DHS: A PORTRAIT OF FAILURE
Carl F. Worden

Following the 9/11/01 terror attacks that killed over 3,000 Americans on United States soil, President Bush decreed that the attack was undetected due to a breakdown in communications that occurred between the various American intelligence agencies. Bush then pushed through Congress the promise of a Department of Homeland Security, 170,000 employees strong, that would combine both foreign and domestic intelligence agencies with agencies tasked with emergency response, be it another terror attack, or a natural disaster.

The new DHS was touted as the answer to any future American calamity, and Hurricane Katrina just proved the new DHS is the most expensive, incompetent and impotent federal agency ever contrived.

We’re talking real simple here: When planning for a nuclear attack on New York City, a chemical attack on a Phoenix water supply, or a biological attack dispersing Anthrax over Chicago, every possible scenario is presented to the respective think tank, and from that consideration, specific response plans are drawn up to handle the degree of damage, from minor to catastrophic. In addition, like any solid military plan of attack, a system of redundant and back-up measures are set into position, whereby personnel and equipment are in place and ready to execute whatever plan and back-up plan and back-back-up plan is in place for them to perform.

Where New Orleans is concerned, it is now obvious no such DHS planning ever took place.

Regardless of the prospect of a terror attack or a natural disaster, New Orleans’ Achilles Heel has always been the fact that 80% of the city is below sea level, and that powerful hurricanes strike the Gulf on a regular basis. Breach the levees, and New Orleans floods to the rooftops, so that is obviously the specific calamity the DHS and its red-haired step-child, FEMA, should have planned for.

And how should they have planned for such an event? Well, first of all, if 80% of the city is suddenly underwater from a catastrophic, multiple levee breach, it is obvious most vehicular traffic won’t be reliable to transport food and water to stranded citizens, and the same is true for getting stranded citizens out. That reduces the immediate rescue options to helicopter air support and watercraft to deliver food and water to the stranded while they await extraction.

The same think tank would also have been cognizant of the water level in each of the areas of the city, if and when flooded, which would have allowed them to place amphibious military vehicles in place well before a dangerous hurricane made landfall.

Try to remember that Hurricane Katrina didn’t surprise anybody. She cut west over the southern tip of Florida, hit the warm waters of the Gulf, made a sharp right, and blew right over New Orleans and the adjacent area. The only thing that surprised anyone was that Katrina grew to 1,000 miles wide as a Category 5 monster.

Even as early as Saturday, it was obvious Katrina had the potential to be the worst of bad news, so all this political/news talk about how it took an unavoidable 4.5 days to get help to the stranded in New Orleans falls short of the truth: If solid, well-thought-out contingency plans had actually been in place, the feds and state governments had from no later than Saturday, August 25th to assemble personnel and equipment, and stock up supplies, and then to execute air-drops of food and water to the survivors no later than Tuesday, August 28th! Instead, it took the locals and feds until September 2nd to finally arrive, and remember that August was a 31-day month.

A lot of people died – and will die – because of this abject failure to execute on the part of the vaunted Department of Homeland Security.

We Americans didn’t get what we paid for, but then, what’s new?

Carl F. Worden