Mayor Studying L.A.’s Ability to Handle Disasters

In the wake of concerns about government response to Hurricane Katrina, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday that he will create an expert team to assess how prepared the city is to handle a disaster.

The mayor offered few details about the group except to say that it will consist of experts from inside and outside local government.

The contention that local, state and federal officials were slow to respond to the disaster in New Orleans has triggered scrutiny of government preparedness across the country. In his televised speech Thursday, President Bush called for a full investigation of the federal response to the hurricane and subsequent flooding. In New York, a state Assembly report released Thursday determined that New York City was not prepared to handle a natural disaster.

Villaraigosa said that Los Angeles, because of its experience with earthquakes and fires, “is as prepared as any city in the nation” to deal with a major catastrophe.

Los Angeles has had a central entity to direct responses to emergencies -- including riots, earthquakes and fires -- since 1980. Known as the Emergency Preparedness Department, it is charged with helping the city “respond to, recover from, and mitigate the impact of natural, man-made or technological disasters upon its people and property.”

Since taking office, Villaraigosa has spent significant time trying to improve the infrastructure needed to respond to emergencies.

He has aggressively lobbied state and local governments to provide more money for anti-terror operations And in the last two weeks, he has convened special meetings of the city’s Emergency Operations Board, which includes heads of major city agencies, to discuss ways to help victims of the hurricane in the Gulf states -- as well as the nearly 1,900 evacuees who have made their way to Los Angeles.