Hurricane Matthew tests U.S. response
lessons from Katrina
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[October 08, 2016]
By Letitia Stein
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Acting on lessons
learned from the botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005,
government authorities this week rushed to get aid to states in
Hurricane Matthew's path, from drinking water and generators to
helicopters and emergency planning experts.
After Katrina struck New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast,
local residents suffered for days with little help as the devastating
hurricane exposed glaring failures in U.S. readiness for natural
disasters. In the decade since, emergency planners have sought to adopt
a forward-looking approach.
"Instead of waiting to see how bad the storm is, they are being
proactive in bringing in as many resources as possible early on, and
then they can right-size the resources later," said Trina Sheets,
executive director of the National Emergency Management Association, a
group representing state emergency management directors.
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The group runs a program called the Emergency Management Assistance
Compact that enables states to request assistance from each other. As
Matthew slammed Florida on Friday, en route to Georgia and South
Carolina, the compact was helping to mobilize aid from more than a dozen
states to the states threatened by the hurricane.
At the request of the states affected by Matthew, teams from
Pennsylvania to California were deploying experts in fields ranging from
dealing with environmental debris to assessing structural damage.
Florida was set to get military helicopters from neighboring Alabama,
which also was sending teams able to set up shelters for people with
medical needs. South Carolina was bolstering search-and-rescue capacity
with staff and equipment from North Carolina.
'GO BIG AND GO EARLY'
In advance of Matthew's arrival, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) said it had 444,000 liters of water and more than 513,000
meals, plus thousands of cots and blankets, ready to go out from support
bases near the affected coastline.
"The one thing you don't get back during a disaster response is time,"
FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said. "Our philosophy is to go big and go
early, and we can always scale back when we need to."
Lemaitre said enactment of legislation that enabled FEMA to deploy
resources to an area in advance of disaster provided one of the agency's
most important reforms after its slow response to Katrina drew wide
criticism.
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A wall lies on the pavement after it was blown out at the LaPlaya
Resort & Suites after the eye of Hurricane Matthew passed Daytona
Beach. REUTERS/Phelan Ebenhack
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FEMA also began moving early when Superstorm Sandy hit the
northeastern United States in 2012 and in this year's flooding in
Louisiana, Lemaitre said.
Nonprofit aid groups now follow the same playbook. Save the
Children, which works internationally on youth-safety efforts after
major disasters, landed in Florida a day ahead of Matthew's arrival.
As the storm raked the state's east coast, the group's Florida
emergency response team leader, Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, was driving
north right behind it, carrying 80-pound (36 kilo) plastic tubs with
toys, games and crafts supplies.
She planned to deposit them at shelters in badly hit areas, aiming
to arrive as authorities set up long-term facilities. She said she
would advise them to create features like bathrooms designated for
families to protect children from potential abuse.
"When Katrina happened, we like most Americans assumed, 'Well,
somebody has the children covered. This is America,'" she said.
Yet when she called authorities in the affected states just before
Katrina's landfall, none could say where their displaced children
would be located. Save the Children went in after the storm.
"We realized there was a critical gap," said De Marrais, now
encouraged to see authorities coordinating on behalf of children in
Florida and South Carolina. "We're here already."
(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by
Colleen Jenkins)
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