By Andrew Brophy
Connecticut Post Online (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Firefighter Brad Sherman recalled with bitterness Monday how the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina, one of the nation’s worst natural disasters.
Sherman, who was among the town police officers and firefighters who went to the flood-ravaged Gulf Coast to help relief efforts, wasn’t just criticizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fellow firefighters on the one-year anniversary of Katrina.
He also had the ear of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who came to Fire Station 1 to thank first responders and acknowledge the government’s failure in responding to the crisis.
“The government failed the victims of Katrina, but individual Americans didn’t,” Lieberman said to a crowd of firefighters, police officers, American Red Cross volunteers and town officials.
Lieberman said FEMA is still unprepared a year later to respond to natural disasters and that 200,000 people in New Orleans remain without homes and access to health care, schools and jobs.
Sherman’s account of FEMA bungling in the days after Katrina “infuriated me,” Lieberman said.
Sherman said he was among 750 firefighters from around the country who went to the Gulf Coast to help Katrina victims. Instead, the firefighters found themselves in an Atlanta classroom, listening to FEMA officials talk about sexual discrimination in the workplace.
FEMA officials, Sherman said, didn’t know when or where firefighters would be deployed and told firefighters who wanted to get to work to “sit down and shut up” or they’d be sent home, Sherman said.
It took Fairfield Fire Chief Richard Felner, after making a few phone calls, to find a suitable place for Sherman and Firefighter Joe Rainis to get to work.
“The chief said, ‘Get in your rental car and head to Baton Rouge,’ ” Sherman recalled. “Once we de-FEMA-tized ourselves and went off on our own, we basically knew everything was going to be on us.”
Lieberman agreed with Sherman’s opinion that the government’s response to Katrina was far from ideal.
“What America saw unfold was the blatant failure of government at all levels to lead,” Lieberman said. But Lieberman said the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee investigated the government’s response and had exposed “the failures of government to prevent them from happening again.”
The committee, Lieberman said, found “profound fault” at all levels of government and developed an 800-page report with 88 recommendations. The Senate adopted a significant part of the committee’s suggested reforms, he said.
But the picture in Louisiana remains bleak a year later, Lieberman said. Some 200,000 people are still living in FEMA trailers, unfinished homes or tents pitched on their properties. He said it was scandalous that FEMA trailers are still in Arkansas.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General on Monday released a report that said FEMA was still not prepared for a natural disaster, Lieberman said.
The Inspector General’s Office investigated seven of FEMA’s 28 Urban Search and Rescue teams and found six “still woefully unprepared to handle the next disaster,” Lieberman said.
Sherman said little appears to have changed for many Katrina victims. “A whole year has passed, and these people still aren’t home. Their homes are destroyed. They’re in pretty dire straits down there and not sure what’s going to happen,” he said.