FEMA Knew Hurricane Response Was Deficient, E-Mails Show

FEMA officials trying to cope with the impact of Hurricane Katrina knew that their response was dangerously inadequate and expected rioting in Mississippi over the lack of such basic supplies as food and water, according to documents released Monday by a congressional committee.

A special House committee examining the government’s response to Katrina released internal e-mails from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in which senior officials described basic levels of their emergency response system as “broken” and said they had minimal supplies to distribute after the storm had passed.

“Gulfport [Miss.] only has enough commodities for roughly 3 hours distribution tomorrow,” wrote FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris on Aug. 29, just hours after the storm.

The e-mails that followed, first reported by Associated Press, indicated a growing sense of panic and anxiety about FEMA’s lack of preparation.

“If we get the quantities in your report tomorrow, we will have serious riots,” FEMA regional official Roger Fenton wrote to officials in Washington on Sept. 1, warning that the water and ice they were sending were seriously inadequate.

FEMA’s former top responder in Mississippi, William Carwile, wrote to Fenton about the report from headquarters on water and ice deliveries. “Turns out this report is true,” he e-mailed. “There seems to be no way we will get commodities in amounts beyond those indicated below. And it turns out these shortfalls were known much earlier in the day and we were not informed.”

Carwile indicated that he didn’t think supplies would last past the morning and that they might encounter unrest or hostility soon after. “Will need big time law enforcement reinforcements tomorrow,” he wrote Fenton. “All our good will here ... will be very seriously impacted by noon tomorrow.”

The next day, Carwile wrote again about the food, water and ice deliveries, saying that the “system appears broken.”

Carwile has since retired and will appear before the special House committee at a hearing Wednesday, along with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

At the time of Carwile’s e-mail, FEMA officials in Washington were fiercely defending their agency’s performance in the face of growing questions about the administration’s response. As the scope of the problems from the storm became clear, FEMA chief Michael D. Brown resigned.

FEMA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, subsequently pledged to cooperate in the committee’s investigation.

FEMA officials were not aware that the panel had released papers Monday.

“I have absolutely no familiarity.... I haven’t seen them yet,” said spokesman Butch Kinerney. “We’re trying to participate as best we can in the investigation. It’s a learning process, and we’re still learning from our response, and we’ll continue to do so.”

Last week, Louisiana released more than 100,000 pages of documents that showed the response in the state to be equally flawed -- and also marred by bickering between the Republicans in Washington and the Democrats in Baton Rouge.

The eight pages released Monday by the committee, headed by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), provide a window onto the anxiety about supplies needed to keep people alive. They also show FEMA was struggling to deal with the dead.

On Sept. 1, Carwile told headquarters about the difficulty of getting refrigerated trucks and body bags to Hancock County, Miss., one of the areas most badly damaged by the storm. “This is unlike what we have seen before,” he wrote.

“I personally authorized Hancock County to buy refer [sic] truck that had been carrying ice because the coroner was going to have to start putting bodies out in the parking lot as his cooler was getting so full,” Carwile wrote. “Still lots and lots of bodies out there.”