From our second book - More Lessons Learned and Not Told - On the anniversary of our deploying Search & Rescue Foundation member teams in response to Hurricane Katrina: In 2005 just before Katrina Bear’s Foundation held the nation’s largest mass casualty marine rescue training. Two months before Katrina we held training in New York harbor for twenty-nine agencies. Two months later when Louisiana was overwhelmed the first question asked of these team leaders by FEMA was how much will it cost to deploy your unit, (not how many personnel and how long to get there, or what equipment do you have). I think that sums up the current civilian response system (yes, it is about money). We have created a national response system based on cost and liability. It is important to remember Fire Departments’ origins come from insurance companies and our whole civilian method of response comes from that heritage. It is a system based on cost analysis. This entire system needs a total revamping of its basic tenants! I learned a whole different method of response from the Coast Guard and the 82nd Airborne in New Orleans. It was goal driven and not method oriented. The military was not fixated on doctrine, or costs, but goals (yes, they do have great training in doctrine, but it does not supercede their goals). I think, that is the sublime difference between civilian and military response. Being goal driven is much more important to saving lives. No one in the United States Coast Guard asked permission to rescue fellow Americans. Michael Brown (a basically good man) who had no background (and no business being head of FEMA) in disaster management is still going around saying he was a disaster manager when on the fourth morning of Katrina on NBC he made the pronouncement: I have deployed every Urban Search & Rescue Team in the Country”. At the time, he had not deployed any of the State USAR Teams (not FEMA) but he was ultimately responsible for asking for them! In fact, it seems he did not realize he was ultimately responsible for every state team’s deployment! It is a complex and intricate system we have established. One should be aware that because of the EMAC agreements, the emergency management compact between municipalities, states, and the federal government, (basically who is responsible for deployment and who is going to pay for it). He did not have an emergency management background and he should never have had the job. Given his lack of background, he did do an excellent job. Someone who was more familiar with the system (with the needed guts to change it to suit the incident) might have done better. Brown was not deploying the State USAR Teams and a hundred teams around the country were waiting for permission to deploy. Many never got permission because they were too expensive to deploy! We have to ask ourselves why Governor Blanco was technically unable to deploy teams because our system required written authorization for deployment… at first, she had no ability to generate written documents… she had lost all fax and e-mail capabilities in the storm Governor Blanco could not even legally ask for help because she had no means to send the paperwork (Fax and E-mail systems were unavailable at first due to the nature of the event). Many teams would not move without written authorization (some of ours started on the road under her verbal authorization). How many lives would have been spared if teams had deployed days, hours or even minutes earlier. It is a hard thing to fathom in this nation born of the Minuteman. . What will we do when communication is knocked out across a half dozen states during some future incident? At Katrina, the Mayors and Fire Chiefs of Baltimore and Salisbury, Maryland were threatened with prosecution and jail for sending very well trained and supplied rescue teams to an overwhelming national disaster where the loss of time and lack of permission was killing people. The press has not looked into the EMAC agreement enough. It killed people in the Gulf Coast as surely as Katrina did. It has changed little in the past years and will continue to kill people in the future. We are, after all, a nation founded by the Minutemen! DNA identification for the victims of Katrina was sent out for bidding. Then the low bidder won it, and turned around and realized they were a mortuary company-not a DNA research organization, and gave it back. I am mad that the company that did do the work (Gene Codes Forensics) at the WTC and made no I.D. mistakes was not even asked! We do not have a national response plan for mass identification either! The military arrived at Katrina (when finally asked) with overwhelming force to conduct life safety missions. They did it better than any FEMA managed event ever had (without the impressive certifications in rescue training). The nature of warfare made them better at improvising and adapting then any FEMA team, (I do believe there is an important place for FEMA teams) but there must be more reliance (and funding) on state and local SAR teams and much more use of both trained and untrained volunteers. Our Army and Coast Guard have learned from the past. The Coast Guard never asked for anyones permission to rescue people in Louisiana and Mississippi. There is much to be learned from the military response as opposed to FEMAs. The military has learned how to maximize our response while our current system minimizes civilian (Fire, PD, FEMA, Volunteer organizations) response due to fear of liability or cost............ These lessons are largely kept away from FEMA response managers. Human life is not our pre-eminent concern in deploying teams under the FEMA/EMAC method. Amazingly, it is those we charge with being our best killers in our society (the regular Army) that were our finest rescuers (although the Coast Guard may be considered our best “rescue service”). Five years after the 9/11 attacks and two years after the Madrid train bombings, Search & Rescue K9’s are allowed to travel on every private airline in the country, but they are not allowed on Amtrak the “National Railroad”. Most of the search and rescue teams (99%) are not eligible for government assistance. Even the FEMA teams must pay for their own training. I am proud of former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (and surprised) who personally took an active interest in the real lessons learned from Katrina (it was an unexpected source of encouragement). Through his lessons learned unit in Joint Forces Command (a leader is only as good as the information supplied them) he sought out the truth about the state of emergency management in our country. One can only hope that FEMA has done as extensive a self analysis as the Pentagon. The military has long learned it is about goal orientation and not method. It is a lesson lost on FEMA, and especially, NYC. I have hope. I have hope because the American people are always better at this then their government. I have hope because the American military is the best it has ever been. I have hope because as much as we have seen the horrors that both man, mother nature and politicians can wreak on humankind, I have witnessed firsthand incredible self-sacrifice, men and women, Soldiers and Civilians, Firemen, Police, SAR & FEMA Teams and K9’s, who would walk into certain death without hesitation to try and rescue strangers; and truly live or die by the motto of all who serve “So others may live”.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:01:38 +0000
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