FEMA official blames Brown
Tags: fema, michael brown, marty bahamondeFEMA Official Says Boss Ignored Warnings
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials did not respond to repeated warnings about deteriorating conditions in New Orleans and the dire need for help as Hurricane Katrina struck, the first FEMA official to arrive in the city conceded Thursday.
Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.
In most cases, he was met with silence or a polite thank you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House. "I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation,'' Bahamonde said.
The testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee contradicted Brown, who has said he wasn't fully aware of the dire conditions until days later and that local officials were most responsible for the sluggish response.
…In e-mails to various FEMA officials, including one to Brown, Bahamonde described a chaotic situation at the Superdome, where many of the evacuees were sheltered. Bahamonde e-mailed FEMA officials and noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.
"Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen,'' Bahamonde wrote in an e-mail to David Passey, an assistant to Brown, in late afternoon on Aug. 28.
Less than an hour later, Bahamonde wrote: "Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast.''
Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by sending truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome on that day even though they knew supplies were in short supply.
"I thought it amazing,'' he said. "I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans.''
The WaPo's version of this AP story is in "FEMA Official Says Boss Ignored Warnings". It starts:
In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail to Director Michael Brown saying victims had no food and were dying. No response came from Brown.
Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss wanted to go on a television program that night _ after needing at least an hour to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge, La., restaurant.
