Town Meeting: Delayed Relief

Sept. 6, 2005 — -- Many have questioned the post-Hurricane Katrina relief effort, which at times has seemed slow and inadequate, as well as the circumstances that led up to the disaster and the future of the hurricane's victims.

"Good Morning America" today gave those most affected by Katrina a chance to ask their questions. The show assembled evacuees currently in Biloxi, Miss.; Houston; Donaldsville, La.; New Orleans; and Salt Lake City; in a town meeting to ask questions of government officials. Here is a look at what was asked, and how officials answered:

Delayed Relief Effort

Diane Sawyer: We are told some 10,000 National Guard were on standby in the states around Louisiana. Who was responsible for ordering them in, and why wasn't it done on Tuesday? Who was responsible for sending in the medicine and clean water and for that matter boats? Why wasn't that done right away?

Patrick Rhode, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: You are asking a very comprehensive question, Diane.

What I can tell you is that on behalf of the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, the coordination ahead of this storm was absolutely unprecedented. I think it is very important that people recognize that while there was an incredible mobilization ahead of this storm of emergency responders and urban search and rescue teams and commodities and resources … There are so many ships that are now providing assistance, so many helicopters that are now providing assistance. If we, in fact, put them any closer than we had, they perhaps themselves would have been compromised by the storm.

The storm, by the way, being one that this country has never seen before. It is one that impacted almost 90,000 square miles, an area almost the size of Great Britain. I'm not making excuses, Diane.

Sawyer: I understand about the storm, but why weren't the National Guard brought in? This is the United States of America. We can send in armies in hours. Why wasn't the National Guard brought in on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Rhode: This response, of course, was not perfect. There are few responses that are. I can tell you that people were moving heaven and earth to do everything they possibly could to canvas this 90,000-square-mile area. This is a search and rescue this country never had before in its history, and you had a major evacuation. Once we were able to get resources in there, I mean basically the north, east and the south were unavailable to us in order to bring in many of our traditional resources. This presented logistical challenges we perhaps have never seen before.

I don't give those as excuses, I present them as challenges that together with the city, with our federal partners, all the resources that have been brought to bear, we have had to overcome. It has been a comprehensive effort in order to get many of the people to the shelters and out of harm's way.

Did it take us longer than we hoped? Of course it did. We will have to all take a look at best practices. Right now we are most concerned about delivering the resources to all the people we possibly can within the shelter communities and also this comprehensive urban search and rescue effort.

Inside New Orleans

Anna Mothershed, New Orleans hotel owner: FEMA is here now. When will the people that are actually within the city going to be able to get anything done? I have talked to some people and they don't know what's going on, who to call; who can they get in touch with and right away?

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco: There is an awful lot of work to be done, as you have now realized. The city is devastated and it is going to take us awhile to get the water out. We have to get the water out. When the water comes out, we can put power back on. We can begin to resume our lives.

I certainly hope you are able to get food and water supplies and that you are not isolated in any way like that. We have got plenty of people now to help you and to help everybody else who is still in the city.

We suffered the greatest devastation that our state has ever seen. It is going to take a lot of us working hard, working together to pull our communities back together and to rebuild our city and the outlying areas as well.

Mothershed: Governor, one of the things I'm worried about is the fact that we had over 500 people in our hotel. We had to get them out. No one helped us get them out. No one. We tried to get them out of here for over four days. If our general manager hadn't got them out, I don't know what would have happened. Can you tell me why it took so long? Why we kept begging for someone to help us and no one would come?

Blanco: We didn't have enough resources. We were begging for resources too. We needed helicopters because of all the water, and we needed boats. We brought in everything we had and we were begging for more. Nothing came as quickly as we needed it.