Department Of Homeland Security Inaction At the Top

When Ivan aimed its fury at the Big Easy, the AP detailed what could happen if the hurricane slammed into New Orleans.In the case of Ivan, serious problems were caused by a lack of planning for a cataclysmic storm, yet with Katrina on the horizon, the lessons of Ivan were all but forgotten.A feckless state governor and New Orleans' mayor repeated the same mistakes they made with Ivan, and hundreds of thousands of largely poor people were forced to endure conditions that one associates with the Third World - not the richest nation on the planet.The disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will come as no surprise to those who recall a September 19, 2004 Associated Press report.Wrote the AP: "Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land."Eventually, tens of thousands of New Orleanans were directed to the Superdome - where no food, water or living facilities were provided for the massive number of refugees expected to remain there for at least several days. Fortunately few arrived.Noted the AP then: "New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans."

Noted the AP story: "When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in." But just as happened after Katrina, the AP reported there were problems, including theft and vandalism.With Ivan approaching, far fewer took refuge from the storm - an estimated 1,100 - at the Superdome, and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen.Wrote the AP of the Ivan debacle: "The main safety measure - getting people out of town - raised its own problems. More than 1 million people tried to leave the city and surrounding suburbs on Tuesday, creating a traffic jam as bad as or worse than the evacuation that followed Georges. In the afternoon, state police took action, reversing inbound lanes on southeastern Louisiana interstates to provide more escape routes. Bottlenecks persisted, however."Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said he believed his agency acted appropriately, but also acknowledged he never expected a seven-hour-long crawl for the 60 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

"Gov. Kathleen Blanco and [Mayor] Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans.But it appears that nothing had been changed by the time Katrina made its appearance in the Gulf.After Ivan, Blanco and other state officials boasted that, while irritating, the clogged escape routes got people out of the most vulnerable areas."We were able to get people out," state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc said. "It was successful. There was frustration, yes. But we got people out of harm's way."

The lessons of Ivan were never learned, and the people of New Orleans paid the price.