Congressional Subcommittee Meets to Learn from Hurricane Katrina
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 – Concerned about effectively predicting and preparing the nation for future hurricanes, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the current National Weather Service’s procedures.
“The last thing we need now is critics,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the chair of the commerce committee’s disaster prevention and prediction subcommittee, adding that this is the time for leaders to step forward and help improve hurricane preparation procedures to save lives in the future.
“Hurricane Katrina is a good example of how accurate predictions save lives,” DeMint said. “Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated because they got early and accurate information.”
While the “catastrophic devastation along the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina is like nothing I have witnessed before,” said Max Mayfield, director of the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center, adding that without the warnings and forecasts of the agency, “loss of life would have been far greater.”
According to Mayfield, between 25 and 30 percent of residents usually evacuate during a hurricane, adding that advanced warnings pushed the evacuation rate during Hurricane Katrina to about 80 percent.
While it is important to help Gulf Coast residents recover from Hurricane Katrina, Mayfield said it is also essential to determine how to protect other areas that are vulnerable to hurricanes, which “believe it or not” includes New England.
Mayfield said that forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, were more accurate than usual during Hurricane Katrina, with the projected tracks for 48 hours before the storm hit almost directly in line with the actual path.
Keith Blackwell, from the Coastal Weather Research Center at the University of South Alabama, said the National Hurricane Center did a “good job” predicting and forecasting Hurricane Katrina days before it hit, adding he is not sure “the vast majority of the public has the confidence necessary in these multi-day forecasts to motivate them to begin early preparation.”
Blackwell suggested the National Weather Service should not issue five-day forecasts of hurricanes in all situations because they are generally too “unpredictable” at that point and warning people in certain areas could cause others not to prepare for the hurricane though its path could change to hit them.
Blackwell also suggested an upgrade of the current hurricane scale so it not only forecasts wind intensity, but storm surge, rainfall and inland flooding and storm size so the public will be able to prepare for all facets of the storm.
“We are nowhere near perfect,” he said, adding that “with Hurricane Katrina, we did have accurate warning.”
Marc Levitan, director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, told the subcommittee that “Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated numerous failures and shortcomings in how we have managed both the natural and built environments.”
He added that, “the battle is won off-season,” that new building codes and construction practices should be put in place to reduce the vulnerability of homes and other buildings in hurricane prone areas.
“Now more than ever we must change our practices,” Levitan said.
Patrick Roberts, president of the Florida Association of Broadcasters, also spoke at Tuesday’s hearing.
Utilizing Florida’s disaster response components, Roberts suggested the federal government consider establishing annual public education media campaigns in multiple languages to inform citizens about what to do in case of a disaster, as well as an emergency disaster alert system similar to the “Amber alert” system, which informs the public of child abductions.
Roberts said the nation also could benefit from a “unified command approach” where “all of the players check their egos, logos and party affiliations at the door” to effectively respond to the needs of Americans.
According to Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who is also a member of the Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction, Hurricane Katrina “really didn’t have to happen this way.”
“This wasn’t just predictable, it was predicted,” he said. “We’ve got another storm to test out our models unfortunately,” he added, referring to Hurricane Rita.
