Communication Worker Deployment Major Focus of Senate Katrina Report
The need for federal action to remove roadblocks such as slowed post-Katrina communications repairs will be a “major finding” of a pending Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee report, Chmn. Collins (R-Me.) said Wed. The report, due within weeks, will address the need to improve first responders’ interoperable communications, she said.
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Private-sector repair efforts tripped over bureaucratic demands for credentials and government controls on access to fuel for vehicles and generators, Collins told a luncheon sponsored by Harvard U.’s Kennedy School of Govt. “I cannot understand why we can’t establish a standard ID card to be used by communications workers in emergency situations.”
Communications crews should have the same access police, firefighters and other first responders, Collins said. “If you don’t have communications the people we think of as first responders… can’t communicate,” she said. “The lack of coordination and cooperation of govt. agencies during Katrina is profoundly disturbing,” Collins said, quoting a hearing witness: “'Emergency management officials should not be exchanging business cards during the crisis.'”
Officials knew Katrina was coming for days, Collins said: “We must ask how much severe the failure would be in a disaster that took us completely by surprise, such as another terrorist attack.” Results of the panel’s 21 hearings indicate interoperable communications remains a problem more than 4 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to Collins.
After 9/11, many jurisdictions made progress on emergency communications, but others, like La., lag, Collins said: “State officials made the decision to dedicate far less of their Homeland security dollars from the federal government to communications than did other states. They're way below the national average. It’s uneven.” Of 4 New Orleans metro area parishes, no 2 had fully interoperable systems, she said.
Whether the committee will recommend taking FEMA out of the Dept. of Homeland Security, a step Collins opposes, is a topic heavily discussed as the report is being written, said Collins. “If you have the same people with the same pressures making the same decisions, it doesn’t matter whether FEMA is inside or outside the department,” she said. Collins said the committee’s report will appear by mid-April and be the most extensive yet on the 2005 hurricanes. It will contain “many, many,” recommendations large and small, she said.