During the past week my anger, disgrace and sadness have been building over the utter failure of our federal government to respond to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. It truly is a national disgrace.
Today I emailed and faxed a long letter to my rep. and senators in DC to ask them to immediately launch a bipartisan investigation, and provided a long list of questions (as a start) that I demand to have answered. You can read the entire letter below the break.
It may not make a difference, but I felt compelled to do something in addition to making a donation. Writing the letters made me feel a little better, but not too much, but it's a start. I hope all House and Senate members have full inboxes when they come back from their vacations.
Dear:
I am writing to you to express my shock, anger and sadness regarding the utter failure of our federal government to respond to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. I agree with commentator Joe Scarborough when he called the government's response, particularly in New Orleans, "a national disgrace." As my elected official in Washington, I am demanding that Congress immediately convene a bipartisan investigation into why and how things went so terribly wrong in New Orleans, and why hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent Americans have died not due to the hurricane but due to our federal government's totally inadequate, inept, indifferent response following the hurricane.
Here are just a few of the questions I would like to see answered in the investigation:
· Even though Hurricane Katrina struck on Monday, and even though we knew several days earlier that this would be a catastrophic even, why did it take until Friday for food, water, medicine and toilet facilities to be delivered to the suffering hurricane survivors in New Orleans? Why did the survivors have to go for three or fours days with no food, water or anything approaching sanitary living conditions?
· Why was Hyatt Hotels able to get food and supplies to its guests stranded in city by Wednesday, when the federal government couldn't get food and supplies to hurricane survivors stranded in the city until Friday?
· Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said as late as Saturday that a main problem with the government's response in New Orleans was that nobody could have known that both a hurricane and levee break could occur at the same time. But for many years, if not decades, there have been numerous studies, exercises, simulations, media stories, and reports - including FEMA's own studies - that have shown that it was highly likely that the city's levee system would break if a hurricane stronger than category 3 struck the city. So why is Chertoff claiming that FEMA had no idea that this might have happened. Is FEMA's disaster preparedness planning that deficient?
· How can Americans have any confidence in the Department of Homeland Security's ability to respond to terrorist attacks under scenarios that we cannot begin to imagine in advance, when it cannot adequately respond to natural disasters whose scenarios we were easily able predict in advance?
· Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown have said repeatedly that one of the main reasons for the government's totally inadequate response in New Orleans was that the communications systems broke down. Well, when a catastrophic storm hits a city one would expect all the major communications systems to shut down, and there are very clear and widely known disaster preparedness standards, procedures and technologies to create a back-up communications system. Given this, why was FEMA not able to create a back-up communications system to coordinate the relief and recovery response in New Orleans?
· FEMA's own hurricane exercises in New Orleans designated the Superdome as the primary temporary shelter to house survivors if a hurricane ever struck the city. Since FEMA had several days' advance warning that a major hurricane was going to strike the city, why didn't FEME furnish the Superdome with food, water, medicine and toilet facilities prior to the storm hitting the city? And once the storm hit and the rescuers began taking people to the Superdome, why did several days go by with no food, water, medicine, toilet facilities, security or coordination of any kind at the Superdome?
· FEMA director Michael Brown said he didn't know until Thursday that thousands of hurricane survivors had been gathered at the New Orleans convention center since Tuesday with no food, water, medicine or toilet facilities, even though this had been widely reported in all media outlets since Tuesday. Given that government officials had directed people to the convention center, and given that the convention center was an obvious gathering point for people due to the fact that it is on relatively high ground and was thus more accessible than the Superdome once the Superdome got surrounded by water, how could Brown not have known about the thousands of survivors at the convention center until Thursday?
· FEMA's own hurricane planning exercises for New Orleans - including a "Hurricane Pam" exercise done just a year ago - showed that at least 100,000 residents of the city would not be able to evacuate the city. Since FEMA had several days' warning about the hurricane, why did it not make any effort to evacuate the city before the hurricane struck, particularly those people in hospitals and nursing homes who would be likely to die if the city lost electricity and was flooded?
· Why did it take until Friday for FEMA to evacuate all of the city's hospitals, and why did these hospitals have to survive for days with hundreds of patients but no electricity, food, water and other basic necessities for medical care?
· A week after the hurricane struck, why are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital, developed with millions of tax dollars for just such emergencies, stuck parked 70 miles north of New Orleans because government officials for several days have not let them deploy to the city?
· Why was the USS Bataan - a 844-foot ship equipped with helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water - severely underutilized as it docked off New Orleans for a week immediately following the hurricane, while tens of thousands of hurricane survivors suffered? Why were its hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients not used? Why were its 1,200 sailors not asked to go ashore to help with the relief effort? Why were its food, water and toilets not used?
· FEMA officials have stated that the evacuation of hurricane survivors was slowed down by the fact that it could not operate the evacuation buses at night. Then why were five buses able to evacuate guests staying at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the middle of the night on Thursday night?
· Immediately after the hurricane struck, why did FEMA prevent the Red Cross from entering the city to provide desperately needed humanitarian relief to the hurricane survivors?
· Conversely, why did FEMA prevent hurricane survivors from leaving the city, since there was no food, water, toilet facilities or sanitary conditions in the city and FEMA was preventing that assistance from getting into the city?
· In the first days after the hurricane, why did FEMA reject offers of desperately needed aid and assistance from other states and cities, including offers from the mayor of Chicago and the governor of New Mexico?
· Within a day after the hurricane struck, Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water for the hurricane survivors but FEMA officials turned them away. Why did FEMA reject this offer of desperately needed water while tens of thousands of hurricane survivors were stranded in New Orleans without water?
· Why did FEMA prevent the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel to New Orleans?
· On Saturday, why did FEMA cut Jefferson Parish's emergency communications line?
· One Monday, the 920th Rescue Wing of the Air Force Reserve Command offered three rescue helicopters to FEMA, but the federal government did not respond to this request until 24 hours after the storm. Why did it take so long to get this approved, when so many American lives were at stake?
· Did the depletion of National Guard troops in Louisiana and Mississippi for the Iraqi war play a role in the lack of sufficient National Guard troops in the immediate days after the hurricane, and in the slow response to mobilize the necessary Guard troops? The White House has said that this is not the case, yet it has released several hundred Guard troops in Iraq to come back to the United States to assist in the recovery efforts in New Orleans, so this seems to contradict the White House statements.
· Why didn't President Bush immediately federalize the National Guard so that the federal government could quickly mobilize and effectively coordinate the Guard's desperately needed assistance in the relief efforts in New Orleans?
· Why didn't President Bush mobilize the military more quickly to assist in the relief and recovery efforts in New Orleans? Why weren't military hospital ships released before the hurricane struck, since we had several days' warning about the hurricane coming, rather than several days after the hurricane struck? By the time these military ships get to New Orleans, there won't be anybody left in the city to assist.
· In 2003 and 2004, why did Congress and President Bush make drastic cuts to requested funding to strengthen the levee system and pumping stations in New Orleans?
· A full week after the hurricane struck, why is the federal government still devoting just one small crane to try to close the still-breached levees in New Orleans?
· Why did President Bush wait until Wednesday - two days after the hurricane struck New Orleans - to end his vacation and begin to direct his full attention to the hurricane relief and recovery efforts? By that time, some hurricane survivors had gone two days with no food, water, toilet facilities or sanitary living conditions.
· Why was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on vacation in New Orleans while tens of thousands of American citizens were suffering and dying in the hurricane's aftermath? Why wasn't she in Washington coordinating assistance being offered from other countries? Why was she attending a Broadway show on Wednesday night and buying expensive shoes on Thursday, while tens of thousands of hurricane survivors were still waiting for their first glimpse of life-saving assistance from the federal government?
· Why did FEMA initially reject offers of assistance and aid from other countries, including Russia's offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid?
· Why did Vice President Dick Cheney remain on vacation the entire week after the hurricane and flooding in New Orleans, as tens of thousands of people suffered unnecessarily?
· The Department of Homeland Security was created to make American better prepared to respond to all types of disasters, natural and man-made. But if DHS cannot adequately provide assistance and relief to American citizens following a natural disaster for which it had advance warning, how can Americans have any confidence in DHS's ability to provide adequate assistance and relief following a terrorist attack for which there will be no advance warning?
I urge you to give immediate attention to finding the answers to these questions, and many others, so that in the future no Americans will have to suffer and die due to the federal government's incompetence, indifference and inability to respond to a disaster.
Sincerely,