Wrong Priorities
[Kris Alexander,
Thursday September 8, 2005 at 9:55am ]
Finally a good piece of analysis. From Newsweek:
My take: Based on my own personal experience, this is right on the money. I never thought placing FEMA under DHS made much sense, and I’ve thought that DHS’s priorities have been wrong-headed from the start.
FEMA understands disasters, and many of its programs have been in place and effective for years. Since its inception, DHS has been chasing its tail looking under every rock for the next 9/11 while ignoring the nuts and bolts issues that face our countries. Hurricane season comes every year. Long after you and I are dead, and 9/11 is a distant memory that our grandkids re-live on the history channel, Hurricane season will come. People are fleeting, Mother Nature endures.
The EMPG grant program cited in the article is an excellent example of DHS’s skewed priorities. The cuts cited by the article were originally going to be much deeper and there were going to be much tighter restrictions on how the money was spent. These restrictions were based on DHS’s view of the world, and not the reality on the ground.
This is some info from a NEMA report on how last year proposed changes to the EMPG grant program would have impacted state and local responders:
Here is how the survey assessed the potential impact on two key states in this disaster:
Alabama would have lost 10.5 Full time employees at the state level, and fifty at the local level. They assessed that emergency management preparedness and response capability would suffer statewide. Many county Emergency Management Agencies would have probably closed.
Louisiana would have lost 34 full time employees at the state level, 40 full time employees at the local level, and 65 part time employees at the local level. It would have had a severe impact on state and local programs.
States and local government depend on this money for their emergency management programs to survive. If these changes had been allowed to stand, the result would have been devastating. DHS was going to use this money as a bill payer for other projects. Luckily, congress intervened and the budget was not cut as deeply.
DHS’s list of 100 disaster scenarios is also another great example of an agency that just doesn’t get it. Back when I worked for the State of Texas doing homeland security stuff, we were asked to comment on this list of scenarios. It had everything short of a Martian invasion. I’m not kidding. It was ridiculous and unrealistic, and seemed more like the product of too many bad techothrillers and not an honest assessment of what actually faces our country. I don’t recall a NOLA levy breech being on the list.
So what should we do? First, cut FEMA out of DHS. Next, we need to seriously evaluate what, exactly, DHS is for. In my assessment much of the heat that FEMA is taking over Katrina is the product of the extra layer of bureaucracy that DHS has added to the federal response.
In the weeks before Hurricane Katrina, state emergency-planning directors repeatedly warned that the Bush administration’s post-September 11 focus on terrorism was seriously undercutting the federal government’s ability to respond to catastrophic hurricanes and other natural disasters.
In a tough letter to Congress last July and in a private meeting with top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials on Aug. 21, a group of state emergency-planning directors complained that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s traditional role of preparing for natural disasters “has been forgotten” under a DHS almost entirely devoted to the terror threat.
***
Internal Homeland Security documents obtained by NEWSWEEK lend support to the state directors’ complaints. Out of 15 “all hazards” disaster-planning scenarios approved by DHS and the White House Homeland Security Council last May, only three involved natural disasters, one document shows.
***
They also have fueled a push in Congress to undo at least part of the major federal government overhaul that created the Department of Homeland Security in the first place. Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan said this week he was introducing legislation to take FEMA out of DHS and restore it as an independent agency whose director would have direct access to the president.
***
The concerns about the direction of FEMA have been building for some time, according to Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Planning Association, a group that represents state emergency planners. Some of it revolves around funding. While grants to states and local governments for counterterrorism emergency planning have soared to more than $1.1 billion a year, funding under FEMA’s Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) program—which is specifically for natural disasters—was cut back $10 million by the White House this year to only $170 million, she noted.
***
Baughman said the disparities for Alabama are especially sharp. In his state, between $30 million to $40 million in federal funds are available to plan and train for hypothetical terror attacks while only $1.8 million is available for natural disasters. Although Alabama hasn’t suffered any terror attacks in recent years, it has had 24 natural-disaster declarations over the past decade, including three in the last year or so, Baughman said.
***
The internal FEMA documents underscore the point even further. Even before Homeland Security officials published their set of theoretical disaster scenarios last spring—which involved planning for such calamities as an “aerosol anthrax” attack and the unleashing of a “10-Kiloton Improved Nuclear Device”—an earlier February 2004 “National All-Hazards Exercise Schedule” prepared by Homeland Security showed the same imbalance. The schedule, marked “for Official Use Only,” included planning for more than 100 disaster scenarios, almost all of them terror incidents. In fact, only seven involved natural disasters—two earthquakes and four hurricanes, although two of the hurricanes were described as incidents in which relief and recovery efforts would be practiced “in context of a credible WMD threat during a natural disaster.”
My take: Based on my own personal experience, this is right on the money. I never thought placing FEMA under DHS made much sense, and I’ve thought that DHS’s priorities have been wrong-headed from the start.
FEMA understands disasters, and many of its programs have been in place and effective for years. Since its inception, DHS has been chasing its tail looking under every rock for the next 9/11 while ignoring the nuts and bolts issues that face our countries. Hurricane season comes every year. Long after you and I are dead, and 9/11 is a distant memory that our grandkids re-live on the history channel, Hurricane season will come. People are fleeting, Mother Nature endures.
The EMPG grant program cited in the article is an excellent example of DHS’s skewed priorities. The cuts cited by the article were originally going to be much deeper and there were going to be much tighter restrictions on how the money was spent. These restrictions were based on DHS’s view of the world, and not the reality on the ground.
This is some info from a NEMA report on how last year proposed changes to the EMPG grant program would have impacted state and local responders:
The President’s FY05 budget includes a proposal for a 25 percent cap on use of Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) funding to support state and local personnel. A recent NEMA survey revealed that approximately 1,565 state level positions are supported through EMPG dollars. At the local level, approximately 2,170 full time positions and 1,184 part-time positions are supported through EMPG. Listed below is a sampling of the number or percentage of state and local emergency management positions funded in part by the EMPG program and the impact the proposal would have on state and local programs.
Here is how the survey assessed the potential impact on two key states in this disaster:
Alabama would have lost 10.5 Full time employees at the state level, and fifty at the local level. They assessed that emergency management preparedness and response capability would suffer statewide. Many county Emergency Management Agencies would have probably closed.
Louisiana would have lost 34 full time employees at the state level, 40 full time employees at the local level, and 65 part time employees at the local level. It would have had a severe impact on state and local programs.
States and local government depend on this money for their emergency management programs to survive. If these changes had been allowed to stand, the result would have been devastating. DHS was going to use this money as a bill payer for other projects. Luckily, congress intervened and the budget was not cut as deeply.
DHS’s list of 100 disaster scenarios is also another great example of an agency that just doesn’t get it. Back when I worked for the State of Texas doing homeland security stuff, we were asked to comment on this list of scenarios. It had everything short of a Martian invasion. I’m not kidding. It was ridiculous and unrealistic, and seemed more like the product of too many bad techothrillers and not an honest assessment of what actually faces our country. I don’t recall a NOLA levy breech being on the list.
So what should we do? First, cut FEMA out of DHS. Next, we need to seriously evaluate what, exactly, DHS is for. In my assessment much of the heat that FEMA is taking over Katrina is the product of the extra layer of bureaucracy that DHS has added to the federal response.
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The disaster recovery mechanism would be no better in the case of a Nuke... Look at it this way, the situation in New Orleans, damage wise, is very similar to what a nuke would have done to the area (see, for example, FAS's nuke-damage mapper, when set to new orleans, and compare it to the sattelite photographs), and then consider that a nuke would probably have a similar effect on the flood-control system.
So not only has the feds failed the disaster recovery test, the ones they have trained for (eg, Nuclear attack), they probably would have failed in similar ways. Not good.
As I live in another mega-catastrophy area (San Francisco, the only spring 2001 disaster in FEMA's worst case NOT to hit yet), this has really impacted how I'm planning for disaster recovery.
Response to the above requires two basic elements: Resources and a method of delivery/utilization/employment. Typically, plans are in place to define the resources and tactics for an "anticipated" emergency. Then the appropriate leaders evaluate the emergency and select the appropriate plan to implement. There is a major weakness in this if resources are not sent en route until the "appropriate" plan is selected. Time is lost selecting the "appropriate" plan, and If the scope or nature of the emergency goes beyond existing plans, even more time can be lost.
When the Cuban refugees rioted and set Ft Chaffee ablaze, our commander requested "as many troops as possible" from nearby Ft Sill, and immediate federalization of a NG unit training there. One FEMA rep said, "What exactly will you do with these troops. Are you sure you will need everything you are asking for? Why not accurately determine the needed strength and then request it?" The commander of the military task force's answer was "We have several hours to develop a plan for using the troops before they get here. If I wait for a plan and strength requirement before requesting troops, that just further delays the ability to take decisive action." In short, by the time the NG troops were federalized and the Ft Sill troops arrived, we knew exactly what to do with them, and while we ended up with a couple of hundred "extra" troops, we had the necessary force in place 10 to 12 hours sooner that the FEMA director's approach would have allowed. Order was restored, and the NG troops returned to NG status in two or three days.
Shift to Ft Sill, OK, 1967. A blizzard was forecast to hit New Mexico very hard. Ft Sill was regularly tasked to provide Chinook helicopter support to relief operations in cases like this. The aviation commander decided to send two crews on a "routine overnight training mission" to an airfield in NM away from the blizzard area, but one day closer to the expected relief site. If the tasker came down to provide relief, we were prepared, if not, then we flew home after a "routine training mission". Tasker came down, and the first two Chinooks were responding a day or more earlier than if we had simply waited.
Using the above as an example of what could have been done on the Gulf coast, consider the following:
If four Chinooks had been pre deployed in a location outside the storm's path and then were on station Tuesday morning, flying in sling loads of emergency food and water from a staging area 50 miles outside the city, they could have done the following:
2 liters water and 2 MREs per person on the ground - approx 6 pounds
14,000 pound ACL for each Chinook
2,333 individuals provided emergency water/food per Chinook sortie
4 Chinooks, 1 hour turn around time per sortie, 10 turn-arounds in a day
40 Chinook sorties in a day x 2,333 = 93,320 individuals with emergency relief per day
PROVIDED BY JUST 4 CHINOOKS - or just 8 Blackhawks.......
That's an amazing dent in one problem, had someone simply authorized it. And that completely ignores the number of seriously sick and injured people who could have been evacuated on the trip from New Orleans back to the staging area.
My suspicion is that leaders at all levels, especially FEMA tried to determine the "right resources and response" before mobilizing them. By trying to be efficient, they were not effective. There's an old military saying, "Once the first shot is fired, battle plans go out the window". While a significant oversimplification, there is still some significant truth therein.
Old school way of doing things, how I wish our leadership today had that about them.
How bout you run for office.
I'll vote for you!
FEMA was independent and ineffective during the 1980s, and independent and more effective during the 1990s. The reason was better leadership, not the structure of the organization chart. Naturally it helped that James Lee Witt was both an experienced disaster management hand and a close Clinton associate, but you can't replicate personal relationships by formalizing the arrangements for who reports to whom.
FEMA was underprepared for the Katrina emergency because the political leadership in Washington was focused on terrorism. That means FEMA's leadership, that of DHS, and the White House, and the Congress. What we need is an adjustment of the emphasis in the relevant agencies to better reflect real risks, and leadership able to address them. What caused risk assessment within DHS and FEMA specifically to become skewed toward terrorist threats is obvious -- it was 9/11. Katrina has fixed that problem already. It hasn't fixed the problem of agency heads who are over their depth, but moving FEMA out of DHS won't fix that problem either.
You are correct in one manner. The current FEMA leadership, as well as other Govt agencies, do not appear to be knowledgeable, take charge types. Structural changes will not fix lethargy, analysis paralysis and bureaucratic freeze.
But there is one structural problem that aggrivates the response problem right now, when our military and resources are on shoestring budgets, and that is that FEMA is a reimbursal agency. If taking the initiative and expending $$$ is not apporved for reimbursal, the budget consequences could be a nightmare for the commander who went out on a limb. Thus, no one takes the initiative until FEMA authorizes reimbursement of expenses. And, as exemplified by the Navy Pensacola helicopter fiasco, taking the initiative can also bring disciplinary action, even if you save lives!
My examples of 1980 and 1967 come from times when we (the military unit) either had the funds on hand (1967) or FEMA rolled over on the spot to the Cuban Task Force's Commander. But in the case of the Cuban operation, we had already been in operation for a few weeks. Faced with the general's logic, the FEMA guys accepted the immediate response approach.
We need seasoned professionals at the helm of agencies such as FEMA, not political reward holders. The head of FEMA must have significant managerial experience that includes on his feet problem solving, stewardship over significant physical resources, and leadership of significant numbers of people. During Brownie's career, he never supervised anyone other than himself until coat-tailed into FEMA's higher echelons. The military promotes colonels to brig general, not privates.
Al
When all about you
Are running in circles
Screaming and shouting
And you are calm
Maybe there is something you don't know?
At no point would I disagree with you that leadership failed. That said, however, the providers of relief (such as the DOD, NG, etc) were not only hamstrung by the pathetic leadership, but since they lack the $$$ to act on their own, the problem was set in concrete.
We are constantly called "the richest country in the world", yet this year we have to borrow hundreds of billions of $$$ to provide a less than robust package of social and governmental serices to the people. We will have to borrow additional tens or hundreds of billions to pay for the Katrina relief bill, as well as accept charity from around the world. This paucity of public funds simply adds to the failure that weak leadership creates.
Al
In another life, I had a great deal to do with the standing up of USNORTHCOM, and I still believe that if any of the apocalyptic scenarios are actually realized, the 'Bad Guys' will be formed around the core (corps) of DHS and it's military adjunct, NORTHCOM. The dependency that Katrina is engendering in the american public on FEMA/DHS smacks just a bit too loudly of previous regimes that promised bread and circuses, or 'to get the trains running on time'. . .
I don't think that is correct. Its pretty clear that in addition to whatever limitation the people in charge might have had, the DHS has made imagined terrorist incidents a higher priority than responses to the almost certain natural disasters. That is a policy failure.
Similar to how there is a PACOM, a CENTCOM, a EURCOM, and so forth, the US would be divided into regional "disaster" commands with a commander and staff. The regional commands will be responsible for planning for both natural and terror disasters in their areas of responsibility.
The commands terroritory will be modeled similar to the current district boundaries of the USACE. However, the boundaries of the commands would include whole states instead of following watershed boundaries.
The commands will work similar to the military commands. Resources, local/state/federal agencies, military units (Active Reserve, Guard), and so forth would be assigned/attached to them for use during events and for training much like units rotating through Iraq fall under CentCom while supporting OIF and OEF. This attachment/assignment would include financial and budgetary support. The funding needed to fly a Blackhawk from the 101st would come from the regional command who would in turn get the money from the relief/recovery packages similar to the one just passed by Congress in response to Katrina.
The regional commands will be headed by a civilian but would include an active duty military liason section that is familar with both the capabilities of nearby units and the capabilities of military resources in general (The local aviation unit can haul this much in this long from this far/A Blackhawk helicopter can haul this much in this long from this far).
These commands would fall under DHS and the regional commanders next higher commander would be the Sec of HS.
The regional commands, based on likely scenarios, will stockpile supplies like the military currently prepositons equipment in such places as the Republic of Korea.
The major problem with Katrina, and any other disaster that spreads across state boundaries, is that the jump between state and federal level is difficult. The establishment of regional commands as described above would eliminate that problem. In a crisis you need a leader (not a manager) who has the established legal authority to quickly and decisivly take command of the situation and implement a course of action to provide and relief to the areas that need it.
How does that sound as a rough plan for reform of the national emergency response system?
immediate disaster relief could have been done with minimal resources - you just need to get a small amount of food and water to the right places *quickly*.
So what went wrong ? Well, saying "FEMA understands disasters" is not quite right: under Clinton, with Witt in charge, FEMA did a great job. But regrettably, this administration has treated FEMA as a "turkey farm", a source of patronage jobs for unqualified people who worked on the Bush campaign. Brown is the worst example - no previous experience in disaster management, and it now turns out much of his resume was false. The main thrust of the current FEMA management has been to downsize and outsource FEMA's activities, and one consequence is that the mid-level experts have quit in frustration and gone to the private sector. And when there's a disaster, you don't really have time to go and negotiate contracts with the private sector to get the emergency relief started - people on rooftops in
90F weather need clean water RIGHT NOW!
So sadly, the current FEMA is worthless - maybe even worse than worthless, as there are accounts that FEMA actively prevented the Red Cross and groups of private citizens from entering New Orleans to provide relief or attempt rescue.
In one case a group of 500 private boats were turned back.
Meanwhile I hear reports that the official rescue effort
has only 300 boats.
Competence matters. Details matter. Experience matters. Common sense matters. All those have been lacking in the response to the hurricane. The Coast Guard seems to be the only federal agency which responded appropriately and promptly.
The delay in responding to Katrina was not a lack of a command structure, but a failure of the leadership of existing command structures that had the necessary resources to respond immediately. DOD and the administration wrestled with jurisdictional issues. Whether to send the NG to serve under the Governor, or the Federal troops under the President via the Insurrection Act, is one example. I'm sure this was further exacerbated by ingrained notions of "turf". My more cynical thoughts imagine Rumsfeld seeing his federal forces under the tacit command of the LA Governor in the same light as surrendering them to a foreign commander!
My Chinook scenario would have caused no legal or jurisdictional conflicts, and would have ameliorated much suffering. Such resources were available from Ft Hood, TX (active Army) and Dallas (NG). Ft Hood helos deployed late Wed, and Dallas on Sat, two and 5 days after the storm came ashore. Had FEMA or DOD told the Governors that Army helos would be providing such support immediately, the issue of command and control would have never arisen. After all, no governor questioned the Coast Guard operations that were not under their command.
But the leadership in Washington was focused on the "big picture" and couldn't see the benefit of immediate small unit humanitarian actions. On the Sunday before Katrina came ashore, NM Gov Richardson offered, and LA Gov Blanco accepted, an offer of NMNG troops. The Guard bureau didn't give the necessary OK until Tues, when the "conventional wisdom" in DC decided that NG was better than Active for this event. My view? - Anything "inappropriate" that arrives immediately is better than the "most appropriate" that arrives five days later.
Another lesson to be learned here is that when disaster strikes, it can strike the local "first responders" in proportion to the general population, seriously reducing local response ability. 9/11 was nothing compared to Katrina. It was confined to a small area. Police and firefighters did not have all their families displaced for them to worry about. Response facilities five blocks away were still standing. Communications were disrupted, but not obliterated. I would imagine that there were more police and fire fighters immediately available to respond within a 25 miles radius of the Towers than there are police, firefighters and National Guard in the whole state of LA. Lessons learned in 9/11 do not automatically apply to Katrina. Today's NT Times had a piece alluding to federal planners never having taken into account any notion of the bulk of local and state resources being crippled by living and working in the disaster area. EVEN IN A WMD scenario!
The answer is not a more creative bureaucratic design. The answer is creative leadership, groomed by a culture that allows and encourages creative, fast and effective thinking. A graduate economics professor of mine once said that "effectiveness must be achieved before any measure of efficiency can be claimed. You can run the least expensive fire department in the world, but if it is always late to the fire, what have you accomplished?" In a disaster, leaders must do what is effective, and immediately. While massive waste is not tolerable, the risk aversive mentality that tries to avoid waste or maximize efficiency while delaying response is even more intolerable.
At the same time, we cannot design organizations and plans that are totally dependent on the qualities of their leaders. They must be designed to maximize effectivenes when staffed by competent people. Brilliant people will then make these organizations and plans operate efficiently and even more effectively.
Al
DHS resources to natural disasters, and somebody dumped a
vial of anthrax in Kansas City, the same complaints would be made.
My son made a very good observation I'll pass on:
it's the Federal Emergency MANAGEMENT Agency. We need MANAGEMENT before the emergency, to make plans, prepostion supplies, etc, and we need MANAGEMENT after to coordinate logistical issues, etc, but during an emergency we need LEADERSHIP, and anybody who thinks that that is coming from a DC bureaucracy with the word MANAGEMENT in its name is naive. LEADERSHIP is provided from the front (local) not the back (DC).
Whatever happened to being proactive, dynamic, and aggressive? To asking forgiveness instead of permission? To exercising intiative and forethought instead of just (belatedly) reacting to events? Changing the institutional structural isn't gonna do squat if the leadership is still weak and indecisive. Right now all the leadership and its supporters can offer is half-ass excuses. And your comments on efficiency versus effectiveness are spot on. You should try dealing with the new, more "efficient" Marine administrative bureaucracy. (Good luck with any pay problems!)
And bud, you're absolutely right on one thing: our national leadership should have been at the front immediately after the storm, not hanging out in DC, or wherever they were.