Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, testified in front of the House Select Committee today. Questions by Harold Rogers (R-KY) were focused on identifying if the evacuation notices for Louisiana were issued late, and who was responsible for issuing these evacuations. As you'll see in the post, the questions were designed to put blame on state and local officials. But in doing this, both Brown and Rogers are deceptive regarding the evidence about the evacuation. Most of the testimony answering Rogers' questions is below, with commentary.
ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Brown, I want to deal with the timeline -- specific timeline. And we need to be brief and terse and to the point with this.
First question, though, is how important in the greater scheme of things was the failure to evacuate New Orleans?
BROWN: Chairman Rogers, in my opinion, it was critical. The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated.
ROGERS: When did the National Weather Service forecast that storm would hit the New Orleans area?
BROWN: When did they first forecast that?
ROGERS: Yes.
BROWN: I don't know off the top of my head, Mr. Chairman. I would have to go look at...
ROGERS: Well, let me ask you this: The National Weather Service say that that took place at 4 p.m. Central Time on Friday the 26th. Would that be consistent with your understanding of what happened?
BROWN: Yes. Because we were fully activated by that time.
ROGERS: Well, that's 56 hours before the Katrina landfall, correct?
BROWN: That's correct.
ROGERS: And they were told, I understand, that this would be at least a Category 4, possibly 5, hurricane.
BROWN: I know, Congressman Rogers, that I was on those conference calls. I had separate side-conversations with Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center, just about every day, even including Sunday night prior to landfall.
So, yes, there's no reason that anyone should not know there was a potentially catastrophic 5 hurricane.
ROGERS: Was it known by you and others that the floodwall around New Orleans was only rated to take a Category 3 hurricane?
BROWN: Yes. That was a fact that came out of Hurricane Pam, that the levees may or may not hold, that the storm surge may or may not top them. They could top -- the storm surge could top the levees without breaking, and they could top and also break the levees. So we knew both of those were potentials.
ROGERS: So 56 hours before the hurricane made landfall, the National Weather Service had told you and the world, as well as the mayor and the governors, that this was a Category 4 or 5 that would flood the city. And yet was there any action taken by the local officials to evacuate the city at that time?
BROWN: There were eventually -- and I'll get you the names real quickly.
ROGERS: Well, the question is there was no evacuation order in spite of that dire warning, correct?
BROWN: That's correct.
ROGERS: All right.
At 5pm EST on Friday, Hurricane Katrina was near Key West. The predicted path had made a major shift, now predicted to hit at the Mississippi/Alabama border, dangerously close to New Orleans. However, at this point in time, it was still difficult to predict if the hurricane would hit near New Orleans. At the 5pm Friday hurricane probability report, there was a 15 percent chance of Katrina coming within New Orleans. Cities with a larger probability of being hit included Apalachicola, Panama City, Pensacola, Buras, LA, (all 17%), Mobile (16%), and Gulfport, MS (16%).
The local government was concerned with the predicted path of Katrina, as the governor declared a state of emergency for the state on Friday evening. But this is obviously too early for the state to call for an evacuation, considering the relative uncertainty of Katrina's path at the time.
Back to the testimony...
Now then, on Saturday what happened, if anything, on Saturday in terms of warnings to the local officials?
BROWN: Well, I can tell you that on Saturday, our emergency response team, the National Emergency Response Team, was activated and deployed to Baton Rouge. St. Bernard Parish was briefed on the activities and the forecast. The Region Four Atlanta office was fully activated. The Region Six office was fully activated.
ROGERS: What I want to get at, what I'm driving at here is the time line of the evacuation or lack of it and how much warning time you and the local officials had to evacuate the city. That's what I'm trying to focus on here. Let's be real brief and terse on that point.
So on Wednesday, the hurricane liaison team was formed. On Thursday, you had the teleconference with state and local officials, as well as federals, about the potential. On Friday, around 4 o'clock, the National Weather Service issued a warning, Category 4 or 5 on the way. And, oh, by the way, the levee only takes a Category 3.
No evacuation yet ordered, correct?
BROWN: That's correct.
ROGERS: Now, on Saturday -- the director of the National Hurricane Center testified last week that he personally called all three governors and the mayor of New Orleans -- personally called. He said he had only done that one time in his life. I think it's 35 years of service.
He personally called them to give them warnings that this was the real thing. Are you familiar with that?
BROWN: Yes, sir, I am, sir.
ROGERS: And was the evacuation then ordered by the governor and the mayor?
BROWN: No. The evacuation was not ordered until sometime Sunday before noon.
ROGERS: And that was only after the National Weather Service advisory said that Katrina was a quote, potentially catastrophic, quote, storm?
BROWN: That's correct. That's correct.
OGERS: But the evacuation was not ordered until what time on Sunday?
BROWN: I know that I tried to reach the governor numerous times Sunday morning. Finally...
ROGERS: What time did he issue the warning?
BROWN: Pardon?
ROGERS: When did he order the evacuation?
BROWN: I recall sometime between 11 and 12 o'clock on Sunday.
ROGERS: On Sunday?
BROWN: On Sunday.
ROGERS: And then the landfall took place Monday morning?
BROWN: Monday morning, about 8 o'clock.
Brown is reporting the time of the mandatory evacuation in New Orleans, which was ordered on Sunday at noon. But a strongly worded voluntary evacuation was called for by the Mayor on Saturday afternoon. Furthermore, other at-risk parishes had issued voluntary or mandatory evacuation notices earlier on Saturday. Here are some examples:
9AM - Mandatory evacuation for St. Charles Parish
Saturday - Mandatory evacuation for Plaquemines Parish
Saturday - Voluntary evacuation for Jefferson Parish, mandatory evacuation for Grand Isle, Crown Point, Lafitte, & Barataria
Saturday - Voluntary evacuation for St. Bernard Parish. T
Saturday - All residents must evacuate by noon on Saturday.
Other counties such as Lafourche and Terrebonne had also issued evacuation notices on Saturday. To state that evacuations weren't ordered until Sunday in New Orleans or elsewhere in Louisiana is blatantly wrong.
Now an obvious question to ask here is "Why didn't the Mayor call for mandatory evacuations earlier?" Louisiana evacuation plans called for the coastal areas (such as in Plaquemines Parish) to be evacuated before other areas. In past evacuations, traffic jams caused by evacuations out of New Orleans and other areas clogged the roadways, making it very difficult for citizens from more coastal parishes to evacuate. So plans were made to call for the evacuation of coastal areas first, followed by more inland areas such as New Orleans. The Mayor was aware of this, and referenced this on Saturday before the hurricane hit.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in a joint afternoon news conference with Gov. Kathleen Blanco, warned residents to take Katrina seriously. Hoping for yet another near miss could be deadly, he said.
“This is not a test. This is the real deal,” Nagin said. “Things could change, but as of right now, New Orleans is definitely the target for this hurricane.”
The mayor said he would stick with the state’s evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start.
“We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving — right now, as a matter of fact,” Nagin said.
So why the focus on the "late" evacuation? To pin it on state and local officials.
ROGERS: Now, under federal, state and local law, and the Constitution, and the division of powers between the federal and state governments, who has the authority to order the evacuation of a city or a state or an area?
BROWN: Well, I can tell you the federal government does not, and the state and locals do.
ROGERS: Is that pursuant to -- pursuant to what?
BROWN: Well, it's pursuant to state law.
I mean, the Constitution first establishes the concept of federalism; that there are sovereign states. And the states determine how their cities are governed, through either home rule or statutory law or whatever, determine what authorities those mayors have or do not have. But that ultimate responsibility lies with the governor and with the mayor.
ROGERS: So you had no authority to order an evacuation of New Orleans?
BROWN: That's correct. And that's why my regret is is that I could not do more personally to convince them to order that evacuation sooner than what they did.
ROGERS: When did you first ask them to evacuate the city?
BROWN: We first started talking to them about that on Saturday. And I became very passionate about it Sunday morning.
ROGERS: And what was their response?
BROWN: The one time that I got through to the governor Sunday morning before the evacuation order was announced was that she was working on it and she was going into a meeting with the mayor.
ROGERS: Well, now, there was an evacuation plan in place, was there not?
BROWN: Yes.
ROGERS: And how did that come about?
BROWN: Well, between the state doing its normal planing, and then FEMA coming in with the Hurricane Pam exercise -- between those two events, they had a fairly robust plan in place.
ROGERS: So as of July '04, when the actual operation Pam took place, there was an evacuation plan in place for the city of New Orleans awaiting the order of the governor and/or mayor to make it happen, correct?
BROWN: That's correct, sir.
ROGERS: So they had a plan in place and didn't pull the trigger.
BROWN: No, sir.
ROGERS: That's it.
Now this is all true...the responsibility for evacuation lies with state and local officials. But this information isn't being presented to enlighten. They're being presented to spin a specific story: state and local officials didn't call for an evacuation early enough and that this failure "was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated." This point can be debated. But not based on the "evidence" discussed by Brown and Rogers at the hearing.
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