WASHINGTON (AP):
HURRICANE KATRINA turned the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into a "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy" so far beyond repair that it should be scrapped, senators said yesterday.
In an appeal that got a cool reception from the White House, they called for creation of a new disaster agency as the next storm season looms.
The push to replace the beleaguered agency was the top recommendation of a hefty Senate inquiry which concluded that top officials from New Orleans to Washington failed to adequately prepare for and respond to the deadly storm, despite weather forecasts predicting its path through the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
LEARN FROM KATRINA
"The first obligation of government is to protect our people," said Senator Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Govern-mental Affairs investigation. "In Katrina, we failed at all levels of government to meet that fundamental obligation."
She added: "We must learn from the lessons of Katrina so that next time disaster strikes, whether it's a storm that was imminent and predicted for a long time, or a terror attack that takes us by surprise, government responds far more effectively."
Frances Fragos Townsend, President George W. Bush's Homeland Security adviser, said the White House would work with Congress.
But she expressed little enthusiasm for replacing FEMA, which has borne much of the criticism for the government's weak response to Katrina.
"As we're headed into the hurricane season, now is not the time to look at moving organisational boxes around," she said aboard Air Force One as Bush travelled to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast.
MIXED REVIEW
The bipartisan report's exe-cutive summary gives Bush a mixed review for his performance. It credits him for declaring an emergency before the hurricane's landfall, but faults him for waiting until two days after it hit to return to Washington and convene top officials to coordinate the federal response.
"The White House shares responsibility for the inadequate pre-landfall preparations," the summary says.
The inquiry's final report, given to lawmakers yesterday, faulted New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco for failing to protect sick and elderly people and others who could not evacuate the city on their own.
It also concluded that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Michael Brown, who then headed FEMA, either did not understand federal response plans or refused to follow them.
But the panel's top Democrat, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, heaped much of the blame on Bush and the White House, which he said "were not sufficiently engaged when they should have been initiating an aggressive response."
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGE
Even after the storm's August 29 landfall, the White House "still seemed detached until two days later," said Lieberman, who faces a primary re-election challenge this year.
The bipartisan panel issued 86 recommendations for change that, taken together, indicate the United States is still woefully unprepared for a storm of Katrina's scope with the start of the hurricane season little more than a month away.
The probe follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration over its handling of the storm.
