At 569 pages (28 MB zipped), the Full Report of the government response to Hurricane Katrina is unlikely to hit the best seller list soon, but may prove to be an important historical document. The entire document is accessible as one zipped file and separate sections as PDF files from the GPO: Congressional Reports: H. Rpt. 109-377 - A Failure of Initiative - Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina
Its study may reveal valuable lessons about the response of complex systems to failure cascades, and the human dynamics of self-organization in the absence of central direction. Whether those lessons will be learned, and whether those lessons are politically palatable, is another question.
The Executive Summary opens with a tribute to those whose individual initiatives in the face of "bureaucratic inertia" saved lives and suffering, and closes with a warning that despite extensive studies following prior hurricanes and 9/11, we are "still not fully prepared." Some quotations from that summary follow below the break.
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Quoting from the Executive Summary:
"The Select Committee identified failures at all levels of government that signifi cantly undermined and detracted from the heroic efforts of first responders, private individuals and organizations, faith-based groups, and others.
The institutional and individual failures we have identified became all the more clear when compared to the heroic efforts of those who acted decisively. Those who didn’t flinch, who took matters into their own hands when bureaucratic inertia was causing death, injury, and suffering. Those whose exceptional initiative saved time and money and lives. We salute the exceptions to the rule, or, more accurately, the exceptions that proved the rule.
* * *
The preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina show we are still an analog government in a digital age. We must recognize that we are woefully incapable of storing, moving, and accessing information – especially in times of crisis.
* * *
We reflect on the 9/11 Commission’s finding that “the most important failure was one of imagination.” The Select Committee believes Katrina was primarily a failure of initiative. But there is, of course, a nexus between the two. Both imagination and initiative – in other words, leadership – require good information. And a coordinated process for sharing it. And a willingness to use information – however imperfect or incomplete – to fuel action.
With Katrina, the reasons reliable information did not reach more people more quickly are many, and these reasons provide the foundation for our findings.
In essence, we found that while a national emergency management system that relies on state and local governments to identify needs and request resources is adequate for most disasters, a catastrophic disaster like Katrina can and did overwhelm most aspects of the system for an initial period of time. No one anticipated the degree and scope of the destruction the storm would cause, even though many could and should have.
The failure of local, state, and federal governments to respond more effectively to Katrina — which had been predicted in theory for many years, and forecast with startling accuracy for fi ve days — demonstrates that whatever improvements have been made to our capacity to respond to natural or man-made disasters, four and half years after 9/11, we are still not fully prepared."
Posted by dougsimpson at April 10, 2006 10:55 AM