Washington – Hurricane Katrina exposed flaws in the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security that are “too substantial to mend,” and FEMA should be dismantled and rebuilt inside the troubled department, according to a final report by Senate investigators.
The report, to be released to key senators today and to the public next week, makes 86 recommendations that would undo major changes made when President Bush and Congress launched the department in 2003, and would reverse parts of a reorganization ordered by Secretary Michael Chertoff last summer.
It stops short of restoring FEMA to independent, Cabinet-level status, as many in Congress and former agency directors want, but would promote its chief to confer directly with the president in a crisis, according to a summary released to news organizations.
The 800-plus-page report, “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared,” incorporates many findings by earlier House and White House investigations but goes further in recommending structural changes in how all levels of government – especially the Homeland Security Department – respond to catastrophes.
It would replace FEMA with a new National Preparedness and Response Authority whose head would report to the secretary but serve as the president’s top adviser for national emergency management.
It would reunify disaster preparedness and response activities that Chertoff decoupled, and restore grant-making authority taken away by Congress in redefining a stronger national preparedness system with regional coordinators, a larger role for the National Guard and the Defense Department and more money for training, planning and exercises.
“We have concluded that FEMA is in shambles and beyond repair, and that it should be abolished,” chairman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a written statement released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held 22 hearings, interviewed more than 320 people and reviewed more than 838,000 pages of documents.
The report by the 16-member panel formally kicks off a frenzied effort by Congress to make fixes before the June 1 start of hurricane season.
By framing the debate around FEMA’s fate, the report faults the Bush administration for failing to fund and coordinate disaster readiness efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The administration was also faulted for bungling the storm response by neglecting warnings, failing to grasp Katrina’s destructiveness, doing too little or taking the wrong steps before the Aug. 29 landfall. The report also found design flaws in New Orleans levees and failures by city and state leaders.
