Three years after Katrina, has FEMA learned its lesson?

By ERIC LIPTON, New York Times

Last update: August 31, 2008 - 10:04 PM

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WASHINGTON - Inside the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday, no one needed to be told that after three years of cramming, test time had finally come.

Representatives of more than a dozen federal agencies tried to ensure that everyone knew what part they had to play as Hurricane Gustav churned toward the Gulf Coast.

"What I need from you is a sense of exactly what the Coast Guard can do," Paul Schwartz, the leader of the 24-hour command center that was activated for the storm, told a Coast Guard representative.

Nature has a way of upending disaster-response plans. But there was a certain confidence on Sunday that the federal government had learned its painful lessons and that there would be no repeat of the ineptitude that defined the response to Hurricane Katrina in 1995.

The evidence was visible both in the command center in Washington and on the ground across the Gulf Coast. The Coast Guard, Defense Department, National Guard and FEMA all have far more personnel, equipment and emergency supplies in the region than they did three years ago before the hurricane, officials said.

FEMA, for example, had 18 search-and-rescue teams ready to go, compared with seven before Katrina landed. It had 240 truckloads of water and packaged meals and 400 more truckloads of blankets, cots and tarps, far more than three years ago.

The Pentagon was coordinating the airlift of more than 1,000 patients from Gulf Coast hospitals and nursing homes.

The Coast Guard had about 500 extra personnel assigned to the response, said Vice Adm. Bob Papp. They were ready to operate 31 helicopters brought to the region, and two squads with small rescue boats, among other equipment.

"We have drilled, we have learned lessons," Papp said. Then, echoing the remarks of others, he added: "I am a sailor and I have been dealing with weather all my life. So I know there will always be a surprise."

Critical to the response was a decision by officials in New Orleans not to set up emergency shelters within the city limits, as they did at the Superdome in 2005. That means the tens of thousands who have evacuated are at a safe distance from the city, and getting them food and shelter will be much less complicated.

Complications were still cropping up, including word from several hospitals and nursing homes that their own evacuation plans had fallen through. But federal officials said they found the planes and other equipment necessary to handle the load.

Louisiana officials also abandoned an effort to immediately register people as they boarded buses to evacuate, after computer problems surfaced. City and state officials, with help from the federal government, also struggled briefly to find an alternative supply of buses after only about 200 of the 700 they had arranged for arrived to help with evacuation.

FEMA activated its new family locator service -- a call-in system that helps separated family members find one another. And it was providing shelter space for cats and dogs owned by families evacuating from the region.

FEMA also has more experienced top officials than it did three years ago. The agency's director, R. David Paulison, unlike his predecessor, Michael Brown, has decades' experience in emergency response; he previously served as the chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Department, which was routinely tested by hurricanes.

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