INSIDE WASHINGTON/Be (better) prepared
The federal Homeland Security Department (DHS) is changing its emergency preparedness and response plans to address the strong criticism of its response to Hurricane Katrina last year and to instill confidence among state and local leaders about its readiness. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff spoke recently to city and county officials about those changes, which include retooling the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
At separate speeches in Washington to officials from the National League of Cities (NLC) and the National Association of Counties (NACo), Chertoff discussed what the federal government is doing to ensure its preparedness — especially before the start of the 2006 hurricane season on June 1. Because everyone learned from Katrina that disasters can affect more than the directly hit communities, Chertoff says DHS will consider “also managing the emergency all over the country.” He told local officials that DHS is considering using global positioning systems to track supplies during an emergency to estimate when they will reach their destinations.
The department plans to improve communication by “making sure everyone has the hardware that works when a storm or other catastrophe blows down wireless towers and destroys communication centers.” That includes a plan to use military airplanes and coast guard cutters to transmit signals for satellite phones, which previously have been unreliable.
Marty Simonoff, a councilman from Brea, Calif., who chairs NLC’s Public Safety and Crime Prevention Committee, says his committee will meet in June to discuss how cities can properly prepare for disasters. He likes the department’s plan to use military planes and coast guard vessels to transmit satellite phone signals. “When the committee meets in June, we will be discussing that [idea],” Simonoff says. “We know phone lines and cell towers go down [and] understand the phones are expensive, but there needs to be a way [to ensure continued communication].”
Officials in the Gulf Coast region say disasters, including hurricanes, could pose new problems for communities that still are rebuilding their homes, public buildings and infrastructure. Manly Barton, supervisor in Jackson County, Miss., says if another large hurricane hits this year, many communities would have a difficult time managing evacuations.
“We have 8,000 or 9,000 people in the county who are living in trailers provided by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, and 2,000 to 3,000 that are living in houses that have not been totally repaired,” Barton says. If a hurricane threatens the area, there will be many more people to evacuate.
Barton says another problem is communicating with different levels of government to complete current repair projects. “We’re still trying to identify how we’re going to work our way through the process, and that’s frustrating,” Barton says. “Because of that, and because there have been so many people involved from the federal side, we are six months post storm and have yet to get a single project at a public building going.”
Gary Duhon, a councilmember in St. Mary Parish, La., agrees that poor communication was the biggest problem during Katrina. “They need to figure out a way to do that better before anything else,” he says.
The author is Washington correspondent for American City & County.
