William Fisher

NEW YORK, Sep 19 2005 (IPS) — The U.S. government’s sluggish and uncoordinated response to Hurricane Katrina again drew public attention to some of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have yet to be implemented or have made unsatisfactory or marginal progress.

This is the conclusion reached in a new report by the 9/11 commissioners, now operating privately as the Public Discourse Project. Since the end of their public mandate, the former commissioners have held a series of public hearings on what the government has done – and failed to do – to correct the flaws exposed in the commission’s best-selling report last year.

Many of their recommendations are as relevant to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina as they are to man-made terrorist attacks.

Among the steps in which the report says the government has made only “minimal progress” is the allocation of radio spectrum that would allow police, fire, emergency medical services and other first responders to communicate with one another, and the National Guard and agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This was a major shortcoming on 9/11, and cost several hundred lives. Authorities experienced the exact same problem during Katrina, four years after 9/11.

The report said legislation pending before Congress would compel the return of the analog broadcast spectrum and its reallocation, including for public safety purposes. “Congress should mandate this reallocation by the earliest possible date,” it said.

Four senior lawmakers, writing in The New York Times Monday, asked, “After watching the horrific communications breakdown that occurred during Katrina, will we wait another four years before acting? How many more lives will be lost? What kind of catastrophic disaster is necessary for Congress to give these heroes the tools they need to save lives?”

The four are Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Reps. Jane Harman, a Democrat from California, and Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

The commissioners’ report also charged that the government has made only minimal progress toward the adoption of an Incident Command System (ICS) to unite multiple agencies and jurisdictions.

The lack of a unified command system was one of the major obstacles during Hurricane Katrina, contributing to widespread chaos and confusion.

The commissioners said the DHS set October 2004 as the deadline for full Incident Command System compliance ‘to the maximum extent possible’. The hard deadline for full compliance as a condition for federal preparedness funds is Oct. 1, 2006.

The Commissioners also gave the government a failing grade on preparing a plan to “regularly assess the types of threats the country faces to determine (a) the adequacy of the government’s plans – and the progress against those plans – to protect America’s critical infrastructure and (b) the readiness of the government to respond to the threats that the United States might face.”

It said, “The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 required DHS to issue a report by June 15, 2005, assessing the risks and vulnerabilities of the nation’s critical infrastructure. This report has not yet been released.”

This type of report would have assessed the nation’s ability to respond to natural disasters such as Katrina, as well as terrorist threats.

Finally, it urged the DHS to encourage the private sector, principally the insurance and credit-rating industries, to establish standards for private preparedness, adding that that only minimal progress has been made in this area.

The commissioners recalled that in a May 2005 speech to private sector representatives, (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff “correctly noted that preparedness is not solely a government responsibility. The insurance and credit-rating industries are beginning to incorporate national preparedness standards into their underwriting and risk-analysis criteria. Leaders in the legal profession are beginning to evaluate the National Preparedness Standard as a legal standard of care.”

Still, it said, “awareness of the Standard throughout the corporate sector is low.”

“In another attack and in any natural disaster, private-sector employees will likely again be on the front lines. As the 9/11 Commission Report showed, employees of enterprises that institutionalise a high level of emergency preparedness are far more likely to survive in a disaster.”

The commissioners urged corporate leaders to “take the lead in encouraging all American businesses, especially those in high-risk areas, or who own critical national infrastructure, to incorporate National Preparedness Standards into their business practices.”

Prof. Beau Grosscup of California State University at Chico told IPS, “This provides further proof of two current political realities. First, for the Bush administration, the real purpose of the 9/11 Commission was to shift the blame away from it and the Pentagon and onto the ‘Clinton-wrecked’ intelligence agencies, notably the FBI.

“Secondly, and more important to the future of the nation, making government work goes against the Bush administration’s privatisation agenda and thus is to be systematically avoided.”