As many know by now, BushCo's latest political strategy (who's playing politics now?) is to
blame local and state officials for failing to evacuate.
SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Tim, the way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials. The federal government comes in and supports those officials. That's why Mike Brown got on TV on Saturday and he told people to start to get out of there.
Now, ultimately the resources that will get people who don't have cars and don't have the ability to remove themselves has to rest with the kinds of assets a city has--the city's buses, the city's transportation.
Well, let's take the Department of Homeland Security National Response Plan and see what it says about evacuations, shall we?
Aside from being irrelevant to the failure to continue levee and flood projects and to keep the guard and its resources in Louisiana and to bring relief to the stranded at the Superdome and elsewhere, this evacuation claim doesn't withstand much scrutiny.
Now, being reality-based and all, it's important to point out that the local and state official do have important responsibilities when it comes to evacuating its people. From page 8:
A mayor or city or county manager, as a jurisdiction's chief executive, is responsible for the public safety and welfare of the people of that jurisdiction. The Local Chief Executive Officer . . . is responsible for coordinating local resources to address the full spectrum of actions to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents involving all hazards including terrorism, natural disasters, accidents, and other contingencies. . . . [and] has extraordinary powers to suspend local laws and ordinances, such as to establish a curfew, direct evacuations, and, in coordination with the local health authority, to order a quarantine. . . .
(More information on the local role on page 53 confirms this notion: "The majority of initial actions in the threat or hazard area are taken by first responders and local government authorities," and that list includes "evacuations").
So, claims that the local and state officials had a key (if not primary) role in evacuating those in New Orleans and elsewhere appear to hold up.
But, what about the feds? Can they point the finger and wash their hands of the whole affair?
From page ESF #1-2:
The [Department of Transportation Regional Emergency Transportation Coordinator] coordinates with appropriate State, local, and tribal entities to facilitate the movement of people and goods to, from, and within the incident area, and participates in decisions regarding issues such as movement restrictions, critical facilities closures, and evacuations.
Well, if evacuations are so important as Chertoff explains, DOT should have been facilitating the movement of people out of the area and at least participating in the decision-making of the local and state officials! So, there is no division between the local/state and the federal decision making for evacuations - and the blame on any wrong move is shared by all. If the feds simply failed to come to the table (as many suspect), that's plainly a dereliction of responsibilities according to their own plan.
More from page ESF #1-4, on the role of the DOT:
Provides technical assistance to Federal, State, local, and tribal governmental entities in evacuation or movement restriction planning, and determining the most viable transportation networks to, from, and within the incident area, as well as alternate means to move people and goods within the area affected by the incident.
So, the DOT is tasked with providing the technical help for evacuations and figuring out the best way to get the people out!
So, just to make sure Chertoff doesn't try to a "blame Minetta" strategy, what is Department of Homeland Security's part in the DOT's role? From ESF #1-2:
The Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC) supports DOT with relevant situational awareness and threat information reports. . . . The DHS Transportation Security Operations Center provides DOT with relevant situational awareness and threat information reports.
In other words, DHS should have called up DOT and said: "Uh, guys, we got a situation on our hands. Little help?"
And there's more in there. Department of Defense is supposed to help DOT in the evacuations (page ESF #8-9). There are many procedures for post-incident evacuation help as well for various agencies, including DOT, FEMA and DHS itself (page ESF #9-5 has one example).
So, it's simply not true that the failure to evacuate is the state/local officials problem to shoulder. And the blame shouldn't belong solely to them either.