Christopher Cooper & Robert Block, "Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security"

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on the morning of August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring—despite all the drills, exercises, and warnings. In this troubling exposé of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of The Wall Street Journal show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with federal, state, and local officials, Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina—the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but were unable to fix it. America’s top emergency response officials had long known that a calamitous hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, but that seems to have had little effect on planning or execution.

Disaster demonstrates that the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. Washington is ill equipped to handle large-scale emergencies, be they floods or fires, natural events or terrorist attacks, and Cooper and Block make a strong case for overhauling of the nation’s emergency response system. This is a book that no American can afford to ignore.

From Publishers Weekly
The fatal inundation of New Orleans was no natural disaster, argues this hard-hitting investigative report. Wall Street Journal reporters Cooper and Block finger two very man-made causes of the tragedy. The first was the decades-long failure of local officials and the Army Corps of Engineers to fix New Orleans' poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls, which collapsed under moderate hurricane conditions.

The second and more spectacular was the breakdown of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after its incorporation into the Department of Homeland Security, which cut FEMA's funding and authority and reoriented it toward the national obsession with terrorism. The result, when the flood came, was a bumbling federal response hobbled by complacent planning, miscommunication, red tape (even recovery of the dead was delayed by paperwork) and an inability to deliver promised supplies and transportation. The authors' exhaustively researched account slogs through the intricacies of this bureaucratic nightmare and goes beyond the usual pillorying of FEMA head Michael Brown to criticize higher officials in the White House and, especially, DHS.

Cooper and Block manage to thread a readable, coherent story through the morass of detail and acronyms, with disquieting implications about the government's ability to cope with catastrophe. Photos.

Contents

Authors' Note

Part One: Prelude to Disaster
 1 The Perfect Storm
 2 Water Pork
 3 A Mountain of Failure
 4 Homeland Insecurity

Part Two: Catastrophe
 5 The Big One
 6 The Undodged Bullet
 7 Stranded in New Orleans
 8 Promises, Promises
 9 Getting Control

Part Three: Flotsam and Jetsam
 10 The Blame Game
 11 Do It Yourself
 12 Reindeer Games
 13 A Civic Responsibility

Sources
 Books
 Katrina Chronologies
 Academic Papers
 U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency
 State of Louisiana
 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
 U.S. Government Accountability Office (Formerly General Accounting Office)
 U.S. Congress
 Daily Videoconference Call Transcripts
 The White House (Including White House Homeland Security Council Documents)
 Newspaper and Magazine Articles
Acknowledgments
Index

Tags: USHistory, HurricaneKatrina

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