Some Katrina Fallout

The official Congressional report on its inquiry into the response of government agencies to hurricane Katrina was released today. Popular Mechanics, of all publications, believes it has turned up some distortions in the report:

[H]ere’s a quick overview of what seems to be the report’s most troubling shortfall: consistently blaming individuals for failing to foresee circumstances that only became clear with the laser-sharp vision of hindsight.

For example, the report states:

"Fifty-six hours prior to landfall, Hurricane Katrina presented an extremely high probability threat that 75 percent of New Orleans would be flooded, tens of thousands of residents may be killed, hundreds of thousands trapped in flood waters up to 20 feet, hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures destroyed, a million people evacuated from their homes, and the greater New Orleans area would be rendered uninhabitable for several months or years."

This statistic is referred to often, and refers to computer modeling of a direct Category 5 hurricane landfall in New Orleans. However, it's also a distortion. According to the data the Committee itself examined, 56 hours prior to landfall, Katrina was a relatively weak Category 3 storm, heading west in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the next few hours, it began its turn north, but where the storm was going to make landfall along the Gulf Coast was any weatherman's bet (the average 48-hour margin of error is 160 miles). In fact, it was not until the next day, Saturday, that it became more of a certainty that the hurricane was heading toward New Orleans. Furthermore, hurricane forecasters and emergency managers tell PM that until about 24 hours before landfall, hurricanes are too unpredictable to warrant the sort of blanket evacuation orders the report describes.

And according to transcripts obtained by POPULAR MECHANICS of the Sunday, August 28, videoconference between FEMA, DHS, Gulf State authorities, the National Weather Service and the White House, as late as Sunday—only 24 hours before landfall—National Hurricane Center storm tracks predicted: "There will be minimal flooding in the city of New Orleans itself." The death tolls listed in the congressional report presuppose: A) certainty that the storm would hit New Orleans directly, and B) certainty the storm would strengthen to a Category 4 or 5. Neither of these propositions was certain 56 hours prior to landfall. And, in fact, the hurricane was a Category 3 storm when it did hit.

The Committee report also criticizes the DHS and FEMA for not including the Department of Defense in their pre-storm and immediate post-storm planning. However, the same August 28 transcript shows that DoD was included from the beginning. In reality, despite organizational shortcomings, the rescue spearheaded by the National Guard and the Coast Guard turned out to be the largest and fastest in U.S. history, mobilizing nearly 100,000 responders within three days of the hurricane’s landfall.

The point is that hindsight is useful only to a point, and should not be the basis for critique of actions taken or not taken on the basis of forecasts at the time. There is no question that Katrina and its aftermath has been a tragedy on multiple levels, including poor coordination between government agencies and personnel. However, there is a real danger brewing if the powers that be do not clearly understand what communications and forecasting actually took place prior to the event. If the aftermath is viewed as a massive failure to act on information that we knew to be true after the fact, and a lack of communication between groups that in fact took place, our ability to plan for the next disaster will be inherently flawed because the new schemes will be built on faulty assumptions. For instance, it appears, based on recording of an interagency meeting prior to landfall, that the DoD did in fact offer its resources. If the plan for the future is based upon an assumption that such an offer did not take place, we will have failed to deal with the true problem: help was offered but still not used properly. We will find ourselves in exactly the same situation again in the future.

Mistakes were made, but the true story is far from over. Blame is easy to cast without much foundation. Crafting true solutions is the hard work. Let's hope good people with pure intentions are being heard.