Tools for managing disaster aid in the works

International offers of help mishandled

1 May 2007 // WASHINGTON -- The U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security are completing new procedures so that in a future disaster like Hurricane Katrina the government will be able to more easily take advantage of offers of help from foreign governments, officials with the two agencies said Monday.

The agencies were responding to the release of more than 10,000 pages of cable, e-mail and other documents Sunday from government officials in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina that indicate only a small fraction of the $80 million-plus in foreign assistance offers were accepted.

Offers of medical teams, search-and-rescue units, food, bottled water, fuel, rescue dogs and two Greek cruise ships to house emergency workers and displaced residents were all rejected.

The revelations in the documents, obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act, brought immediate condemnation Monday from Democratic presidential candidates and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

"As our people were fighting for survival, governments around the world tried to help us, but our own federal government turned them away," Blanco said in a written statement. "This latest revelation of incompetence burns the wounds our people are desperately trying to heal."

The Senate homeland security committee, meanwhile, plans to hold hearings this summer into the matter, senators said.

Unique challenge

Sean McCormack, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said Hurricane Katrina was unique in American history in terms of both "scope of this disaster and the generous outpouring from the international community."

"We did the best that we could trying to direct those efforts in constructive ways, in effective ways," he said. "That didn't always succeed."

Since then, McCormack said State Department officials have been working with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies so that "if we ever do face such circumstances again -- and we all hope we don't -- that there would be a more effective mechanism that we might use."

Aaron Walker, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees disaster responsibility for Homeland Security, said that last year FEMA officials, working with the State Department and other agencies, developed a draft plan designed to enable aid offers to be evaluated quickly with the idea of getting assistance from abroad in the appropriate hands quickly.

"Now we're in the process of completing a document that formalizes the policies and procedures as we move forward and ensure that we utilize the lessons learned from Katrina," Walker said.

Under the plan, FEMA's office of international affairs would work with the State Department's Agency for International Development to monitor foreign assistance offers and make sure that the help was channeled quickly to where it could be used most effectively, Walker said.

Campaign issue

Joining Blanco in criticizing the government's failure to take advantage of more of the aid offers were four Democratic presidential candidates.

"It's bad enough that our own government was so tragically incompetent as to need other nations to bail us out of the Katrina mess, but it's the height of embarrassment that we weren't even competent enough to accept their aid," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Sen. John Edwards, who announced his presidential bid in New Orleans, said: "This is just new evidence about how badly the administration mishandled the response to Katrina -- not only did they fail to respond rapidly and effectively, they actually turned away others who were prepared to help."

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that "this is yet another sign that the Bush administration bungled the response to Katrina at every level." His office released a letter that he and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sent the Department of Homeland Security in September 2005, asking why the government had turned down the offer from the Greek government of free use of two cruise ships at the same time it signed a $236 million contract with Carnival Cruise Lines for temporary housing.

Mo Elleithee, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said that a Clinton administration would have a detailed emergency preparedness plan in place, including a mechanism for the United States to "work with our friends if, God forbid, another disaster struck."