Fixing What's Broken
Americans watched in horror as a great city, New Orleans, descended into chaos. Victims without food, water, or shelter; weeping mothers; sick children; dead bodies rotting on the flooded streets; hoodlums shooting at rescue helicopters; old people and children left alone and unattended--all this in a nightmare scenario where the suffering was disproportionately borne by poor African-Americans.
This was an America that Americans were not used to seeing and do not want to see ever again. Government at all levels failed in its primary obligation to protect its citizens. The New York Daily News front-page headline captured it exquisitely: "Shame of a Nation."
What now?
1. Clean up New Orleans and the rest of the region.
2. Deal with the immediate survival needs of every single person displaced by Katrina: The $2,000 debit cards distributed last week restore at least a semblance of freedom and dignity.
3. The affected states, with the federal government in the lead, must adopt a plan spelling out options for the hundreds of thousands who can't go home and may not have a home for months, or even years--many, maybe never. Neighboring states and communities have been generous Samaritans. They cannot be expected to continue as hosts indefinitely.
4. Learn the lessons. Every state and every major city must have an emergency plan for action in the first crucial 72 hours. It should include evacuation and earmark enough National Guard soldiers to prevent the repetition of the breakdown of order we saw in New Orleans, as well as to organize buses, trains, and ships to rescue the immobile, unwilling, and distrustful.
5. The lines of command and communication between local and federal officials must be spelled out clearly. Local authorities simply cannot be expected to deal with disasters of this magnitude.
6. The administration must clean house. Its appointments to the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned it from a professional relief organization into a chummy political clubhouse. It was a reckless indulgence to pass over countless thousands of professionals and put the nation's disaster agencies into the hands of people who do not know how to run them.
Bush's first FEMA chief, Joe Allbaugh, who was his 2000 campaign manager, literally counseled states and cities to rely on "faith-based organizations" like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service as if the nation could be expected to handle massive disasters through volunteers, church groups, and individuals. His successor, Michael Brown, was his college roommate. Brown, who was forced out of his previous job overseeing horse shows, was removed from the Katrina cleanup efforts last week. But he and his deputy director and chief of staff, Patrick Rhode, an advance man for the Bush-Cheney campaign, remain at FEMA; the former deputy chief of staff, meanwhile, was a public-relations expert who worked for the Texas firm that produced media spots for the Bush-Cheney campaign. This is, purely and simply, an outrage.
7. Review what kind of "new" New Orleans can prudently be rebuilt, given how compromised it is by its location. No major American city has ever been entirely emptied of people while faced with a failing infrastructure and a severely limited level of economic activity, perhaps for years. The port facilities are critical for agriculture and oil and natural gas. They will have to be rebuilt to withstand Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. A qualified independent group should be appointed to plan and supervise the construction.
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