Interesting Yesterdays

IN THE BROADEST sense, the House investigation of the government's preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans confirms what we already know: namely, that blame for the fiasco can be fairly laid at the feet of a wide range of federal, state and local officials. But the unflinching House committee investigation -- prepared under the leadership of Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), and due to be published in full tomorrow -- contains details that were not previously well known. It also paints a picture of federal incompetence that you'd think a chief executive would want to study and learn from. If the White House's first reaction is anything to go by, President Bush wasn't initially all that concerned.

The report reveals how poorly federal officials -- including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- understood their own National Response Plan, a set of bureaucratic responses that should have been second nature to officials in the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As a result of these misunderstandings, Mr. Chertoff chose Michael D. Brown, the FEMA director, to take charge of the situation, despite the fact that Mr. Brown had no emergency management experience, that others who did have such experience were available and that his absence left FEMA under the control of an incompetent deputy at a crucial moment. The report also shows how poor communications prevented information about New Orleans from reaching the White House and the upper levels of DHS in time; how the failure to declare a "mandatory" evacuation of the city meant that many residents stayed in New Orleans; and how the absence of a state database of emergency shelters led to confusion.

Is it worth learning about these mistakes? We think so. Obviously, so does Mr. Davis, whose hard-hitting report deserves credit -- especially from House Democrats who charged early on that it would be biased -- for its tough criticism of the administration, something congressional reports have not had much of in recent years. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), whose Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs also is investigating the Katrina saga and will interview Mr. Chertoff today, also believes there's value in uncovering the mistakes of the past. "You can't learn the lessons if you don't look back," she told Post editors yesterday.

Unfortunately, it was less than clear that the White House initially wanted to know what exactly went wrong. A White House spokesman told Post reporter Spencer S. Hsu that he wouldn't comment on an early version of the report, partly because the White House was working on its own investigation and partly because, "The president is less interested in yesterday, and more interested with today and tomorrow . . . so that we can be better prepared for next time."

But it's going to be very difficult to be "prepared for next time" if the president is not interested in the "yesterday" described in the House's investigation. Even a brief glance at the report should lead DHS and the White House to make changes. Clearly, the National Response Plan -- the same set of mechanisms that are supposed to kick in if a radiological "dirty bomb" goes off in Washington -- needs work (and needs to be taught more explicitly to officials). Clearly, the White House needs to look more closely at how its officials and DHS leaders get information from the ground about disasters that are underway. Clearly, local and state governments could start building up the shelter databases that were lacking in Louisiana. Belatedly, the White House is saying it's interested in some of these changes, too. Perhaps it wasn't "yesterday's" story after all.