include four hurricanes last year in Florida and a number of super typhoons in the Pacific, and I have never seen--and I had two combat tours in Vietnam, special forces. I have never seen the damage that I saw and you saw in Hancock County and Harrison County. Total devastation of entire communities. We talk about communications. I have never been in a situation where we had such a shortfall in communications. Last year in Florida, fundamentally, we could use cell phones. Practically, just most of the time, we had to rely on sat phones. But I am talking about no communications. Senator Lieberman talked about situational awareness. Very difficult to have down there other than overflights. I know that Governor Barbour and his staff in the State of Mississippi have done an extraordinary job of leadership. I do think that there has been an awful lot of focus on the visual on New Orleans, and obviously, there was a great deal of suffering there that needed to be tended to. I do think that there could be more attention paid to the restoration of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, especially. I say ``Gulf Coast,'' but I was in Jackson when a storm--we had a category 1 hurricane go over Jackson. We were without power in Jackson for days and days, all the way up to the northern part of Mississippi. So the visuals are on the Gulf Coast, and obviously, that is terrible. In addition to wind damage, the 30-foot surge just cleared off whole counties practically. It was total devastation. But I would concur if someone were to suggest that Mississippi probably deserves more attention than it has been getting, ma'am. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman, do you have any questions? Senator Lieberman. I do, a couple. I will try to do them quickly. Thanks, Madam Chairman. I want to come back to the discussion about the communications and situational awareness, and I am struck that the National Guard had those two communications vehicles in the Superdome. And I understand this is always a question of hindsight is clearer than foresight. The understanding was growing in the preceding week that this was going to be a hurricane category 4 or a category 5. I was going to read this to Senator Stevens, but I didn't. There was a communication from William Lundy of FEMA to you, Mr. Carwile, and to Robert Fenton and others, e-mailed on Saturday, August 27, at 11:41 p.m. ``Recent recon flight reports category 4 now, maybe a weak category 5 by Monday morning. Landfall around noon. Storm is carrying a lot of moisture. Experts predict that the levees protecting New Orleans will be breached late Sunday night, thereby flooding the city to a depth of 6 to 12 feet. Storm surge 13 feet, with 20-foot waves on top of that.'' Unfortunately, that e-mail was pretty much correct, except it estimated a little bit earlier than the levees actually broke. So here is my question. Again, hindsight clearer. And this is why some people say FEMA moved slowly. You have got this Red October, a fantastically equipped communications vehicle--why not move it into New Orleans in advance of landfall so you are there with a communications apparatus before, what was being talked about and predicted, the levees broke and the city was flooded? Yes, Mr. Parr? Mr. Parr. This was something that I discussed with the staffers that were down beforehand. One thing that you never want to do, especially when you are a response--we are not a rescue organization--but a response organization or an emergency organization, is put equipment or people into harm's way. If we had brought those vehicles into the Superdome, they would have been exposed. They probably, almost certainly with the high winds of a hurricane hitting, would have been damaged and rendered useless. There are other things that we could have done. And in hindsight, if we had been fully aware of the situation, we could have helicoptered communications suites in. Senator Lieberman. Beforehand, you mean? Mr. Parr. No. Afterwards. Senator Lieberman. Afterwards. Mr. Parr. But in my opinion, and there is no response organization that I am aware of that puts people or equipment in harm's way prior to landfall of a hurricane, unless it is a rated hurricane shelter beforehand, sir. Senator Lieberman. Yes, I have learned this as we have gone on, and I am not prepared to argue against it. But I am prepared, not now, to question it as we go along. Because, obviously, the people on the ground there, the local fire, police, emergency personnel are there. And if you see something this big coming, it is tough. I don't have an easy answer to this one. But it seems to me that there is an argument to be made that you would want to try to the best of your ability to get some people in, maybe equipment in there beforehand. But I want to come back to that. Mr. Parr, I do want to give you, while you are here, an opportunity to answer questions that were raised in Mr. Bahamonde's testimony and then in other testimony before the Committee about the fact that you and your teams left the Superdome on Thursday. You were there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then left on Thursday, which left, obviously, the Superdome without any FEMA presence, including the medical team that you had. So, obviously, we ask why. And I want to give you the chance while you are here to answer that. Mr. Parr. Certainly. I could give you the long answer or the short answer. So I will try to give you something in the middle ground that would give you the situation. Senator Lieberman. OK. You have got two centrists up here. So---- [Laughter.] Chairman Collins. The middle position is always a good one. Mr. Parr. I think that we have described the situation in the city as a whole. The situation in the Superdome was always a powder keg. The Guard first made the suggestion, one of the generals of the Guard first made the suggestion that I consider leaving Tuesday night. Senator Lieberman. Do you remember which one that was? Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. It was General Veillon. Senator Lieberman. General Veillon. Mr. Parr. And that was when the city was filling, and they felt that once the lights went out that there would be pandemonium there. Senator Lieberman. So was he suggesting that your safety might be in danger? Mr. Parr. Well, I believe the school of thought was everyone, including the Guard--because, remember, not everyone in the Guard was armed. Most of the Guard was involved with getting food, commodities in, running and helping with medical missions. As I said before, they did a phenomenal job in search and rescue, in everything, and assisting the New Orleans PD as much as they possibly could. So I think it was everyone's safety. To skip many things, Thursday morning at first light, General Jones, who was the commanding general in place, said to me--I don't remember his exact words, but there are certain phrases that he said that stick out in my mind very clearly. ``I don't believe I can protect you or your people any longer. We are going to be making our last stand,'' and he pointed to a portion of the parking lot over there. He says, ``Get behind us, and we will do what we can.'' That is when we started making plans to leave. I spoke, since it was my responsibility to take care of the Federal forces on hand, I spoke to the NDMS teams, told them to continue to operate. I wanted to have helicopters standing by if the situation degenerated. We were unable to get helicopters in immediately. To make a long story short, I was informed by the DMAT team, the medical assistance team that was in the basketball stadium, that the Guard, in shortening their lines, had pulled all security from them. They told me that they did not feel safe and that they were evacuating. And they had high-water vehicles that they used to resupply and that they were pulling out in their vehicles. It was only at that time that I made the decision to leave since if conditions did degenerate, we would have no other way out. Senator Lieberman. I want you to know that some of the other folks who were there say that, in fact, there was not any behavior that would lead them to think that there was a riot or that there was a safety problem. I guess my final question to you is the following--to what extent did you see any behavior that would lead you to think that your personnel would be in danger, or was it derived from what the National Guard folks told you? Mr. Parr. There are many things that I left out in not giving the answer in total. The intelligence that we had all came from the Guard. That is the first thing. The second thing is is that--I just lost my train of thought. But one of the things to remember, when I did make the decision to leave, is not only did the Guard say that. You could see from some of the memos that the city asked for with 400 rifles, etc., the Guard--and this was what I wanted to say. The Guard had intelligence that there would be riot. That people would move in force against the Guard at some point that late morning. Senator Lieberman. And they told you that? Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. And one of the things to remember is that I have worked in riot situations in my time as a firefighter and fire officer in New York City. I have worked in near-riot situations. The time for unarmed people, that is specifically a security and law enforcement issue, and the time for unarmed people to leave is before a situation starts, not after. And that is when I made the decision to leave when I did. Senator Lieberman. OK. I appreciate your answer. We are running out of time. I am going to mention something else. Maybe I will send a letter to each of you and ask for your response. This goes also to pre-storm, and the question is the following--in a circumstance like the one we saw coming here, a category 4 or 5 hurricane, with potential talked about widely that the levees were going to break. And what seemed to you, Mr. Wells, to be an inadequate evacuation plan in Louisiana as compared to what you saw in Texas, should we in the future have the Federal Government, perhaps through the military, be prepared to do pre-storm evacuation? Let me state it in a dramatic metaphor. If we had intelligence that led us to believe that a bomb was going to explode in one of our major cities within 3 days, and if we thought it was accurate intelligence, but we hadn't found a bomb, I presume we would use whatever Federal resources we had to get in and evacuate as many people as we could. And in some ways, though not quite the same, if you put all the facts together, we were in a somewhat similar situation with Katrina. And my question is should the Federal Government try to develop a kind of standby capacity, particularly using the military, and have the ability to assist in that kind of massive evacuation? Anybody really want to give a quick answer? Sorry. Mr. Wells. The answer is yes. And Katrina clearly showed that. But it needs to be expanded. I mean, the continuity of government. We need to have that capability. But this bottoms- up approach only works to a certain point, and we need to have a Federal capability that once you get beyond that point that can make up the difference. And it may mean a totally different architecture. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Wells. If that is the way it is, so be it. But this evacuation is a very important thing. And if we would have gotten those people out in time, we wouldn't have lost close to 1,100 lives in Louisiana. Senator Lieberman. Absolutely right. Mr. Wells. So those are things that I think we need to look at to make it better next time so we don't have this happen again. Senator Lieberman. Mr. Carwile. Mr. Carwile. Senator Lieberman, if I might? I agree with my colleague, Mr. Wells, on this point in terms of capacity. I get in a little trouble, I think that the governors of the States have constitutional authorities that we can bring Federal capacity, whether it is military or other, to bear in support of them to whatever degree they are comfortable with. But I just throw that small caveat out. Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Mr. Parr, do you want to answer? Mr. Parr. Yes, sir. I also agree. I would defer a little bit. I think the military, the DOD is a support group in every emergency support function we have because they have so many talents and bring so many expertise to bear. In my opinion, I do not think they should be the lead in an evacuation, but certainly their assets could be used to help an evacuation. It might actually mean changes in statute. Until there is a disaster, the Federal Government has limited involvement, at least until there is some sort of declaration. I would like to see, personally, and I believe Mr. Wells in his writings has talked about expanding FEMA's role pre-disaster declaration. So that we can, even if it is just technical assistance, provide some assistance to States and locals from the Federal perspective in helping for evacuations. Senator Lieberman. Very helpful responses. Thank you. You have been very helpful witnesses overall in assisting the Committee in fulfilling its responsibility. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you. I, too, want to thank each of you for appearing today, for your candid and insightful testimony. It has been very helpful for us to hear from those who were involved directly in the operations. We are going to be continuing our investigation and ultimately drafting some legislation for reforming the system, as well as recommending administrative reforms. And I would invite you to keep in touch with the Committee, and I hope you will be willing to react to proposals as we go along because you do have so much experience that I think is very helpful to this Committee as we attempt to determine what went wrong and what reforms are needed. So I thank you very much for your testimony and your cooperation. The hearing record will remain open for 15 days. We will include your complete written statements in the record, as well as any other materials that you wish to submit. This hearing is now adjourned. Thank you. 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