Leadership and Crisis (16 page)

We went to see Sheriff Jack Stephens in St. Bernard Parish. I asked Jack what he needed. He gave me a short list:

I couldn’t help with the ammo, but I did get him those Ford trucks. Months later Jack told me, “We’re still using those trucks you got for us. And we’re still waiting for the trucks the federal government promised us.”

We went to the other companies and said, “You know, Ford gave us a bunch of trucks. The need is so great, can you help too?” Sure enough, they started to match Ford’s assistance. Isn’t American generosity great? Budweiser shipped in water and ice. Pharmaceutical companies sent much needed medications.

In the absence of clear authority, more private companies came to my staff and to me to ask what they could do. A major company called my office. With the situation deteriorating, they wanted to send a rescue helicopter for their stranded employees. But they could not identify the agency with the authority to give them the go-ahead—and despite our best efforts, neither could we. We heard alternatively that FEMA, the FAA, the Department of Transportation, and the military were in charge. Even a FEMA representative on the ground in the state’s emergency operations center could not give me a straight answer.

Time was running out, and we had to make a decision. So I told the company to avoid interfering with the Coast Guard, whose rescue missions were amazingly effective, and then I gave them the go-ahead.

“You got us authorization?” they asked.

“I’m giving you your authorization right now,” I told them.

Sometimes, asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission. But this was hardly the only case when red tape triumphed over common sense. When one mayor in my district called federal officials to try to get supplies for his constituents, he was put on hold for forty-five minutes. Eventually, a bureaucrat promised to write a memo to his supervisor. In another case, evacuees on a boat from St. Bernard Parish could not find anyone to give them permission to dock along the Mississippi River. And I can’t tell you how many churches told us they’d sent volunteers to make food for hungry people, only to be threatened by government officials for not following some obscure health code regulation.

With the government mired in bureaucratic sloth, private businesses, institutions, churches, and individuals filled the breach. In nearby Baton Rouge, signs began appearing on the streets: “If you need food, water, or a bed, come here.” Churches put up signs on the side of the road saying, “If you need something, come here.”

We saw that same spirit again when Hurricane Gustav struck in 2008. After that storm, I received an email from the Oklahoma Christian Center saying they wanted to send thousands of pounds of frozen chicken. Everyone thought it was a joke, but they were dead serious. They said, “Look, you send a truck, we’ll give it to you for free.” So we arranged for transportation and sure enough, the frozen chicken was cooked up and fed to thousands of people.

During Katrina, my office became a coordinator of volunteers and donations for the corporate, community, and faith-based groups eager to help. If someone needed clean water, we called the beer and soda companies. If someone needed medical supplies, we called the pharmaceutical companies. If we needed people and boats, we called the
churches. And when volunteers called us wanting to help, we went down the list calling up everyone who owned a plane or a helicopter to transport them. We also organized efforts from out of state; church groups, Rotary clubs, and civic organizations began arriving to help with the relief effort. I was especially touched to see children from all over the country send backpacks and other supplies.

Officials got on the radio and explained they needed water for the thousands of people staying at the Baton Rouge convention center. Within a few hours they broadcast a new message: “We don’t need anymore.” So many people showed up to donate bottles of water, Gatorade, and other drinks that officials were overwhelmed.

Private individuals certainly acted with more energy, compassion, and competence than many politicians and bureaucrats. That Friday, I sat in a meeting with Governor Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, several state and federal officials, and President Bush. I told the president about a sheriff in my district who had called federal officials to ask for assistance and was told he would have to email his request. The bureaucrat was just following procedure, you see, he just wanted to have a record of the request. When the sheriff mentioned that he, like the rest of his town, had no electricity, the bureaucrat suggested he call someone who could email the details—and be sure to include the part about not being able to email in the email.

Almost every other official around that table told a similar story of people in their districts trying to get help and coming smack up against a government whose primary concern was checking off all the boxes and sending people through the red tape maze.

The president continually shook his head, shocked at what he was hearing. He kept turning to tell his aides, with ever increasing seriousness, “Fix it.”

At the end of the meeting, I suggested that he consider appointing General Colin Powell, Jack Welch, or someone of similar skills and prominence with the authority to cut through the red tape, someone without political aspirations who had a record of getting things done. It was clear that many of the people involved were far too concerned with covering their own rear and looking good on TV. President Bush said he’d consider it, but he’s known for being a very loyal man, and he seemed reluctant to second guess the people he’d put in charge. Loyalty is rare in politics and is usually a great asset—but in this case, it did not serve us well.

The relief effort foundered until the military finally imposed a unified chain of command. And that’s one of the main lessons to improve the response to a future crisis: the government needs to establish from the outset a unified chain of command with the power to override the normal process restrictions and get things done. And junior officials up and down the line need to know they are authorized to make obvious and sensible calls in an emergency. They need to be encouraged to think creatively, exercise common sense, and develop innovative ways to solve problems—like turning to private companies and charities.

The experts who predicted Louisiana would never be the same after Katrina were right—just not in the way they expected. Louisiana changed, fundamentally, in the wake of the storm—the disaster forced us to rethink our aspirations as a state and our goals for the next generation. The storm forced us not just to rebuild, but to improve as we did so—to cast off failed institutions, crack down on long-standing corruption, and make our state a better place for people and businesses alike. Katrina was a terrible blow, and there is no silver lining, but Louisiana seized the opportunity to change for the better.

After the storm we cut red tape and streamlined our state recovery processes. We also put federal recovery dollars toward local governments and rebuilding critical infrastructure, ensuring transparency and strict accountability. The primary focus was on helping our hardest-hit communities complete their recovery efforts.

There’s still a long way to go, but I’m optimistic because I have seen how the great spirit of Louisiana’s people shone through during a catastrophe. First responders saved and evacuated tens of thousands of people and distributed millions of Meals Ready to Eat and liters of water.
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To this day, an array of volunteers and organizations is helping us to rebuild. You see the generosity of the American spirit when you meet families from around the country, like my friend and now governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell, who give up their vacations to come down to Louisiana and help rebuild homes in our battered communities.

In many cases, charities, faith-based groups, and not-for-profit organizations move faster and are more flexible than federal programs. Don’t get me wrong—there is a role for government, which has to build those levees and otherwise ensure our basic safety. And we must acknowledge that the National Guard responded to Katrina with stunning courage and efficiency, as did the Coast Guard, which is estimated to have rescued 33,000 people. But FEMA’s centralized model simply didn’t work.

Thus, we’ve created a bigger role for private citizens to play in future relief efforts. This builds on the tremendous efforts we saw from local restaurants, caterers, cafeterias, and schools and universities, which produced hot meals for evacuees. We are also coordinating efforts with church groups, which cooked thousands of meals for free. Many people would be surprised to learn it’s cheaper (and tastes a lot better) for
us to buy a hot meal from world famous chefs like John Folse or John Besh in New Orleans than for FEMA to deliver an MRE.

The story of Katrina is one of tragedy, yes—but it is also one of heroism, of the inspiring examples of individuals who sacrificed all so that others might live.

Craig Fugate, the new head of FEMA under President Obama, has argued that when disasters strike, government has to be prepared to “draft the public.” “We tend to look at the public as a liability,” he told the
Atlantic Monthly
. “[But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor.”
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That’s the truth. When disaster strikes, your neighbors are likely to be your best hope—and they shouldn’t have to worry about a bureaucrat standing in their way.

It’s not America’s government that has made America great. It’s Americans. It’s the people who are, at their core, so incredibly uncommon. I witnessed America’s incredible civic spirit countless times in the aftermath of Katrina. And this spirit goes back a long way. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about it in the nineteenth century—about how the “countless little people, humble people, throughout American society, expend their efforts in caring and in the betterment of the community, blowing on their hands, pitting their small strength against the inhuman elements of life.”

We witnessed this same spirit again just a few weeks after Katrina, when Hurricane Rita hit southwest Louisiana, completely demolishing some of our coastal communities.

Once again, masses of people turned out to help their neighbors in need. It is the same courageous spirit that has animated the American
soul since our nation’s founding—the spirit that dares us to explore, to build, and to take enormous risks to better ourselves, our families, and our country. When Americans see a burning building and hear cries for help, we don’t run from the flames, but into them. That’s why we are a nation of people who are not just free, but bravely so.

Government needs to acknowledge the incredible feats Americans can accomplish when called upon. Too often government stands not at the side of the firefighter, the police officer, the emergency responder, and the civilian volunteer—but in their path, standing in front of the burning building to say, “Stop! Don’t go in there. Fill out this form first.” Politicians appear on TV a lot during a crisis, but they’re rarely heroic. Certainly nothing I did during Katrina was heroic. All that my staff and I did, or tried to do, was to knock down the barriers between the real American heroes and the people they were trying to save. It’s a travesty those barriers existed at all.

In 2008, three years after Katrina, I was beginning my service as governor, and the first of two hurricanes entered the Gulf. Hurricane Gustav was a menacing storm with strong winds which the National Weather Service told us could be as bad as it gets, possibly even worse than Katrina. Remembering the experiences of Katrina, I quickly decided that we would evacuate all of coastal Louisiana, the largest evacuation in American history. We worked with parish presidents and coastal leaders to issue mandatory evacuations to encourage those who had the ability to evacuate themselves to do so. For the rest, we provided transportation, shelter, food, and medical attention when needed. Ambulances began transporting the medically needy from hospitals and homes to airfields. We faced many obstacles. Buses and ambulances that were promised didn’t show up in time. MREs and tarps didn’t come in sufficient numbers.

So we made do. For example, we commandeered school buses and deployed national guardsmen as drivers to evacuate our people. It was Sunday morning, hours before Gustav’s winds would close the airspace and prevent medical airlifts. We had used the limited ambulances we had to bring patients from New Orleans area hospitals to Lakefront Airport. Governor Rick Perry of Texas dispatched six C130s from the Texas National Guard to fly continuous sorties bringing patients from New Orleans to Texas hospitals. Eventually Northern Command sent aircraft from as far away as Canada, but those first planes from Texas literally arrived just in time and helped us save lives. God Bless Texas.