News

Hurricane Katrina Teaches Former FEMA Chief Resilience

Randy Ellis

10/04/2015

Oct. 04--Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina obliterated the political career of then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown with the same savage brutality that it crushed the city of New Orleans.

"Truthfully, it was devastating," said Brown, a Guymon native who resigned as director of the agency that coordinates federal disaster relief efforts in 2005 after being pilloried in the media for the government's response to Hurricane Katrina's destruction.

"People blame you for the deaths of people. ... It was the low point of my life," said Brown, who has an undergraduate degree from Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma) and a law degree from Oklahoma City University.

Political scapegoat

Reflecting on the experience 10 years after the disaster, Brown told The Oklahoman much of the personal criticism was unfair and he believes he was a political scapegoat -- a position Brown expounds upon in his 2011 book "Deadly Indifference."

But more importantly, Brown said he believes his tribulations have provided him with unique insights to share with the American people about human resilience and the need for the country to be better prepared.

Just as the people of New Orleans have come a long way toward rebuilding their magnificent city, Brown said he has rebuilt his personal life.

"I'm on top of the world," said Brown, who now hosts a successful Denver talk radio show on KHOW and travels the world, speaking mostly on the topics of disaster preparedness and the capacity of humans to be resilient.

"You're looking at a guy who has been able to fly around the country on Air Force One," Brown said. "I've been at the pinnacle and I've been in the basement."

"Something really bad ... could happen to you today," he said. "I want you to know, it's not the end of the world, that you can pick yourself up and you can reinvent yourself. You can start a new life and you can pick up where you left off and you can keep going. Don't let bad stuff stop you."

This country needs to do a better job of preparing for disasters, he said.

Lack of planning

Brown, who joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency as its general counsel in 2001 and became the agency's director in 2003, said he was shocked at the lack of planning for disasters that he found.

"There was no true planning for what we call catastrophic disasters," Brown said, referring to events such as Hurricane Katrina or major earthquakes that can displace hundreds of thousands of people.

Brown said he wants the public to know that as FEMA's director he took steps to correct that oversight -- going to Congress in 2004 and obtaining money to plan for responding to seven simulated disasters.

One of the scenarios they chose to simulate was a Category 5 hurricane that would strike New Orleans, breach levees and flood the city.

Exercise shut down

Ironically, the agency chose to shut down the exercise in July 2005 after finding the city of New Orleans was "so dysfunctional and so ill-prepared that we can't even conduct the exercise," Brown said.

Six weeks later, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and more than 1,800 people lost their lives across the Gulf Coast region.

The FEMA director quickly became the pinata for public blame, said Edmond attorney Andy Lester, Brown's close friend.

Brown said he made some mistakes, including not working well with the media, but pointed much of the blame elsewhere.

The levees that failed were not well maintained, and that was the responsibility of local levee boards, he said.

"They received millions of dollars in grants for maintenance and improvements and most of that money was either misspent, or who knows where that money went," Brown said.

Brown said he went on cable news television and urged people to flee the city before the storm reached landfall, but said neither he nor then-President George W. Bush had the power to order people to evacuate as a precaution. That power belonged to the governor or mayor, he said.

"To this day it fascinates me ... that the governor and the mayor would not either heed our advice nor themselves do what people had elected them to do -- that is, to lead," Brown said.

FEMA misconception

"I think people have the misconception of FEMA that it owns planes, trains and automobiles and when something really bad happens, that FEMA is going to swoop in and they're going to save your life and they're going to stop the damage to your property and then they're going to reimburse you for everything that happened and went wrong," Brown said.

In reality, FEMA only has about 3,000 employees during normal times, he said. Its true power is its ability to coordinate relief efforts by other agencies and write checks to reimburse governmental entities and, to a more limited extent, help individuals financially.

Brown said he doesn't think the United States is any better prepared for disasters now than it was when Hurricane Katrina hit.

"I think the more technological society becomes, the further away we get from Mother Nature and the fact Mother Nature is going to do what Mother Nature is going to do," he said.

The lack of spectacular terrorist attacks since 9/11 has allowed the public once again to have a misplaced sense of invulnerability, he said.

"I can tell you just from my most recent trips to the Middle East that the threat is very real and ISIS and al-Qaida are still very much alive," he said. "It's a real threat."

Oklahomans chided

Closer to home, Brown chided Oklahomans for not being better prepared for tornadoes.

"I grew up in Oklahoma. We know tornadoes happen. How many people build a new house and never put a safe room in it?" he asked. "Probably 99 percent of the people. And why do they do that -- because it's never going to happen to me."

Brown said he is now working on a second book that will look into the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that includes FEMA and one that he describes as a "monstrosity."

"I personally think it was a huge mistake," he said.

Brown said he has a great volume of research materials and the book likely will take a couple of years to complete.