Washington – The federal government must play a stronger role in dealing with catastrophic natural disasters, including greater use of the military, the White House said Thursday in a report ordered by President Bush to study lessons learned from the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.
The report, which combined a detailed reconstruction of what went wrong with more than 100 recommendations for change, embraced the traditional view that state and local authorities should take the lead in ordinary emergencies. But it said that in major disasters like Katrina – which swept across an area the size of Great Britain – only the federal government has the resources and broad authority to react effectively.
And, while saying it was not practical to “simply let the Pentagon do it,” the report called for much greater use of the Defense Department in responding to future catastrophes.
“The fact is that the U.S. military may be the only entity available to the federal government to protect the American people” in a disaster, said Frances Townsend, the president’s adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, who supervised preparation of the report.
But the military will not be able to use its superior resources effectively, the report said, unless existing rules are changed to ensure that active-duty troops and National Guard units are under a unified command.
While active-duty units were coordinated by the Colorado Springs-based U.S. Northern Command, National Guard units were run by various states.
“For the first two days of Katrina response operations, (Northern Command) did not have situational awareness of what forces the National Guard had on the ground,” the report said.
Townsend said the goal of the report was not to assess blame but to glean lessons for the future. Nonetheless, the report cataloged shortcomings in the responses of local and state officials.
