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Far from home when they were needed most

BY DANIEL WAGNER | WASHINGTON BUREAU

September 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - On Aug. 1, weeks before anyone had heard of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider complained to a local TV reporter that Guardsmen had been deployed to Iraq with "dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators."

"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," he said, adding that if a hurricane hit, Louisiana's only recourse would be to request additional resources from neighboring states.

Two weeks after the worst natural disaster in his state's history, Schneider still didn't have the equipment. In the week after Katrina's landfall, as many out-of-state Guard resources idled for days awaiting instructions from federal and state authorities, experts and Guard officials said it was apparent that outside help could not replace the convenience and immediate accessibility that Louisiana's own Guardsmen could have provided.

"This event will demonstrate how important those vehicles are," Schneider told Newsday after the storm, adding that if the approximately 3,000 Guardsmen who were deployed in Iraq had been in Louisiana, "we would have used them - it's a no-brainer."

In the days after the hurricane, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that the overseas deployment of Louisiana Guardsmen affected the Guard's response to Katrina.

"That's just flat wrong," Rumsfeld told reporters Sept. 6. "Anyone who's saying that doesn't understand the situation." In a radio interview later that day, he explained, "Today there are ... hundreds of thousands of Guard and Reserve people who are still available and aren't being used in this."

But in the crucial first days of rescue and recovery, the Louisiana National Guard was limited to the 5,700 troops who were not in Iraq or otherwise unavailable. Other states' Guard resources had been placed at the ready, but it took days in many cases before they had the instructions and approvals necessary to deploy to the Gulf Coast.

By Aug. 29, the day Katrina made landfall, all 5,700 of Louisiana's available National Guard had been mobilized.

In every corner of the nation, thousands of Guardsmen sat ready at their posts. But authorities in New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia and elsewhere could not deploy much-needed resources until they received instructions from state authorities or the National Guard Bureau, the federal agency that administers the Army and Air National Guards. Some instructions did not arrive until Sept. 3.

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson activated 200 National Guard members on Aug. 29. State authorities spent the next few days "spinning around and waiting on stuff back from D.C. and the National Guard Bureau" about how troops would be transported, said Tim Manning, the state's Director of Homeland Security. The first deployment of New Mexico Guardsmen left Sept. 2.

A Guard Bureau spokesman defended the initial response but acknowledged that by Sept. 1, 7,500 Guardsmen were operating in Louisiana, including the 5,700 available Louisiana troops and about 1,800 from other states. The number of outside troops was far fewer than the number of Louisiana Guard members deployed in Iraq. More backup arrived in the coming days, the spokesman said.

Disaster experts say additional troops could have provided crucial support. Steven Kuhr, chief executive of Strategic Emergency Group in East Northport, said, "The enormity of ... [Katrina] in terms of destruction and human suffering indicates that they needed more human resources" in the disaster area immediately after the storm.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department Office of Counter-Terrorism official, said Guardsmen can also "stand out there in the street and at least show a presence that says there's someone in charge so ... [looters] can't do anything."

Local Guardsmen like those in Iraq would have been essential to the recovery effort, said Stephen Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander and disaster preparedness expert, because, "With emergency response, particularly in the first critical hours or days, you want people who literally know the neighborhood."

The Louisiana Guard expected outside help to be organized through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, or EMAC, which states created to facilitate sharing of resources in emergency situations. But many states that offered their help through the EMAC system waited for instructions to arrive, the normal procedure.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said his state's Guardsmen "had themselves packed, had four-wheelers and trailers lined up" immediately after the storm cleared. But though 100 Red Cross vehicles in the state were able to "roll as soon as the storm cleared" on Monday, the Guardsmen did not depart until Huckabee received a specific request from Blanco on Tuesday evening.

West Virginia Guardsmen were also notified to prepare "almost immediately after landfall," according to a state official, but didn't receive the request they needed to move until Sept. 3.

Staff Sgt. Dan Hartag of the Colorado Army National Guard said his unit was notified on the evening of Aug. 30 to report for duty the following morning. They spent the next five days waiting at their post, researching St. Bernard Parish on the Internet.

Flynn said the overseas deployment of Louisiana National Guard members had a significant impact on the immediate response to Hurricane Katrina.

"Bottom line," he said, "you would like to turn to the National Guard in as much capacity as you have, and you like to turn to people from your own neighborhood. But the capacity was not there."