Review just a ‘snapshot,’ official retorts
By JULIA MALONE and RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia is unprepared to handle a catastrophic event and Atlanta’s emergency plans are even more problematic, a review released Friday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded.
The assessment, part of a nationwide study conducted by a team of local and state officials, found only 11 percent of Atlanta’s emergency plans to be “sufficient.” Most of the city’s preparations — including those for evacuating the sick, poor or aged — were rated as only partially sufficient. The city’s lowest rating came for its system for relaying emergency information to such at-risk populations.
The state scored slightly better, with 18 percent of its preparations rated as sufficient. State and city officials downplayed the report’s findings, saying it gives an incomplete picture.
The review of all 50 states and 75 major cities found that the majority of emergency plans aren’t up to managing enormous disasters, such as a major terrorist attack or Category 5 hurricane, and demonstrate “the need for all levels of government across the country to improve emergency operations plans,” the Homeland Security Department said.
The review, ordered by President Bush, was prompted by the collapse of response systems when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast last August, leaving thousands of poor, disabled and elderly residents stranded as New Orleans, its levees breached, filled up with water.
The six-month study rated New Orleans’ overall emergency plans as inadequate for handling a new catastrophic incident and said its plans for emergency contacts with “at-risk” populations, its health and medical capacities and its plans for emergency resources were insufficient. Just 4 percent of its plans were judged to meet requirements.
George Foresman, undersecretary for preparedness at Homeland Security, said conditions are still tough for New Orleans, which is recovering from Katrina even as it braces for the just-started 2006 hurricane season. He said federal emergency officials are assisting with evacuation plans there.
In Georgia, officials said the state of preparations is better than the report indicates.
“Atlanta is far more prepared than we’ve ever been,” Capt. Byron Kennedy of the Atlanta Fire Department said. “We’re continuously moving forward.”
Buss Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, said the report did not give a full picture of the state’s readiness.
“This is a long report, and we are still in the process of reading and reviewing it,” Weiss said. “We always want to do better and we welcome constructive input. But we aren’t really sure this report offers that input.”
He called the report “a snapshot of where we were on a particular day. It doesn’t reflect the ongoing development and revisions that have occurred since then. It doesn’t reflect the ongoing development in revisions that have occurred since then. We were expecting a critical analysis. This report is nothing more than a superficial report card.”
Ten states were rated as having sufficient plans to respond to disasters: Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont.
Florida, accustomed to being whipped with hurricane winds, was the only state to meet all the department’s basic requirements for planning for catastrophes.
New York and Washington, al-Qaida’s targets on Sept. 11, 2001, received lukewarm ratings. Seventy-one percent of New York’s emergency plans were described as only partially sufficient. In Washington, 67 percent of the plans were deemed partially sufficient and 2 percent insufficient.
Despite sending $18 billion in Homeland Security grants to spur local preparedness since the Sept. 11 attacks, “very little of it has gone to planning, training and exercise,” said department Undersecretary George Foresman.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.