BRETT COOMER / APLouisiana State Police officers in an armored car roll by lines of Hurricane Katrina evacuees before the National Guard delivered food and water yesterday to the people stranded near the New Orleans Convention Center.
Posted on 09/03/2005 10:12:13 PM PDT by neverdem
Newhouse News Service
CAMP SHELBY, Miss. — A tiny fraction of the active-duty U.S. military is engaged in rescue and relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a situation that frustrated senior military officers are attributing in part to complex relationships with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"There is a tremendous amount of frustration here, that we have assets stacked up ready to go," said one officer who asked not to be identified. "All we can do is nudge the folks at FEMA and say, 'How about if we do this or that?' "
But a difficult command structure inside the military seemed equally cumbersome as officers wrestled yesterday with having to coordinate any movement of forces with dozens of supervising commands and agencies.
At the Pentagon's sweltering forward-command post in Mississippi, a television running on intermittent power showed scenes of utter devastation in New Orleans, with corpses, burning buildings and throngs of desperate refugees.
Military-action officers — who have at their fingertips thousands of heavy-lift cargo planes, medical-evacuation helicopters, warships, quick-reaction battalions of infantry and military police, as well as fleets of trucks and armored personnel carriers — watched the chaos while monitoring computer screens and answering the occasional phone call.
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of First U.S. Army, which coordinates all military involvement in hurricane rescue and relief, flew into New Orleans yesterday to kick the military effort into higher gear. Thousands of National Guard troops began delivering food, water and ice to refugees.
But officers said no military assets can be touched without an official request from FEMA.
"We are in support of FEMA; we are not running our own operation," said Maj. Gen. Dan Colglazier, deputy commanding general of the First U.S. Army. "That's one of the hazards" of a complex situation involving dozens of local, state and federal agencies.
A request from FEMA — say, water delivered for 1,000 people a day, or a dozen emergency generators and fuel at the New Orleans airport — must come through a defense coordinating officer in Baton Rouge, La., or Jackson, Miss.
It then is forwarded to the operations center at Camp Shelby, which ensures the military can meet it.
Next, it is forwarded to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., where officials of Northern Command — which oversees all active-duty military operations in the United States — match it with specific units.
The package finally goes to the Pentagon to await the signature of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Only then can the unit be deployed, whether it's a squadron of helicopters or a dozen dump trucks.
So far, according to officers at Camp Shelby, the military had managed through this system to deploy 68 Army, Navy and Marine Corps helicopters and four ships, including the USS Bataan, an amphibious carrier; the aircraft carrier Truman; the Iwo Jima, a second amphibious ship; and the USS Comfort, a hospital ship.
Transporting soldiers to the disaster zone was slow.
As of yesterday morning, according to officers, only 12,000 Guardsmen from all contributing states were on station in Louisiana and Mississippi. That's fewer than half the 30,000 National Guard troops available for deployment from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, according to officials at the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va.
FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule defended her agency's coordination efforts with the Pentagon.
"The military has been joined at the hip [with FEMA] since this storm was approaching Florida," Rule said. "We were working all together on the national coordination response in Washington as well as at the regional level 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
The maddening delays in delivering help also stem from the extraordinary, complex nature of the disaster itself. The major focus in New Orleans has swung from simple storm relief to desperate flood relief to security to emergency delivery of food and water.
"This is tough because there are so many people who want to help, and sometimes you just have to hold them off until you see how they can be used," said Air National Guard Maj. Gen. Hank Morrow, the air liaison officer with Northern Command.
Also frustrating was the shortage of information. Nowhere, for instance, did officers have access to the kind of overhead pictures provided by Predator drone aircraft in Iraq.
Air Force Col. William Duckett, an air liaison officer at Camp Shelby, said there had been discussion of asking for Predators from their chief base at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, but no decision had been made.
The staggeringly desperate situation at the New Orleans Convention Center "wasn't anybody's priority until this morning," Colglazier said yesterday.
Once they are thrown into a difficult situation, military personnel often find ways to cut through bureaucratic tangles.
This week, for example, air officers aboard the USS Truman waived the normal requirements that Army helicopter pilots train and qualify to land on an aircraft carrier.
"There was no time for that," Duckett said. Given the desperate need to bring refugees out to the ships and return with food, water and ice, "They just said, 'Come on and land,' and they're going like madmen out there."
BRETT COOMER / APLouisiana State Police officers in an armored car roll by lines of Hurricane Katrina evacuees before the National Guard delivered food and water yesterday to the people stranded near the New Orleans Convention Center.
Yeah, the FEMA structure needs to be retooled. Looks like it doesn't need to be under Homeland Security. It looks to me like it needs to be a military organization. Perhaps a senior general or admiral should command the org. Too much politics is what screwed up this cluster. Army Corps of Engineers needs to be retooled, too. Talk about politics.
There's a schoolbus behind the armored vehicle. Perhaps it is an escort.
Federal troops can't enter the state without the governor's consent. The governor is in command of the national guard troops there regardless of where they're from.
She refused to allow the Fed to take command.
The governor is in control of all national guard there. The Federal military can't enter the state without the consent of the governor.
The governor is the problem.
Bump..
"The governor is in control of all national guard there. The Federal military can't enter the state without the consent of the governor. "
Yes, so far we are nation ruled by Constitution and the law. All the governor had to do is turn it over to the military for help. We on FR will get the message, but the MSM will never own up to the problem and make the nation aware. There lies the problem.
Um, it's not red tape. It's Federal Law. The Posse Comitatus Act, to be specific.
It's really a pretty good idea. I hope we don't throw it out in the post-Katrina angst-fest.
The MSM is just a big echo chamber.
I think most of the nation ignores the MSM because they've been burned so many times before.
It will get out.
That red tape is the Constitution and now it shows that even that venerable document can indeed become a suicide pact.
Just curious, did the Administration have these troops prepared and ready to go at governor's request?
Apparently, you were there. Please explain your funny joke about the cowardly US troops, azzhat...
Once upon a time, there used to be a CD part of DoD. That was when they were worried about atomic attack. Obviously a lot of weeding needs to be done. Good thing that this disaster has given us a trial run of a truly BIG incident. It would take a suitcase a-bomb to cause more turmpil than this thing.
Back in the 1890s, Grover Cleveland intervened in a labor strike over the objections of Governor Altgeld. So it may be irregular but not unprecedented.
Hey Darksheare,- check out the fur on this funny little bunny...
"Funny" thing is, there was an F-117A Nighthawk shotdown.
A one in a million lucky shot by an SA-14.
I guess Fangz here doesn't recall that little Clinton era embarrassment.
Thanks for the ping Treader.
This one IS interesting.
Perhaps, then again- you know how "seared" the memory of a petite bunny can be...
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