Confusion About Levees Status During Storm

More emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group, demonstrate the incompetence of FEMA and its former chief, Michael Brown, during the onslaught of Hurricane quatrain.

At 9:50 a.m. on August 29, 2005, a local New Orleans TV station reported that a levee breach had occurred near the Ninth Ward neighborhood. The information was relayed by a FEMA staffer at the National Hurricane Center. Over two hours later, Brown denied that report and said that levees had been overrun but had not been broken. As a further embarrassment to Brown, the emails show that at 6:21 a.m. on the day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Brown was preparing for an interview and e-mailing with his then-deputy, Patrick Rhode. "Yea, sitting in the chair, putting mousse in my hair," Brown told Rhode in an email.

The episode underscores a major problem faced by U.S. national emergency agencies; difficulties in communication and obtaining and sharing accurate information. FEMA, or any agency that replaces it, must have better information-gathering and sharing capabilities. For a local TV station to have better information than FEMA, who has the resources of the U.S. government, is unacceptable. Accurate information must also be conveyed much faster. The confusion about the status of the levees hampered efforts to stop the floodwater and save lives. As the most important line of defense, the levees must be carefully monitored in future storms.