Special Hearing Gives Insight Into How to Meet Hurricane Victims’ Needs
WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 – Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, Wednesday criticized the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina in the first Senate hearing on the subject.
“At this point, we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy,” said Collins, who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I’m very troubled by the hesitant and halting initial response at all levels of government particularly in Louisiana,” she added in a telephone interview.
The hearing was the first in a series investigating what went wrong in the preparation and response to Hurricane Katrina, though it focused on the future, not past mistakes.
“We want to learn from what went wrong,” she said, adding, “We are still so ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophe.”
She said that she doubts the post-9/11 focus on terrorism weakened the response and that she believes FEMA should remain a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Congress is considering whether to form a joint, bipartisan committee to investigate the response to the hurricane or establish an outside panel to do so. Collins said in a telephone interview that a decision is likely to come this week.
Collins said that her committee would in future hearings consider the questions of what went wrong, but Wednesday’s panel focused on how to help the victims going forward. “We will ask the hard questions about the adequacy of planning efforts for this long-predicted natural disaster” in future hearings, she said.
Nevertheless, some witnesses also looked backward.
“I come here shocked and angry,” said former Mayor of New Orleans Marc Morial who is also the president and CEO of the National Urban League. Morial encouraged the need for a victims’ compensation fund much like what was offered to victims after September 11. He also supported the idea of a rebuilding czar who would have access to both Congress and the President.
Iain Logan, operations liaison for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the chief coordination officer on the ground after the December tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, addressed the psychological aspects of handling a disaster.
“The most critical thing is people need to get up and feel like they have hope,” Logan said. After a disaster, he said, some people are resilient while others become overwhelmed.
Disaster relief workers need to be prepared to help both types, he said.
Logan said disaster relief needs to occur quickly but also requires careful planning.
Some people will return to the disaster-struck city and others will stay away. “How do you plan to meet both of those eventualities?” Logan asked. “Forced resettlement is not acceptable in any country in the world.”
Former California Gov. Pete Wilson said that to hasten the recovery, governmental officials should cut red tape wherever possible by setting aside unnecessary rules imposing delays and waiving waiting periods for unemployment benefits. State organizations also can issue bridge loans to close the gap before federal aid arrives.
Patricia Owens, former mayor of Grand Forks, N.D., a city that flooded in 1997 after an unusually snowy winter left 100 inches to thaw, advised evacuees to take their “pets, pills and pillows,” knowing they would be gone for a long time. The majority of people left her city and Owens learned two lessons about evacuation: the importance of providing the public with a constant stream of emergency information and the necessity of having strong communication between community, city, town and state institutions.
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