In the 1960's and early 70's, the agencies responsible for combatting wildland fire started thinking about the best way to respond to multi-jurisdictional emergencies. The result of that planning effort is the Incident Command System (ICS), adopted by the Forest Service, Park Service, BLM, BIA, and FWS to manage incidents of all types and complexities.
The most amazing thing about ICS is that there is no relation between what you as an individual do during an emergency and what you do at your regular desk job.
For instance, a GS-9 ($35-40k per year)Range Technician can become a Type I Incident Commander and be responsible for hundreds of people and millions of dollars for two weeks and then go back to his regular job working with ranchers and cows. It is not uncommon for people to show up on fires and find themselves working for people they supervise at the home unit. Everyone understands that the positions we work at on an incident are solely determined by our experience and training and the fire agencies have bought into the idea that the best qualified person for an emergency job may not be the highest paid or the one with the grandest title.
Yes, we make mistakes... but they are rarely mistakes that stem from agency turf battles, petty jealousies, or personality conflicts because everyone buys into the system. (I'm talking emergencies only... we screw a lot of things up in our regular jobs.)
What kills me is that FEMA and other agencies responding to Katrina have never figured out (or had the leadership to act upon) the idea that the best people for making decisions in a stressful, dynamic environment where people's lives are at stake are not necessarily the ones with the titles. Skills and personalities that allow you to climb the bureaucracy and rule the conference rooms are often counter-productive in emergency situations.
After 9-11, Homeland Security adopted the ICS and then put so many layers of advisory groups and upper-level involvement to make sure that all departments and concerns had a say at the levels above the responders that it is no surprise the command structure for the response is non-existent or at least severely weakened. For example, in an incident of this size, the "Command" structure includes the following according to the National Response Plan:
>Homeland Security Council/National Security Council
>Policy Coordination Committees (White House)
>Interagency Incident Management Group (Core Group = 23 Departments/agencies and the Red Cross... then there is "Subject Matter Expert Augmentation)
>Homeland Security Operations Center with Representatives from 18 Departments or agencies, Red Cross, and State and Local govt.)
>Joint Field Office
>and then, Emergency Response personnel and Teams (the folks on the ground)
And exactly how many of the higher levels have people trained in this sort of stuff?
Saying you follow ICS doesn't mean a thing unless you empower people, and that is something this administration is loathe to do. Even if you do empower people, it's tough for them to act without logistical support, which takes coordination and planning.
(By the way, the one agency outside the fire community that bought into ICS in a big way is the Coast Guard. As near as I can tell, they have been head and shoulders above everyone else in the response... you listen to the pilots interviewed and you can tell they have a command structure and they have at least the rudiments of a plan. That's no accident. The Coast Guard, made fun of by the other services and rarely given credit by press and public, are the ones doing what they are trained to do and saving lives.)
As already implied, the other critical part of ICS is to always have a plan and to base that plan on the best information possible. The plan encompasses both the strategic long-term and the tactical short-term and everyone who works on the incident is aware of what they are working on that day and how it fits into the larger picture.
In the fire community, we also do pre-planning for fires we know will happen some day. For instance, there are plans for Yosemite, Flagstaff, and Santa Fe that detail things like communications frequencies, staging areas, evacuation plans, resources needed, etc. Now, within the first half hour, your plan is going to go to hell, but by having gone through the exercise, you know what needs to be done and how you're going to communicate and what the command structure will be.
I know the challenges created by Katrina and the flood are immense, but they are not at all unexpected and resources should have been there within 24 hours if not sooner and they should have arrived with a plan and command.
It is not surprising this didn't happen. In the response to the FL hurricanes last year, every wildland fire person who went to help came back with disgust at the lack of planning, coordination, and command inherent in that operation. People and resources were just sent out to do "work" with no structure and no instructions. FEMA kept releasing press releases that said "We spent X millions in County Y" but they couldn't tell you how that money was spent or what good it did. We're seeing the same scattershot approach here.
This whole thing in the Gulf States is infuriating to me as a guy with experience in emergency operations and even more so as an American. We could do better.