FEMA Official Acknowledges Poor Response to Hurricane Katrina

WASHINGTON – Poor planning and communication plagued FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina, a top agency official said Monday, acknowledging that other federal departments' offers to help rescue storm victims went unheard or were ignored.

William Lokey, chief of response operations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told senators he was unaware that the Interior Department offered to send boats, planes, trucks and personnel to rescue Katrina's victims immediate after the Aug. 29 storm hit.

"Communications and coordination was lacking, preplanning was lacking," Lokey testified at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. "We were not prepared for this."

"Does that suggest a symptomatic problem when you, as a federal coordinating official, do not get word that these assets are available?" asked Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the committee's chair.

Answered Lokey: "At minimum, that shows we have a lot more work to do at the federal level."

Underscoring communication problems between state and federal officials, Lokey said FEMA rejected a request by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries for rubber boats to rescue victims stranded in flooded areas. Instead, he said, FEMA provided a smaller number of flat-bottom boats that could not be punctured by debris in the water.

Lt. Col. Keith Lacaze, the state Wildlife and Fisheries assistant administrator, said the rubber boats could have been used to rescue sick and immobile victims in shallow-water areas.

"I believe the rafts would have been beneficial, especially in the early stages," Lacaze said.

But Lokey strove to explain an internal FEMA e-mail, dated Sept. 1, indicating the agency was pulling back its search and rescue task force efforts in Louisiana even as other federal departments frantically kept trying.

Lokey said rescues were suspended only temporarily — perhaps only a day — because of looting and other security problems in the days right after the storm hit

"They did not pull out," Lokey said.

"They just pulled back?" asked Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., the panel's top Democrat.

"They redirected in other places and they did not go into the hazardous area until they ascertained exactly what the threat was and were able to get law enforcement people to accompany them," Lokey said.

The testimony came in the latest hearing of the Senate inquiry into the government's sluggish response to Katrina. The panel is expected to issue its findings in mid-March. A separate House panel is concluding its own investigation with a report due Feb. 15.