Washington – The only staff member for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was in New Orleans on the day Hurricane Katrina struck the city told the Senate on Thursday that the agency disregarded his eyewitness accounts that the storm had broken the city’s levee system and would cause catastrophic flooding.
Marty Bahamonde, sent by former FEMA Director Michael Brown to be his “eyes and ears” in New Orleans, said he alerted Brown’s assistant shortly after 11 a.m. Aug. 29 with the “worst possible news” for the below-sea- level city: that the Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.
Bahamonde e-mailed six FEMA aides to report “water flow ‘bad”‘ from Lake Pontchartrain and called Brown personally after 7 p.m. to warn that 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater and that he had photographed a 200-foot-wide breach.
“I was there to provide information. I gave it when I knew it. I gave it to as many people as possible,” said Bahamonde, a 12-year FEMA staffer. “FEMA headquarters knew at 11 o’clock. Mike Brown knew at 7 o’clock. Most of FEMA’s operational staff knew by 9 o’clock that evening. I don’t know where that information went.”
