Brown's out in New Orleans

Embattled FEMA chief is bumped from his role in Katrina, sent to D.C. as officials say death toll may shrink

BY JOHN RILEY | STAFF WRITER. This story was supplemented with wire service reports.

September 10, 2005

The Bush administration moved Friday to oust embattled disaster-response boss Michael Brown from Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, and New Orleans officials said early indications are that the death toll from the storm may be dramatically lower than earlier estimates.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen would take charge of Katrina operations, and Brown, whose effectiveness and competence came under fire as thousands were stranded last week amid lawlessness in New Orleans, would return to Washington.

Brown, who has headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency since 2003, will keep an eye on Hurricane Ophelia off Florida's Atlantic coast and oversee the bureaucracy. "We can't afford to let our guard down in respect to other threats that might happen," Chertoff said.

Just last week, President George W. Bush praised Brown during a visit to the Gulf Coast, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." But the indecisive federal response generated widespread criticism of Bush and Brown, and disclosures that Brown had no disaster-response experience, headed judging for an Arabian show-horse association before joining FEMA in 2001, and may have padded his resume, put a target on his back.

Brown aides said Friday that, fortuitously, he was already planning to retire from FEMA after the current hurricane season. Brown, not allowed to speak during Chertoff's announcement, said later that he was puzzled about why he was shunted aside, and thought he had become a press scapegoat.

"I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep," Brown said. "And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims."

In New Orleans, as the city and National Guard troops officially ended rescue efforts and shifted to collecting corpses that have been floating, laying on the streets or hidden in structures, assessments of the body count marked a rare piece of relatively good news.

"I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated last weekend there could be 10,000 dead, and state officials revealed Thursday they had 25,000 body bags available. But, said Ebbert, "Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000."

The official death toll from Katrina stands at 118 in Louisiana and 204 in Mississippi, and Ebbert declined to offer a new estimate of how high the tally will be. He said news media would be barred from body-gathering missions for reasons of propriety.

In another bit of good news, Army engineers lowered their estimates of how long it will take to clear floodwaters to between 30 and 45 days. Previously, they said it could take up to 80 days. Police reported slow progress in their efforts to get stragglers to evacuate New Orleans. Nagin has ordered everyone to leave because of health hazards.

Bush plans to visit the Gulf Coast this weekend, for the third time since Katrina hit. But his shows of concern and the removal of Brown don't seem likely to quell all the questions about his own responsibility for a response effort that he has declared "not acceptable."

Among the new developments: Although the administration has tried to shift responsibility to state and local officials for not requesting help sooner, a FEMA planning document on a hypothetical New Orleans flood, disclosed Friday, predicted a collapse of local authority. It warned that the federal government should be prepared to mobilize assets "before they are requested via normal (National Response Plan) protocols." There is no evidence the White House saw the document.

Also, although the Pentagon has insisted that troop deployments to Iraq did not stretch the National Guard too thin to respond quickly to Katrina, a top National Guard general appeared to contradict that. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said deployments of thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi Guard troops hindered initial response.

"Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," Blum said in an Associated Press interview.

Friday also brought new glitches in the federal response. FEMA said a 2-day-old plan to deliver $2,000 in aid to evacuees via electronic debit cards - praised by Bush in a national address Thursday - was being canceled.

Cards have been distributed to Katrina victims in Texas, but the agency said it would not be extended to other states because distribution required too much staffing. Evacuees will now get aid by direct deposit into bank accounts, the traditional method.

This story was supplemented with wire service reports.