DHS Command Center Katrina Response - Watch TV, Go Home - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

To the Department of Homeland Security, this gizmo-filled complex — known as the Homeland Security Operations Center — embodies all the lessons learned since Sept. 11, 2001. The idea is that by using technology to feed timely information to the right people the government will be able to prevent or rapidly respond to any catastrophe. The center was tailor-made to manage a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. But details that have emerged in the last week, through Senate testimony and a new report by a House committee, raise questions about how much it accomplished in the face of human error and indecision.

When Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast on Monday, Aug. 29, Brig. Gen. Matthew E. Broderick — the center's director and a veteran of Vietnam and Somalia — was on duty. At the end of each day, his job, based on the information collected by the center's staff, is to file a report to the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, on the nation's security status. More important, if he decides a situation is dangerous or dire enough, it is his responsibility to call the secretary and White House staff to make sure they fully understand what is occurring. The dispatches starting rolling in early Monday morning.

"It is getting bad," said a 10 a. m. report sent to the center from Louis Dabdoub, a Homeland Security official in New Orleans. "Major flooding in some parts of the city. People are calling in for rescue saying they are trapped in attics, etc. That means water is 10 feet high there already. Trees are blowing down. Flooding is worsening every minute."

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So instead of placing a call to Mr. Chertoff or the White House, General Broderick waited. And then the television report came in. "In the French Quarter, on television, they were dancing and drinking beer and seemed to be having a party in the French Quarter of New Orleans that evening," General Broderick told the Senate. "It led us to believe that the flooding may have been just in isolated incidents. It was being handled and it was being properly addressed." With that, he went home for the night.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/weekinreview/19lipt.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Good to see DHS have thier finger on the pulse

Don't you feel safer knowing these guys are protecting you?

[htuttle]

2. So the government was getting all of it's information from cable news...

...when the same cable news gets all of it's information from the government? Talk about a vicious feedback loop. Recycled propaganda going in circles.

Hey guys -- gotta let the truth get in there SOMEWHERE or you have no idea what's going on...