Reply #267: Sept 2: Slow response bewilders former FEMA officials

[mom cat]

Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005

Slow response bewilders former FEMA officials

BY FRANK JAMES AND ANDREW MARTIN

Chicago Tribune
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/12549282.htm

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."

More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the tabletop scenario as 120-mile-an-hour winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.

"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."